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Publisher v2 Suggestions


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As a longtime user of InDesign (I used it back in the day when it was called PageMaker and wasn't an Adobe product) and someone who uses it 'in the trenches' I thought it might be interesting to make a couple constructive of points.

Well done Affinity you have just about created an InDesign 'killer'. But at the moment there are a couple of things you might want to change:

SHOW SPECIAL CHARACTER - from someone who went through the typesetting craze (and had to use Quarks XPress package) I have learnt to rely (totally) on using and seeing 'Special Characters' on screen. In the 'real world' of design etc., this is a must; it's not a deal breaker but, it would be incredibly helpful for the size and colour of the 'special characters' to be seen. If you don't like them, you can always turn them off!

SHOW TYPOGRAPHY - Why in gods name is this not able to be docked as a side panel? As again, being a typography nut, this would be really useful for me...

GLYPH BROWSER - this panel would be excellent if it allowed you to use a 'slider' to make fonts bigger or smaller.

Hope someone takes notice of the above points! We really need Affinity as a real opponent to Adobe.

Cheers!

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • Staff

Hi - for "Show Special Character" are you asking for something different than you can turn on via the text menu? Text -> Show Special Characters?

Glyph browser - the burger menu available in the top right hand corner of the panel has some options to adjust the size of the glyphs being shown in the panel.

Typography dialog vs panel. Fair point, we'll have a look at that.

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@Ash Can you add a feature of "Section Break" so in case we restart the numbering of a section on a page and it reflows down, the new page number sticks to the new page?

Also, can you add a feature to fix a master page to a specific style. I format books too, and I have a special Master page of chapter openers, but If I adjust the text and it increases/decrease the page number, then suddenly the chapter opener master page is in the wrong place.

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Hi Ash! I need the 'special characters' to be bigger/more distinct, you can hardly tell they are on; being able to give them a specific colour as well would be nice. I use them all the time in InDesign to make sure that the correct space is there or not as the case might be. I'm producing several books at the moment and I would been in trouble if I couldn't see the spaces/special characters. I know I might be a bit of an edge case with this, but they have saved my bacon many times over...

The Glyphs Browser should have another level of viewing size (at least) in my honest opinion. The 'slider' used by Adobe in their version is perfect 😉

Keep up the good work at serif!

 

Thanks

 

Chris W

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33 minutes ago, cdw said:

I need the 'special characters' to be bigger/more distinct, you can hardly tell they are on

Their size is relative to the font size, as in they increase in size in proportion to the font size...

33 minutes ago, cdw said:

being able to give them a specific colour as well would be nice

You can achieve this by using a Layer and changing the colour of the Layer...

1031908500_SpecialCharacterColour.thumb.jpg.e184a32b350e63643d54331ecec58870.jpg

 

33 minutes ago, cdw said:

The Glyphs Browser should have another level of viewing size (at least) in my honest opinion

Really, this doesn't give you sufficient choice?

383771982_GlyphBrowserSizes.thumb.jpg.3ef49fb5be5e673e10d1e71c8bdd3c30.jpg

 

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10 minutes ago, cdw said:

The size of the 'special characters' are STILL TOO SMALL! 😅 You only have to look at your pics to see that...

Personally I don't have an issue with their size, to me they are perfectly legible but that's not to say they couldn't be bigger...

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Personally I have no issue with the size of the special characters in your screengrab, to me they all appear perfectly legible and I can see exactly what I would expect to see and/or what's missing but maybe that's just my set up.

I'm sure if there are enough people who feel the special characters could or should be larger then Serif will take that onboard and either make them larger or provide an option to do so.

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@cdw FYI in case it helps you differentiate the special characters, I made a list of all the special character symbols this week.

I'm not seeing any difference between the size of special characters in InDesign (top) and Publisher (bottom). But you've customized the colour in InDesign to a much more noticeable orange - the default blue in both programs is rather subtle so this isn't a fair comparison.

2133973643_Screenshot2022-11-24at4_58_51PM.thumb.png.78861165f97cc0e3014710c50ba31de9.png

1446031191_Screenshot2022-11-24at4_58_59PM.thumb.png.4b876f7e13bb7eef954fa29bc95897e6.png

In some cases, Publisher's symbols are more delicate than InDesign's. For example, the guillemot used for tab has tapered strokes so InDesign's un-tapered character feels like it has a bit more heft. Publisher's Indent to Here symbol is more delicate than InDesign's dagger symbol, but it's also far more logical. Who would pick a dagger for Indent to Here? However, it would probably be good if Indent to Here's vertical stroke were a bit thicker, more akin to the vertical strokes in the paragraph markers which are very legible.

InDesign's space symbol is a larger round bullet instead of the smaller square bullet in Publisher—I far prefer Publisher's more subtle symbol because it makes reading text with invisibles on much easier.

If I was going to ask Serif to change one thing it would be to add an option to change the colour. This is needed if you're using text on a blue background. @Hangman, how did you do that in your screenshot? I know the layer trick in InDesign but I don't know how to do that in Publisher.

 

 

Download a free manual for Publisher 2.4 from this forum - expanded 300-page PDF

My system: Affinity 2.4.0 for macOS Sonoma 14.4, MacBook Pro 14" (M1 Pro)

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You just have to be aware of the differences in the level of vision of each customer, there are lots and lots of types of visual impairment in addition to age-related visual impairment. The colours people can see alone are very different. And here I think the colour of the symbols themselves can cause problems for some.image.png.ed80a11aa967e83ca6fb336e09036882.png

So when feedback comes in here that can't be solved with settings, it's a matter of listening. In general.

The glyph browser can be set up really nicely though.

I have some applications where in addition to medium, large presets etc. you can also adjust the application baselinesize for visual elements or text, so when I set one of those to 110% for example, everything in the application adjusts up while I can still adjust in individual panels (where possible). I can definitely recommend this. I use it a lot for different type of screens too, so I don't use a general setting across multiple devices. And companies don't really get size requests in the programs, it's completely adjustable and in percentages so customers can fine-tune.

In accessibility, where there is a requirement, you have to support magnification up to 200% and technically you can go to 400% and beyond (which starts to get meaninglessly large though) and I've seen people who need it in workplaces. And their actual access to the job market is simply that software today can help them. It's a helping hand for some completely as cheap products for others. Sometimes for the same person.

The big factor, of course, is age catching up with us all, and I have seen quite a lot of seniors here.

https://brailleworks.com/visual-disability-rise-heres-matters-business/

And... one with visual impairment with another example here:

My vision is still okay but I find this very hard to decipher on some screens:

image.png.042398e153ff31331f3aa8e511aac187.png

 1) You have completely wrecked the layers panel, Serif.

2) I recommend Reddit groups instead of this forum. Not the same few bot-like users replying to everything, a wider representation of users, fewer fanboys, more qualified users. In short, better!

3) I was here to report bugs and submit improvement requests for professional work professionally in a large setup and to bring a lot of knowledge from the world, i.e. professional product development, web- and software development, usability, user experience design and accessibility. I actually know what I am talking about!

BUT! We are phasing out Designer and Affinity in 2022 Q1 - and replacing it with feature complete and algorithmically competent alternatives.
Publisher is unsuitable for serious use, and was never adopted.

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13 hours ago, MikeTO said:

If I was going to ask Serif to change one thing it would be to add an option to change the colour. This is needed if you're using text on a blue background. @Hangman, how did you do that in your screenshot? I know the layer trick in InDesign but I don't know how to do that in Publisher.

@MikeTO, simply by using a Layer and changing the Layer Property Colour (Right Click the Layer Icon to the left of the Layer thumbnail and select Properties at the bottom of the context menu...

1761719659_LayerColour.jpg.5a7ecd9eb41c285f78378fb629b37d02.jpg

 

Obviously distractions such as column guides and margins don't help the visibility of Special Characters so simply hiding these makes a difference...

976586274_TextwithColumnGuides.thumb.jpg.656f5e74c38868d5ea2ebf0dd8526c42.jpg

 

13 hours ago, François R said:

You just have to be aware of the differences in the level of vision of each customer, there are lots and lots of types of visual impairment in addition to age-related visual impairment. The colours people can see alone are very different. And here I think the colour of the symbols themselves can cause problems for some.

image.png.ed80a11aa967e83ca6fb336e09036882.png

 

from an Application point of view, you can use the same technique to change the colour of the Special Characters to make them more legible...

1843296643_SpecialCharacterLayerColour.thumb.jpg.3b44ce1c57aa31a3058ab3f9d6bc5aef.jpg

 

This option allows you to use multiple colours per page based on the page design rather than being restricted to using a global colour, although having a global setting in the same vein as Guide and Column colours would be a welcome addition..

666093422_TextwithoutColumnGuides.thumb.jpg.7c7c13bb085d2a30d719e06aecd7b521.jpg

 

There is also a responsibility on the Designer to ensure the design itself meets accepted accessibility contrast ratio standards whether in print, UI or web design... Just taking the colours in the sample above, they would fail an accessibility contrast check (see the images in the top row below, AA Normal is defined as 16pt text and below, so basically body copy)...

Any well thought through brand guidelines should ensure accessibility is a consideration to ensure legibility across different media...

19998418_ColourContrast.thumb.jpg.467c9d6e23ce2280a7c75618e153f901.jpg

This is not to say that the way Special Characters currently appear in Publisher couldn't be tweaked and improved but more to highlight that there are already a number of options available to help with legibility when it comes to layout...

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3 hours ago, Hangman said:

@MikeTO, simply by using a Layer and changing the Layer Property Colour (Right Click the Layer Icon to the left of the Layer thumbnail and select Properties at the bottom of the context menu...

I had no idea you could do that. I really should read the manual someday. 🙂

I just spotted a tiny bug while playing with this.

  1. Draw a layer and make it some other colour, let's say red
  2. Draw a box - it's bounding box and handles will be blue
  3. Add the box to the red layer - it's bounding box and handles will now be red
  4. Undo - the box is no longer part of the red layer but it's bounding box and handles will still be red - oops (at least on macOS, may be different on Windows)
  5. Move the page a hair or move the mouse over the box - the box's bounding box and handles will redraw as blue

Download a free manual for Publisher 2.4 from this forum - expanded 300-page PDF

My system: Affinity 2.4.0 for macOS Sonoma 14.4, MacBook Pro 14" (M1 Pro)

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1 hour ago, MikeTO said:

Move the page a hair or move the mouse over the box - the box's bounding box and handles will redraw as blue

If Zooming in/out also solves it, it sounds like it's another redraw problem.

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8 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

If Zooming in/out also solves it, it sounds like it's another redraw problem.

I would concur with that analysis... if you move a layer between layers of differing colours you can make your own disco lights with the resize and rotate handles changing between blue and the layer colour as well by first moving the layer and then clicking on the layer (i.e., the text frame in this case)... 🪩🕺

Colours.thumb.jpg.57c3592dfd086825180a741e33fc945c.jpg

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12 hours ago, Hangman said:

simply by using a Layer and changing the Layer Property Colour (Right Click the Layer Icon to the left of the Layer thumbnail and select Properties at the bottom of the context menu...

That is very good! I hadn't spotted that.

Edit: I haven't checked, but I don't remember seeing it anywhere else. Perhaps Serif should make it more widely known.

Edited by LondonSquirrel
To show that I haven't checked.
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Publisher is missing an invisible character for the Leading Override. It is extremely hard and time consuming to find where you inserted it after some time or after adding/deleting text.

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20 minutes ago, NNN said:

Publisher is missing an invisible character for the Leading Override. It is extremely hard and time consuming to find where you inserted it after some time or after adding/deleting text.

Leading Override isn't an invisible character but formatting applied to visible characters. I think what you're asking for is a way to reveal hidden formatting. For you it's Leading Override but for me it's No Break or No Spelling. I apply these to a word or two and then accidentally type a lot more text. It's not obvious why a line of text isn't breaking and I'll never find spelling errors in text I accidentally formatted this way.

People have asked for something similar in InDesign and AFAIK there's still no way to reveal hidden formatting in that app. People usually ask for the text to be shaded like with a highlighter but with a long book that would be tedious, you'd have to flip through the book.

The best way to find hidden formatting like leading override, no break, and no spelling, is with the Find and Replace panel. If you don't use text styles you'd have to click the Gear icon > Position & Transform > and then enter the Leading Override value you want to search for. It's much easier if you're good about only formatting your text with styles because you can just click the Gear icon > Character Style and choose the style name. I really recommend using character styles instead of individual character attributes when overriding your paragraph styles, it will save you time when you need to find it later.

Using Find is faster than a shading feature because the panel lets you click each search result to go directly to that page.

Unfortunately, I might have hundreds of instances of my No Break and No Spelling styles in a 500-page book and most of them will be valid so I'm saving this step for just the final editing stage. I haven't tried it yet but I assume I'll be able to use a Grep search to find ones longer than what I'd typically use. Grep is a brick wall for most users so perhaps someday when Affinity has scripting I'll write a script and share it in the forum.

Download a free manual for Publisher 2.4 from this forum - expanded 300-page PDF

My system: Affinity 2.4.0 for macOS Sonoma 14.4, MacBook Pro 14" (M1 Pro)

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