Affinity Designer's equivelent of Adove Book Files

[J.L.Trout]

Hey all!

Does Affinity Publisher have an equivalent to a "book" file where I can string multiple documents together for rendering into full fledged PDF for print? I'm working on a graphic novel and I'm not keen on the idea of creating one massive super document when I can have a way to organize and see the entire project without having every chapter open.

Here's an example (and link) from someone else's work online of an indesign book for reference: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vdcek7LPAH8/maxresdefault.jpg

Edited March 21, 2021 by J.L.Trout

[John Rostron]

Hello @J.L.Trout, and welcome to the forums.

I think that this is something one might look for in Publisher rather than Designer. It could be that Publisher's Data Merge might do what you want, looking at your posted images.

John

[J.L.Trout]

2 minutes ago, John Rostron said:

Hello @J.L.Trout, and welcome to the forums.

I think that this is somethink one might look for in Publisher rather than Designer. It could be that Publisher's Data Merge might do what you want, looking at your posted images.

John

Oh, right, that's what I meant (derp!)

[J.L.Trout]

19 minutes ago, John Rostron said:

Hello @J.L.Trout, and welcome to the forums.

I think that this is somethink one might look for in Publisher rather than Designer. It could be that Publisher's Data Merge might do what you want, looking at your posted images.

John

Any comprehensive tutorials on how Data Merge works and should I expect much larger files? Larger files is what I'm trying to avoid.

[John Rostron]

This is the link to the official Affinity tutorial on Data Merge.

John

[SillyWalk]

16 hours ago, J.L.Trout said:

Hey all!

Does Affinity Publisher have an equivalent to a "book" file where I can string multiple documents together for rendering into full fledged PDF for print? I'm working on a graphic novel and I'm not keen on the idea of creating one massive super document when I can have a way to organize and see the entire project without having every chapter open.

Here's an example (and link) from someone else's work online of an indesign book for reference: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vdcek7LPAH8/maxresdefault.jpg

The feature of the „Book“ in Affinity Publisher was mentioned by Andy in the article here: https://affinityspotlight.com/article/creating-the-affinity-publisher-workbook/ 

 

[vwatson]

I have Publisher 1.10.1, was this never implemented? I don't see a Books panel in my software.

[walt.farrell]

9 hours ago, vwatson said:

I have Publisher 1.10.1, was this never implemented? I don't see a Books panel in my software.

Not yet.

[katrinrr]

how long do we have to wait?

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, katrinrr said:

how long do we have to wait?

Until they decide it's ready to release. It will first appear in a beta, probably not in 1.10, but possibly in some later version 1 release (1.11, 1.12, ...). Serif usually does not reveal plans for upcoming features.

[garrettm30]

12 hours ago, vwatson said:

I have Publisher 1.10.1, was this never implemented?

The original statement "sometime after 1.9 release," though it does suggest 1.10, does not necessarily require it. However, it may be helpful to know that 1.10 actually began as 1.9.4, but the particular improvements brought out in that minor beta eventually were judged by Serif to be more substantial than originally planned, so they changed the version number accordingly. That much is public knowledge. So we infer from that that 1.10 was not the intended next big release, and we assume that the features originally intended for what would have been 1.10 are therefore pushed back to a subsequent major release.

[vwatson]

I hope it's soon. I love the program and have a 200 page activity book I created with it, but the one-file approach is far too unwieldy for me to do that again. I much prefer the book-file approach with each chapter/section as a separate file. For now, Publisher is mainly sitting on the shelf, except for small projects. 🙁

[Old Bruce]

We can currently add pages from file...

[vwatson]

So, you create a master document, then Add each chapter or section as a file?

If you do that, will it continuously number the pages from all the files as it would with a book file?

[wonderings]

Why not go the PDF route? Have a new file for each layout. Export to PDF and put together with a PDF viewer like Acrobat or put together in Publisher. You could even get it all setup and then change and simply update the PDF file once laid out in Publisher. Personally I like having everything in one document, though I can see issues with Publisher, unless they have corrected it. I did some tests a while back with simple text and Publisher became very laggy after 400 pages or so (if memory serves me). 

[vwatson]

That seems like too much work to me? Plus I don't have a good pdf editor.

I love the ease of using a book file and doing everything from within a single program.