Add a set of styles

[FredVN]

When I open a pdf, no styles like headings are available.

For the moment I import a specific made document where I changed the values of the headings to my wishes. But after import all values of the headings are different, so I must change them again.

Suggestion.

A set of predefined styles, which can be changed to be valid for future imports or new documents.

I am a big fan of tandardization in everything I design.

[MikeW]

A pdf has no concept of paragraph or character styles. Only text attributes.

If you save the APub document, then open it to make changes, the paragraph styles are retained. 

[FredVN]

Background of my wish.

I have a couple of books in Word. I want to convert them into Publisher.

The only way to do that is making a pdf and import the pdf. As there are no preset styles in Publisher I must do a lot of work. That can be organized much better and easier.

See https://shielavandenbosch.nl/kleinebedrijveninvietnam/ for a Dutch demo of one of my books. The English page is under construction at the moment.

[MikeW]

Can you just place/import the Word file?

If you used text styles in Word, they will be available in APub. 

[FredVN]

No. Acording to th Help of Publisher only pdf. Which sounds logic: pdf is more or less a standard, while Word is changing.

And as Affinity you want be dependent on MS.

[MikeW]

No. You can place a .docx file.

[Alfred]

8 minutes ago, MikeW said:

You can place a .docx file.

The Help on Placing content currently only mentions Excel (*.xlsx) spreadsheets, not Word (*.docx) documents.

[MikeW]

57 minutes ago, Alfred said:

The Help on Placing content currently only mentions Excel (*.xlsx) spreadsheets, not Word (*.docx) documents.

Who cares? I didn't comment on how sucky Serif's help documentation is.

The Word .docx above comes in with both paragraph & character styles intact. While the sucky Place command shows "Open" as the button text, I am using the Place command and "All Documents..." for the type of documents. One can both see/preview the .docx file(s) and they place just fine.

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

The Help on Placing content currently only mentions Excel (*.xlsx) spreadsheets, not Word (*.docx) documents.

 

21 minutes ago, MikeW said:

Who cares?

Anyone relying on the Help to tell them about the range of options available to them!

5 hours ago, FredVN said:

Acording to th Help of Publisher only pdf. Which sounds logic: pdf is more or less a standard, while Word is changing.

 

[MikeW]

1 minute ago, Alfred said:

Anyone relying on the Help to tell them about the range of options available to them!

Serif's so-called APub expert and their documentation head & team ought to actually create helpful, and far more complete, documentation.

I spent 12 years of my professional life creating documentation of software. I don't know why--other than the bean counter's involved--who thought skimpy, near non-existent documentation was a good idea. But just because it is prevalent these days doesn't mean companies should continue the practice.

As far as the quote from FredVN? PDFs are not a "standard" when it comes to editing the same. They are a "closed box," final form type of document. They should be used, as regards editing, a last resort option.

[Alfred]

2 minutes ago, MikeW said:

Serif's so-called APub expert and their documentation head & team ought to actually create helpful, and far more complete, documentation.

I couldn’t agree more.

3 minutes ago, MikeW said:

As far as the quote from FredVN? PDFs are not a "standard" when it comes to editing the same. They are a "closed box," final form type of document. They should be used, as regards editing, a last resort option.

Fair points, as usual.

[FredVN]

I tried the option with place, but I only get the front photo of my book with the title behind the photo. No other pages.

[MikeW]

6 minutes ago, FredVN said:

I tried the option with place, but I only get the front photo of my book with the title behind the photo. No other pages.

The front photo may be causing problems. But if you are drawing out a text frame on a document page, likely the text will not "auto flow" thereby creating additional pages.

If there is a couple of red symbols at/near the lower right like in this screen shot:

then if you hold the shift key and click on the red, right-pointing triangle, the remainder should auto-flow.

The "red eye" symbol with the line through it can display overflow below the text box.

If your text frames are on a master page and linked together, I feel they should create additional pages automatically. But in the example above, they don't and there isn't anything in the paragraph styles, nor are there page/section breaks in the docx, so I have no idea what/why this is happening. However, clicking on the red triangle while holding the shift key auto-flowed the remainder as well.

[FredVN]

I am the first to attribute the problems to his own inexperience in Publisher, so some more testing.

I have read a few Word files into Publisher, with and without a photo on the first page. I found the result to be a mess.

I compared those to the read pdf. There are a few strange things in there due to the choice of a somewhat exotic font in Word.  But the document looks like I had made it in Word (and so you can expect from a pdf 🙂 ).

My workflow is now clear to me: Word, convert to pfd, open in Publisher, add styles.

I'm not saying this is the ideal solution for everyone and every situation. But for me for this current situation: absolutely.