Affinity Publisher Customer Beta - 1.9.0.742

[AdamW]

Status: Beta
Purpose: Stability and General Testing
Requirements: Purchased Affinity Publisher
Mac App Store: Not submitted
Download: Download
Auto-update: Not Available

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Hi,

We are pleased to announce that Affinity Publisher Customer Beta 1.9.0.742 is now available as a download from the link above.

If this is your first time using a customer beta of an Affinity app, it’s worth noting that the beta will install as a separate app - alongside your store version. They will not interfere with each other at all and you can continue to use the store version for critical work without worry.

This beta is significant update from the 1.8 version available for purchase - we strongly recommend that you do not use this beta for real work as data could be lost and the files you save are not guaranteed to open in previous or future versions of Affinity Publisher.

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New Features and Improvements

We are still very early in the beta process for 1.9. We have additional features we expect to integrate over the next few weeks.

PDF Bookmarks
Bookmarks provide a listing of flagged content that are present within a PDF document.
Bookmarks can be added via the Anchor Panel or automatically generated from a Table of Contents.

PDF Passthrough
It is now possible to flag placed PDF files for PDF passthrough. When such a file is encountered during PDF export it can be embedded verbatim in the output PDF ensuring 100% fidelity.

PSD flattened image representation
When placing a PSD we now use the flattened bitmap representation in the file rather than interpreting the file content ourselves. This will generally give better results on output.

Convert Pixel Layer to Image Node / Picture Frame
It is now possible to convert a Pixel Layer to an Image or Picture Frame plus content.

Initial Text Baseline Advance
Text frames now support an ‘Initial Advance’ property. This can be helpful to keep text aligned with other page elements and ensure predictable consistent layout.

Path Text
Additional controls now make it possible to avoid flowing text onto both sides of a curve. Additionally it is now possible to hide overflowing Path Text if desired.

Configurable Bleed and Margin Guide Colours
The colours used for Bleed and Margin guides are configurable by the user and saved with the document.

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Known Issues with New Features

The following lists some of the more important known issues we currently have with new the features:

- PDF Passthrough: Crash exporting specific PDF - If you have crashes exporting we would love to hear about them
- PDF Passthrough: Preflight warns of passthrough pdf when it is set to interpret. Some preflight checks drill into PDFs flagged for passthrough and report spurious errors.
- Convert Pixel Layer to Image Node: Converted image resources can end up with no name
- Path Text: Path text overflows on wrong side, hiding overflow hides all text

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To be notified about all future Mac beta updates, please follow this notification thread 

To be notified when this Publisher update comes out of beta and is fully released to all Publisher customers, please follow this thread

[000]

PDF Passthrough! Fantastic! Thank you SO much!!!!

[Seneca]

33 minutes ago, AdamW said:

We have additional features we expect to integrate over the next few weeks.

Looking forward to testing them all.

[dcarvalho84]

1 hour ago, AdamW said:

PSD flattened image representation
When placing a PSD we now use the flattened bitmap representation in the file rather than interpreting the file content ourselves. This will generally give better results on output.

If this is what i'm thinking i would love the abbility to choose bitmap or the way that it is now (editable) when we open pdf files, not only in Publisher, but Designer and Photo too would be really useful for me.

Ex: A client send me one file with fancy fonts or something and i need to set a plane for print with 4 on a page, at this time and since i don't have the assets in the pdf file i will end up with a file that is not like the original one and the option to place it/open as a bitmap (like photoshop does) would solve that problem for me.

[walt.farrell]

26 minutes ago, dcarvalho84 said:

If this is what i'm thinking i would love the abbility to choose bitmap or the way that it is now (editable) when we open pdf files, not only in Publisher, but Designer and Photo too would be really useful for me.

Ex: A client send me one file with fancy fonts or something and i need to set a plane for print with 4 on a page, at this time and since i don't have the assets in the pdf file i will end up with a file that is not like the original one and the option to place it/open as a bitmap (like photoshop does) would solve that problem for me.

You started out talking about the text you quoted, which refers to placed PSD files. You then gave an example that talks about a PDF file.

I don't see how your example relates to your first comment.

 

[dcarvalho84]

4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

You started out talking about the text you quoted, which refers to placed PSD files. You then gave an example that talks about a PDF file.

I don't see how your example relates to your first comment.

 

Because and before i test i think they are doing with PSD files exactly what i've explained (open the file completely in a bitmap way (as an image) and not editable) and want for PDF files. Or maybe i'm wrong and what i've quoted is not supposed to work like i'm thinking and that won't make sense for you but it does for me. Maybe i haven't explained myself the best way (I'm Portuguese )

[000]

PDF Passthrough: Love the implementation, especially that ,passthrough' is the standard setting but that you can change it on a case-by-case basis.

I have been playing with it, just picking random PDFs from my hard drive and my emails and pulling them into an empty document to see what happens and am having a lot of fun with it.
The attached file crashes the beta reliably every time for me, it imports correctly in the release version though.

BILd_zeitung_73_2019.pdf

[Seneca]

1 hour ago, AdamW said:

New Features and Improvements

One thing that is missing from your list of improvements is:

• Additional improvements regarding IDML import.

This beta is able to open an IDML file which up until now Publisher, including 1.8.4 release, wasn't able to deal with (immediate crash).

👏

 

[Jon P]

Thanks, @Jens Krebs, I've logged that

[walt.farrell]

38 minutes ago, dcarvalho84 said:

Because and before i test i think they are doing with PSD files exactly what i've explained (open the file completely in a bitmap way (as an image) and not editable) and want for PDF files. Or maybe i'm wrong and what i've quoted is not supposed to work like i'm thinking and that won't make sense for you but it does for me. Maybe i haven't explained myself the best way (I'm Portuguese )

We've always had the option of opening text in a PSD as either editable or bitmap, via Preferences, General. The new change (I'm guessing) simply changes the source of the bitmap when the Preferences do not say to keep it editable.

I don't this PSD enhancement is related to what you want. However, the PDF Passthrough part of the announcement may be what you (and a lot of other users) want (and have wanted for a long time)

[Dazmondo77]

PDF PASSTHROUGH YAAAAAAAY!

Unfortunately I can't get it to work, each pdf i've tested shows up as passthrough but theres still font issues

[AdamW]

Hi @Dazmondo77 - You will still get the interpreted preview in the document in Affinity, we may end up watermarking it or something to make this more obvious, but when re-exported to PDF does it look correct?

[dcarvalho84]

37 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

We've always had the option of opening text in a PSD as either editable or bitmap, via Preferences, General. The new change (I'm guessing) simply changes the source of the bitmap when the Preferences do not say to keep it editable.

I don't this PSD enhancement is related to what you want. However, the PDF Passthrough part of the announcement may be what you (and a lot of other users) want (and have wanted for a long time)

Hmm maybe the PDF Passtrough could help but i've made a quick test with some downloaded pdf and don't work, even in preflight i have a lot of warning of missing fonts. I don't see any difference choosing Passtrough or interpret in this specific case (3 pdfs)

I have a result similar to Dazmondo77 and even exporting the files are not ok.

Edit: Now i've done another test and the files are almost 98/99% ok!!

@Dazmondo77 choose the preset PDF (Print) and give it a try.

@AdamW The first time i've done the test i've used the X-1a:2003 and it didn't work. Should the passtrough work on all presets??

[walt.farrell]

24 minutes ago, dcarvalho84 said:

Hmm maybe the PDF Passtrough could help but i've made a quick test with some downloaded pdf and don't work, even in preflight i have a lot of warning of missing fonts.

Covered in the "Known Issues" section at the end of the announcement?

[AdamW]

@dcarvalho84 - Yes, there are constraints. For example you cannot pass through a placed PDF with a higher PDF version when exporting to a PDF with lower PDF version, e.g. a placed PDF/X-3 cannot be output to PDF/X-1a or a PDF 1.7 cannot be passed through when exporting to 1.6 or lower. You can use the 'PDF Passthrough' preflight check to set a target PDF output version - if you do this then any placed PDF files that are not compatible will be flagged.

As above though, unfortunately there are currently a few issues with the preflight checker, for example the 'Missing Fonts Check' is logging issues that are not relevant. We will fix these problems in due course.

[garrettm30]

Although 1.8 lacked features I was (and still am) hoping to see, I personally considered it to be good progress forward—you can't do it all at once, after all. Particularly with PDF passthrough, I feel like 1.9 is off to a good start as well. That one change will open up to me additional document types that I previously had to do elsewhere or rely on non-ideal workarounds.

[Uncle Jack]

9 hours ago, AdamW said:

 

We are still very early in the beta process for 1.9. We have additional features we expect to integrate over the next few weeks.

Hi,

My enthusiasm is very limited. When will cross-column text formatting be installed?

As it looks like this will not be implemented in the next 1.9 update - although it has been requested many times here in the forum. Your "Publisher" is therefore still no alternative for InDesign for me.

[evtonic3]

What the H is PDF pass through? Lol not serious, seriously.

[fde101]

12 hours ago, AdamW said:

It is now possible to convert a Pixel Layer to an Image or Picture Frame plus content.

A curious side-effect of this feature is that the embedded image data that came from the pixel layer shows up in resource manager with a blank name.

If you "make linked" it will then save it as a TIFF file with a name like "_1.tiff".

Any chance we could opt to have that become a PNG instead of a TIFF?

 

12 hours ago, AdamW said:

Additional controls now make it possible to avoid flowing text onto both sides of a curve. Additionally it is now possible to hide overflowing Path Text if desired.

It took me a minute or two of staring at this one to find it, but now that I have, seems to work just fine.  I like it.

A nice option to add for this yet would be for the text on the "other side" to be rotated back to the correct orientation.  The current option is good too, but it might be nice to have the text on both sides be right-side-up sometimes but still follow the curve?

[A_B_C]

16 hours ago, AdamW said:

You will still get the interpreted preview in the document in Affinity, we may end up watermarking it or something to make this more obvious, but when re-exported to PDF does it look correct?

Adam, I’m excited about PDF passthrough! But why do you display the interpreted preview in the Affinity document, and not the actual output? That is thoroughly confusing. Is there a technical constraint that motivates this aspect of the implementation? 🙂

[Dazmondo77]

15 hours ago, AdamW said:

Hi @Dazmondo77 - You will still get the interpreted preview in the document in Affinity, we may end up watermarking it or something to make this more obvious, but when re-exported to PDF does it look correct?

Tried more tests and doesn't work using PDF/X-1a:2003 so tried PDF/X-4 and just bombs but now can't even get that far as as soon as the export screen comes up it bombs so can't even change the settings - tried making new documents and trying existing documents - as soon as I go to export it bombs

[Dazmondo77]

16 hours ago, AdamW said:

You will still get the interpreted preview in the document in Affinity, we may end up watermarking it or something to make this more obvious, but when re-exported to PDF does it look correct?

Maybe a low rez preview with passthrough watermark would enable the user to export with a bit more confidence - it would also be useful for a backup plan for when the inevitable deadline takes a dive, simply because of PDFs not passing through, so maybe a quick rasterise in place function???

[AdamW]

1 hour ago, A_B_C said:

Adam, I’m excited about PDF passthrough! But why do you display the interpreted preview in the Affinity document, and not the actual output? That is thoroughly confusing. Is there a technical constraint that motivates this aspect of the implementation? 

Yes! We are still working on aspects of our PDF importer that converts PDF to native Affinity, not least the lack of support for embedded fonts, and it is the PDF importer that is used to create the on-screen representation. The alternative is to embed the placed PDF data directly into the exported PDF, i.e. simply ‘pass it through’. Since we are not manipulating the PDF data in any way via this route we expect good results.

[thomaso]

22 hours ago, AdamW said:

New Features and Improvements

Besides the impressive list of new features, are there any bug fixes worth mentioning in the .742 Beta?

[Dazmondo77]

19 hours ago, dcarvalho84 said:

The first time i've done the test i've used the X-1a:2003 and it didn't work. Should the passtrough work on all presets??

As PDF/X is a print industry standard I would have thought passthrough would have worked - bombs every time for me