Add appearance studio to Publisher

[Intuos5]

For some reason, there is no appearance studio in Publisher itself, there is one the Designer persona, though. Could the appearance panel be added to Publisher?

[GarryP]

It already exists in the Designer Persona in the Windows version – see attached image.

[Intuos5]

Must have misclicked on Photo when I didn't see the studio 😅

[GarryP]

Easily-enough done.
Does that mean that all is well and this doesn’t need acting upon?

[Intuos5]

No, I would still need it in Publisher, switching personas is not the way to go. It adds unnecessary overhead.

[GarryP]

Switching Personas is “unnecessary overhead”?
How often are you doing it?
(Those are rhetorical questions.)

While your are, of course, free to make the request I would suggest not ‘holding your breath’ waiting for it to happen.
If something is available via the Personas in Publisher then it’s unlikely that Serif will add it to Publisher – if they add it to Publisher then people will have one less reason to purchase a licence for the other software.

[Intuos5]

Crippling the software for a customer base that should purchase a product at the expense of its paying customer base, that's not a good business model.

I have Designer, so in that case it makes zero sense to cripple Publisher from a user point of view. Also, better software should lead to higher sales...

[GarryP]

I would say that Serif’s business model is entirely up to them – it seems to have been pretty good for them so far.
I wouldn’t like to say that it’s the best it could be, or not, because I don’t know any of the details which could tell me that.

Even if I knew the details I probably wouldn’t be able to say either way as I probably wouldn’t be able to understand most of it as I’m not an accountant or business strategy analyst, I don’t have the livelihoods of more than a hundred staff to worry about, and I haven’t been in the business of creating commercial graphics applications for as long as Serif has.

I can’t see how not having an Appearance Panel in Publisher is “crippling the software”.
The Appearance Panel is part of Designer; if people want it then they should purchase a licence for Designer.

This is all by-the-by anyway. Serif will either do this or not do this; we don’t really have much say in that at all.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Intuos5 said:

Crippling the software for a customer base that should purchase a product at the expense of its paying customer base, that's not a good business model.

I have Designer, so in that case it makes zero sense to cripple Publisher from a user point of view. Also, better software should lead to higher sales...

You're of course free to ask for it to be added.

But where would that stop? What else from Designer would you want added directly to Publisher? What from Photo (if you also own that application)?

Which other users would want something else that you haven't found necessary? (Hint: you'll find lots of different requests in Feature Requests for "this function is in <some Affinity application>, so why can't it be in <some other Affinity application>.

Serif quite specifically does not want to have one application whose UI includes all the functions. That would become congested, and would require users who don't need some functions to work around (ignore) them, complicating their work and understanding of the application. Instead, Serif wants 3 applications, one tailored to publishing, one to vector design, and one to photo processing. They want them to share the same file format, and interoperate via File > Edit In if functions from one of the other applications are needed, or (for Publisher) via StudioLink that gives access to the primary Personas of the other two applications.

[Old Bruce]

4 hours ago, Intuos5 said:

For some reason, there is no appearance studio in Publisher itself, there is one the Designer persona, though

 

3 hours ago, Intuos5 said:

No, I would still need it in Publisher, switching personas is not the way to go. It adds unnecessary overhead.

Two mouse clicks.

I am ... agast.

[Pšenda]

9 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Serif quite specifically does not want to have one application whose UI includes all the functions.

... and whose price would be triple. So probably a lot of current and satisfied users wouldn't even buy it, because they don't want such an expensive and complex mega application when they only want to edit photos, or only draw, or only write.

Another issue is an even better system for integrating the features of purchased apps, but that's for a whole other discussion.

[Intuos5]

This discussion has gone way out of hand. This particular feature is relevant to Publisher so you can make double strokes. Adobe has it in Indesign & Illustrator, it's only a studio, so this shouldn't really clutter up the UI. I don't really get why users are against such feature requests, It's not cluttering the UI IMO. And, it helps to circumvent mistakes when you accidentally (out of habit) do end up editing a multi-stroke object in Publisher as opposed to in the Designer Persona.

If Serif is "not allowed" to make quality of life improvements, because they are already in one of their other apps, you'll end up with a dangerous argument. And if a user asks for it, I don't think the forum veterans should be dismissing it straight away. This is up to Serif and Serif only. And if I don't ask, I cannot reasonably expect them to listen, can I?