What I still miss from Publisher V2

[PaoloT]

Hi,

Not a feature request, but a short recap of what I still miss to make Publisher my page layout program. As a premise, I must say that I'm a technical writer, with the occasional narrative/philosophy book on which to work. So, my needs are very much specialistic, and not obviously general.

- Export to DOCX. This is a file format that would allow exporting to word processors for further reuse, and to programs to be used to generate reflowable ePub books. It would open many opportunities for integrating Publisher into consolidated workflows.

- Export to IDML. This would let InDesign users open Publisher files without too many issues. Reuse would be finally possible, and Publisher will be allowed in a consolidated workflow (as is, for example, LibreOffice or Google Docs into a workflow based on the DOCX file format).

- Support for long and complex tables. As a technical writer, it is easy to understand how essential this feature would be.

- Picture frame/object styles. Being able to quickly adapt the style of image frames to a different house style or output type is essential. For example, I could have shadowed images in the onscreen reading version, and have to remove them for digital printing. Styles would let one do it by just applying a template or editing some parameters in a style.

- Accurate CJK language support. I just need the horizontal version, with correct spacing and line breaks. In my agenda, China and Japan are essential markets for both devices and books.

- RTL language support. While a less immediate need than CJK support for me, this is important. I have to admit that these wouldn't really be a show-stopper for me, at the moment, since my partners usually prefer to work on a Word/LibreOffice file. But it would be handy, when making multilingual publications and wanting to avoid pasting text as images.

- Conditional text. I make different versions of the same project, and conditional text would let me keep all the source materials in the same file. Check a few conditions, and you go from a larger edition to a limited one, or to one for a customized model.

- Scripting. This is very much tied to the ability of exporting to different file formats, so it would be a bit premature. Batch-converting several files would be my main use of scripting in Publisher. So, maybe I just need a batch-convert feature.

I would like more things (like export to a web site project, or finer navigation through a structure tree), but the above would really be enough to allow abandoning InDesign once forever. And getting able to take advantage of the integration with the other Affinity programs.

Paolo

 

[Fdfd]

Export to IDML would definitely be GREAT