InDesign-to-Publisher: Weird...

[OroNZ]

I've been a graphic designer/ technical writer for a couple of decades, and a user of InDesign almost since its birth. I've started using Publisher to write long docs. I've also been with my current employer's UX team in documenting features and services, and doing some UX Writing for the B2B SaaS we produce. Just setting context

My experience of Publisher so far is... I really don't follow its userflow. It has a lot of features, but they're weirdly distributed.

Obviously, being 'indoctrinated' with InDesign's UI I expect to run into a learning curve of sorts. But I don't think the Publisher team has nailed down the usecases they're trying to satisfy. They might be filling out the toolshed, but I'm not getting a sense of why, or for what purpose. So let me layout what I'm after.

I divide features into four groups (and in order of priority):

1. Second-to-second. These are tools/features I'm constantly using in the development of a document. For me, these tools largely concern Styles: character, paragraph, object. Not only should these tools be easy for me to access, they're easy for me to prioritise and assign hotkeys for fast, uniform operation. The current style palettes almost serve this function, but I want to arrange these style lists in the order I prefer, with the ability to assign common ones hotkeys.
2. Layout. Publisher's a layout program, placing elements in frames and allowing frames to 'knit' together into a cohesive document. However, the Tools palette shows 5 similar tools that don't offer significant differences: Frame text, Artistic text, all the shape tools and the image frame tools. All of these tools just create wrapped frame borders. By default, the alignment tools are duplicated and placed as far away from the layout tools as possible. And why is there a dedicated Alignment tools button when the Alignment tools themselves are already exposed? Why aren't they in a palette with Transform, or Constraints? This is how valuable screen real estate gets wasted.
   
    
3. Navigation. I want to navigate through my document quickly. I want to see only what I want to see. I want to navigate through the tools and features quickly. And because everyone has different priorities on what to navigate through, allowing the user to set that workspace up lets them work faster and more confidently. I don't like the mandatory facing-page spread view if I'm not working in 2-page spreads: sometimes I'm working in single page docs like scripts, other times I'm working in multiple page gatefold projects, where I need to stay fluid in page order.
4. Set n' Forget. Page dimensions, units, UI prefs, templates, lots of things that are found in the Settings... menu. Oddly, there appears to be a disproportionate amount of effort placed in UI customising to little or no benefit. Why is Clip to Canvas buried in a View mode setting, if the background grey level is so dark we couldn't see what was clipped anyway? I'd like to see an ability to bring these UI settings into their own dismissable palette.

All-in-all, this is a weird app. I fully understand that Affinity comes in at a different price point than subscription apps (that's largely behind my urge to move away from Adobe). But I hope you'll note I'm not asking for a single additional feature. Having less features than InDesign: I can deal with that. But I'm concerned at how SLOW I'm going, having to find and click buttons when hotkeys for repetitive tasks aren't assignable, or because feature arrangement isn't ergonomic.

I'm sure there are ways to configure the UI to something closer to what I'm after. But I really want some attention on that second-to-second workflow, with emphasis on long doc usecases. I figure short doc usecases can be done in Designer.

Edited July 30, 2023 by OroNZ

[fde101]

On 7/29/2023 at 9:19 PM, OroNZ said:

the ability to assign common ones hotkeys

For text styles you can already do this: right-click the style in the Text Styles panel and choose the option to Edit the style.  There is a field for a "Keyboard shortcut:" on the "Style" page of the resulting edit window.

 

On 7/29/2023 at 9:19 PM, OroNZ said:

Frame text, Artistic text, all the shape tools and the image frame tools

Frame text is meant to contain paragraphs of text.  It creates a text frame which is already prepared to receive text and which you can use immediately, covering the most common use case without requiring extra steps.  Placing an empty text frame on a master page gives you a placeholder for entry of page-specific text on pages which include that master.

Artistic text is text that can be warped, put on a path, etc. - text that is "loose" within the page as opposed to containing entire paragraphs.  It gives more creative control for special decorative use cases.  Uniquely, this cannot be used empty as a "placeholder" on a master page.

The shape tools create an assortment of shapes which are not initially prepared to contain text.  You can convert them to text frames in order to add text to them, but this is an extra step.  Placing a shape on a master page without explicitly converting it to a text frame does not give you a placeholder for entering text.

The image frame tools are not meant to contain text, but rather pictures.  These are used on master pages, for example, to create placeholders where images can go.

 

On 7/29/2023 at 9:19 PM, OroNZ said:

I don't like the mandatory facing-page spread view if I'm not working in 2-page spreads

File -> Document Setup and on the Model tab in the resulting window turn off Facing pages.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, fde101 said:

File -> Document Setup and on the Model tab in the resulting window turn off Facing pages.

Or turn the setting off when creating the document.

Ideally it will be set at the beginning of work, before the document has been populated with data, as switching from Facing to non-Facing after the fact can cause problems.