Suggestion ─ Re: Corporation Market Penatration

[Michael Lloyd]

Serif guys,

I am a technical writer/business analyst, and love Serif Affinity applications.

Too often companies use Microsoft Word for designing and publishing documents. Many would argue Word is not the right tool ─ I agree. However Word provides a significant advantage... Everyone uses it. It's not about familiarity or convenience, that resistance is relatively low. It's about document portability.

Usually one person or a small team is responsible for integrating content and desktop publishing. However, often documents must be passed to managers or SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) for input and technical accuracy refinements. Affinity Publisher has no mechanism for supporting that workflow. Therefore it is not practical to use Affinity Publisher in this massive market.

I believe two things would facilitate this workflow:

1. Create a comment/revision mechanism in Affinity Publisher, similar Track Changes in Microsoft Word, or Document Review in Corel WordPerfect.
2. Develop Affinity Publisher Lite. Purpose: provide extremely simplified Affinity Publisher capability for text and color editing, comment annotation, and other tools designed around the needs of document contributors. This simple application should not provide page layout, typography, photo, or vector editing capability.

Other enhancements could be incorporated later:

• 'Mark Section for Editing' that locks all other sections, preventing unauthorized or accidental changes
• Cloud based synchronization of edits (syncs only rich text and comments)
• Collaborative editing ─ similar to Google Docs or Word 365
• Basic Edit (or Lite) Persona in Affinity Publisher that provides only Affinity Publisher Lite functionality, preventing unwanted changes

This capability is also beneficial for design studios and freelancers, for collaboration and approval with their clients.

Thank you for considering my suggestion.