Toggling visibility of objects in Publisher (marking objects as visible or invisible at output ... is it possible?

[Jim Tooley]

I'm coming from InDesign ... It is it possible to enter text in Publisher or Designer that has a property setting,  which can be toggled, so that it won't print on final output? This is sort of like  a placeholder that can be seen but not printed at output time. 

I can place an .idml file in Publisher ... work on it in Designer ... turn off visibility of a text block ... bring it back into Publisher .... and the objects are gone. If I  move the page back to Designer, I can't turn the visibility back on because they are gone from Designer too.

If would be helpful to be able to toggle visibility of objects in Publisher, on or off, as needed.

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

I'm unsure why you're moving between the Publisher and Designer applications. Why not just stay in Publisher, and use the Designer Persona if you need a Designer function that the Publisher Persona doesn't have.

I'm also unsure why you'd need to go to Designer to work on Text at all, as Publisher has more Text functions than Designer. 

But in any case, if you Hide a Text Frame or Artistic Text object, the object would still be there in the Layers panel, and you'd be able to simply show it again in any of the three applications.

So there must be something further about your workflow and problem I'm missing.

 

[Hangman]

Hi @Jim Tooley and welcome to the forums,

9 hours ago, Jim Tooley said:

I'm coming from InDesign ... It is it possible to enter text in Publisher or Designer that has a property setting,  which can be toggled, so that it won't print on final output? This is sort of like  a placeholder that can be seen but not printed at output time. 

Not currently for individual text frames, the closest we have at the moment is Sections in Publisher where you can specify specific non-printing pages which allow you to keep the page content visible but non-printing...

Version 2.4.0 will add States which will allow you to show and hide different elements on a page based on numerous different criteria with a single click but there you are toggling the visibility of selected items so you'd end up hiding the items you didn't want to print...

It would perhaps be a nice addition to States to have a non-printing option so you can keep elements of your design visible but non-printing...

10 hours ago, Jim Tooley said:

I can place an .idml file in Publisher ... work on it in Designer ... turn off visibility of a text block ... bring it back into Publisher .... and the objects are gone. If I  move the page back to Designer, I can't turn the visibility back on because they are gone from Designer too.

As @walt.farrell mentions above you won't lose anything going back and forth between Publisher and Designer, toggling layer visibility off on Designer will still allow you to toggle it back on in Publisher and vice versa...

[thomaso]

11 hours ago, Jim Tooley said:

so that it won't print on final output? This is sort of like  a placeholder that can be seen but not printed at output time. (…)

If would be helpful to be able to toggle visibility of objects in Publisher, on or off, as needed.

An option like "do not print this layer" does not exist in Affinity but has been requested as a new feature for years. You might want to add your vote to this tread:

As a workaround it was suggested occasionally to place those objects inside a master page "Layer" layer on the document pages to be enabled to hide them via the master page across the entire document with 1 click before export/print.

Unfortunately this workaround is quite cumbersome because it requires for every new object on a document's page to …

1. select the master page layer,
2. choose "Edit detached",
3. add the wanted object inside the master's container layer,

… and then possibly

4. move this master page layer across the entire document to a required position within the Layers panel layer hierarchy via "Edit linked" > "Arrange" > "Move …"

… and/or possibly

5. move the master page layer with non-printing objects on certain document pages to a required individual position within the layer hierarchy on that page.

Finally, before export/print, you will have to …

6. go to this Master Page in the Pages panel and
7. hide the container layer that contains all non-print objects on the document pages.

[Alfred]

46 minutes ago, thomaso said:

An option like "do not print this layer" does not exist in Affinity but has been requested as a new feature for years.

Older versions of Serif PagePlus had separate controls for a layer’s ‘Visible’ and ‘Printable’ attributes, but a few versions before the product was discontinued it was decided that the two should be merged, resulting in a new ‘if you can see it, then it will print’ behaviour. Many users expressed their dismay at that retrograde step.

[Hangman]

10 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Older versions of Serif PagePlus had separate controls for a layer’s ‘Visible’ and ‘Printable’ attributes, but a few versions before the product was discontinued it was decided that the two should be merged, resulting in a new ‘if you can see it, then it will print’ behaviour. Many users expressed their dismay at that retrograde step.

Perhaps, if it hasn't already been requested, this should be added as a feature request for the Affinity Suite...

[Jim Tooley]

Thank you Walt, Hangman, Thomaso, & Alfred for your comments and instructions. They clarified the possible scenarios that I will have to use to get the job done. 24 hours ago, I wasn't even aware of Affinity. I got an email from a customer in Michigan who happened to mention that she had moved from InDesign to Affinity. That snippet of information kind of changed the course of my day yesterday.