Affinity Publisher Customer Beta - 1.9.0.742

[AdamW]

Status: Beta
Purpose: Updates and Fixes
Requirements: Purchased Affinity Publisher
Windows Store: Not submitted
Download: Download
Auto-update: Not available

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 Windows 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

[MikeW]

So far, great job with pdf passthrough. Even some pdfs that tripped up PPX9 using transparency made in ID sail through fine.

Fonts have been correct, etc.

Thank you, Adam and all concerned. 

Mike 

[Robert Laskey]

Yeeessss

[MrDavidW]

Unstable version. Program either crashes without warning or goes into endless "not responding" mode.

[dominik]

2 hours ago, MrDavidW said:

Unstable version. Program either crashes without warning or goes into endless "not responding" mode.

Hello @MrDavidW,

can you please be a bit more specific about the cause for the crashes. The way you post it does not help the developers to solve anything of what you experience. Also, if you can provide a step by step instruction on what to do to make the program crash others can try the same and perhaps confirm it. This also is a good practice to find the cause of a crash.

Cheers,
d.

[walt.farrell]

4 hours ago, MrDavidW said:

Unstable version. Program either crashes without warning or goes into endless "not responding" mode.

If you report more details, as dominik suggested, please create a separate topic in the beta forum to do that.

[MrDavidW]

Attempting to create simple two-page spread with text boxes and image. Program stops - "Not Responding" - and will not recover.

[dominik]

31 minutes ago, MrDavidW said:

Attempting to create simple two-page spread with text boxes and image. Program stops - "Not Responding" - and will not recover.

Thank you @MrDavidW,

to get to this stage of the layout you must have done several steps before APub stops working. Can you tell what was the last thing you did before you saw this?

d.

[Mithferion]

On 9/18/2020 at 9:04 AM, AdamW said:

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

Yeeeeeei! Thanks for taking my petition into account.

Best regards!

[Alfred]

On 9/18/2020 at 3:04 PM, AdamW said:

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.

Placed files are imported, aren’t they??

[Patrick Connor]

18 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Placed files are imported, aren’t they

The sentence you are querying is correctly worded. A passthrough placed PDF file is treated differently when export to PDF

[Robert Laskey]

1 hour ago, Patrick Connor said:

The sentence you are querying is correctly worded. A passthrough placed PDF file is treated differently when export to PDF

However you only see how it really looks like when you export it. While viewing a passthrough pdf placed on the Publisher Artboard, if there are missing fonts, you will get a wrong font representation (replacement) as if you are editing it. Correct viewing as in Indesign will be much appreciated.

[Alfred]

2 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

The sentence you are querying is correctly worded. A passthrough placed PDF file is treated differently when export to PDF

Ah, OK, it was the (lack of) punctuation that threw me! I read it as “When such a file is encountered during PDF export” instead of “When such a file is encountered, during PDF export ...”

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

Ah, OK, it was the (lack of) punctuation that threw me! I read it as “When such a file is encountered during PDF export” instead of “When such a file is encountered, during PDF export ...”

It really is "when such a file is encountered during PDF export"

1. You import it (Place, Paste, ...)
2. You flag it for Passthrough (that's the default, actually).
3. At that point, in your Publisher workspace you'll still see an interpreted file, but there have been complaints about that and Serif is considering changing something. But that's irrelevant to this part of the discussion.
4. Then, you export. When it (the imported file) is encountered during Export, the original PDF page, uninterpreted, is put into the output file.

[broadcast]

Quote

PDF Passthrough

Game changer. Thanks 🙌 🙌 🙌   🙌 🙌 🙌   🙌 🙌 🙌

[Petar Petrenko]

Thanks guys for the new features you added. They are really great.

I would like to know why we can't define margins and bleed colors when creating new document, instead of opening "Document setup..." and "Guides manager..."?

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Petar Petrenko said:

I would like to know why we can't define margins and bleed colors when creating new document, instead of opening "Document setup..." and "Guides manager..."?

Perhaps there's a limited amount of space in the new document dialog? Perhaps the feature is still not finished?

Whatever the reason, if you have a common margin and bleed color you'd like to use, you can set it up once in a Template.

[Petar Petrenko]

8 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Perhaps there's a limited amount of space in the new document dialog? Perhaps the feature is still not finished?

Whatever the reason, if you have a common margin and bleed color you'd like to use, you can set it up once in a Template.

Yes, perhaps...

[Seneca]

14 hours ago, Petar Petrenko said:

I would like to know why we can't define margins and bleed colors when creating new document, instead of opening "Document setup..." and "Guides manager..."?

I was thinking about it as well and came to a conclusion that the margin and bleed colours should live in Preferences.

And the per Project colours changes should be where they are now.

[Trljr]

So awesome, will be testing it soon! Excellent work guys looks like loads of great new features

[PONTHIEUX]

Hi Affinity's team

Great to have bookmarks for pdf !!!!!!
I would like to have WYSWYG bookmarks pdf in a dedicated panel inside Affinity Publisher.
Can we have numbering with bookmarks in TOC ?

"PDF Passthrough" is great too !
Finally, it will be so good to have a AFFINITY Acrobat Pdf Pro (standalone) !
Can i hope for this ?

Best regards

[Michail]

On 9/18/2020 at 4:04 PM, AdamW said:

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.

Where can I see the additional controls? I only see the four triangles I have always seen.