Use cases for the Affinity Suite

[PaoloT]

Hi,

This has been discussed here and there in other threads, but I suspect it would be useful to focus on what a major suite of graphic design and communication is going to be aimed to.

These are world constantly evolving (as is the world itself…). Our days are not the same as the ones when we where working with PageMaker. Gone are many software and others have come. Gone are entire publishing sectors and companies. New ones have appeared.

So, what are you using your beloved graphic/communication suite, and how would you use it? Is there something that Serif can do, to give us the perfect tools to complete our work?

Paolo

 

[PaoloT]

I'll answer my own question.

I'be been working, for more that thirty years, as a technical writer, translator, editor, web designer.

As a technical writer, I've always struggled with tools conceived for a mainly graphic workflow. PageMaker, XPress and InDesign were focusing on the final page, rather than the textual content. FrameMaker has been the most balanced of the tools I could use, by supplying an advanced wordprocessor with advanced page layout and structuring features.

The need for single-sourcing (to print, PDF, online help, ebook) has gone stronger in the years, but the available tools have not. The paradigm of the major suites is still the one of the printed page. Specialized tools try to be more powerful with the other targets, but are then very weak on the page layout front.

My ideal tool would be lightweight and smart when dealing with text. Able to treat text and images as separate types of objects, so that text edited outside of the page layout program can be reintegrated in the page without scrambling the page and breaking the relation between text and images. It would make managing multilingual documents easy. It would allow easy integration with translation tools.

Paolo

 

[Dan C]

Hi @PaoloT,

Just to let you know I've moved this thread to Questions, as I know you're asking for feedback from other users and not asking a direct question regarding Affinity, but I think the thread fits slightly better here (and you may receive more responses )

[PaoloT]

3 hours ago, Dan C said:

Just to let you know I've moved this thread to Questions, as I know you're asking for feedback from other users and not asking a direct question regarding Affinity

Thank you for caring, Dan. I'm not so sure this was a technical question, more than a way to trigger a series of feedbacks for the team. Maybe we miss a 'general musing' section in the forums!

Paolo

 

[walt.farrell]

46 minutes ago, PaoloT said:

more than a way to trigger a series of feedbacks for the team.

However, from the header of the Feature Requests & Suggestions forum:

Quote

If you have any suggestions about how to make our apps better, please post them here. We read every idea which is posted, and in fact since launching Affinity we have added 100s of new features and improvements based on customer feedback

Just a few things to bear in mind:

• ...
• ...
• Please just do one suggestion per thread. If your post title is “Here’s a few ideas to improve Affinity Publisher” you’ll be asked to split them up.

There have been other "catch-all" suggestion threads (what are your top 10 wishes, etc.) that are really not the way Serif has indicated they want to receive requests. The discussions become very convoluted and confusing, and impossible to track what the ideas are.