Are there flat-plan templates in Affinity Publisher 2

[Tony Pritchard]

I see in InDesign there seems to be an automatic flat-plan feature. I am working on a 400 page book in Affinity Publisher and am at the stage whee I need to plan and re-jig pages and see this as a flat-plan. Does this exist in Affinity?

[Oufti]

I am not sure what means flat-plan but if it's like the French "chemin de fer", you can use the Pages side panel if you need to move pages, or even just unzoom in the main window if it's only for viewing or editing purpose. 

[Tony Pritchard]

12 minutes ago, Oufti said:

I am not sure what means flat-plan but if it's like the French "chemin de fer", you can use the Pages side panel if you need to move pages, or even just unzoom in the main window if it's only for viewing or editing purpose. 

Thank you for your reply especially as you are doing so not in your mother tongue. Merci beaucoup! Your reply is clear to me. This is not quite what I meant. A flatplan isn't an overview of the existing document. It is more a planning situation. MY book is 400 pages and is currently in separate chapters. I don't want to do a lot of work using that final document until I have a plan. Here is the video I saw on the InDesign version 

Here is an article https://medium.com/@kaibrach/how-to-plan-a-print-magazine-using-a-flatplan-dae139c82a4e

It is far more basic. During the analogue era you would draw out double page spreads and write onto each page what would be on the page eg title page; contents; introduction; chapter opener; etc.

I was wondering if Affinity Publisher had something like this to plan with, to get the overview.

Tony

[Oufti]

Thank you for these self-speaking examples! 😃

Actually, it is not a feature in itself, only documents prepared for this use — aside from what I suggested you…

As you want it for planning purposes like them, why don't you use either of their tools, or mock it up for yourself? 

• In the second one, the author lets us freely download its tool (a genuine spreadsheet), but I think I would soon improve it… Really simple, yet efficient. 
• For the InDesign template (it's not a feature, only a template the guy made), you have to pay ±$20 for it. An IDML version is included but how would it open and behave in APub? Not sure enough…

That having been said, in the video he explains very well how its template is made and I think it would not be too harsh to create such a template in APub (beside perhaps the "magic" that allows to swap right and left pages thumbnails?)

Perhaps also are there such templates already existing in the Resources section of the forums?

— Well, a quick search gave me only this mundane discussion: 

 

[Oufti]

3 hours ago, Oufti said:

it would not be too harsh to create such a template in APub (beside perhaps the "magic" that allows to swap right and left pages thumbnails?)

This could begin with something like that: 

Chemin de fer-WIP.afpub

 

[Tony Pritchard]

7 hours ago, Oufti said:

This could begin with something like that: 

Chemin de fer-WIP.afpub

 

Dear Oufti

Thank you for your generous time and efforts and for kindly sharing this. I've had a brief look and will take a deeper dive later. In the past I would have created a flatplan in Adobe Illustrator and printed it out. Then scribble on paper the layouts. It often took a few goes to get the sequence right. I then used the digital file but the page numbers and content weren't linked so any update meant moving pages and renumbering individually. Fine for a small job but not 300-400 pages! A former colleague (no longer with us) created a linked file which updated automatically. They did this in InDesign. My skills are limited so I'll have to have a play to see if I can come up with something that makes sense and is usable. Again thanks for taking the time to investigate this. 

All the best

Tony