Designer: flowing text?

[Benwiggy2]

I see in the pre-V2 Archive that Designer deliberately restricted the ability to flow text across frames. The same seems to be the case for creating text columns, too.

I can just copy frames over from Publisher; but is this limit still in place? 

There doesn't seem to be a Publisher 'persona' that I can switch to, either.

[GarryP]

6 minutes ago, Benwiggy2 said:

Designer deliberately restricted the ability to flow text across frames. The same seems to be the case for creating text columns, too.

I can just copy frames over from Publisher; but is this limit still in place?

Those were deliberate design choices by Serif which still apply, and I can’t see that changing any time soon because of the way the Affinity suite has been designed to work.

6 minutes ago, Benwiggy2 said:

There doesn't seem to be a Publisher 'persona' that I can switch to, either.

Only Publisher has Personas for the other applications.

You can open the Designer document in Publisher and then (temporarily) switch to the Designer Persona as necessary.
Or you can use menu “File → Edit in Publisher…” while in Designer to move the document over to the Publisher application.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Benwiggy2 said:

that Designer deliberately restricted the ability to flow text across frames. The same seems to be the case for creating text columns, too.

I see it differently. Designer existed long before Publisher. While it may have been used for text (in preference to using Photo) having large amounts of text was never a design point for the implementation of Designer. It was intended for vector design projects, with limited text, I think. Serif did not restrict its capabilities; it simply never had them.

Serif implemented Publisher later, with an intent for handling large amounts of text, and implemented several additional functions for doing that. 

At this point, any user who needs those newly-implemented text functions should use Publisher. 

If you have both applications, and especially if you have all three, I would just work in Publisher. With both Photo and Designer, Publisher gives you everything that Designer has except for the Export Persona. And when you need the Export Persona you can switch to Designer using File > Edit in... and just spend most of you time in Publisher.

[Benwiggy2]

Well, version 2 was released altogether, and all three apps parse the same document data in the same way. Designer copes with text frames brought in from Publisher perfectly: the 'design choice' was just to exclude the UI controls. 

I thought the whole idea of the App Sync™ thing was the ability to do anything in any of the apps. But I guess the lesson is: "Do it all in Publisher". 

I'd be interested to know what the benefit to the user is of this limitation.

Thanks, all.

[carl123]

4 minutes ago, Benwiggy2 said:

I'd be interested to know what the benefit to the user is of this limitation

It's not a limitation, it's a vast improvement (stroke of genius) that was added to Publisher

[walt.farrell]

45 minutes ago, Benwiggy2 said:

Well, version 2 was released altogether, and all three apps parse the same document data in the same way. Designer copes with text frames brought in from Publisher perfectly: the 'design choice' was just to exclude the UI controls. 

The design point is to focus the applications on the projects they are most suited for, rather than having everything implemented in one huge application.

[Benwiggy2]

1 hour ago, carl123 said:

t's not a limitation, it's a vast improvement (stroke of genius) that was added to Publisher

I'd hardly call having text flowing between frames and columns a "vast improvement" to Publisher: I'd call it fairly essential for a page layout app. Oh wait: is this an AI-generated response?

 

33 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

The design point is to focus the applications on the projects they are most suited for, rather than having everything implemented in one huge application.

That does seem contrary to the whole app-linking/persona thing, whose very nature is to provide everything in one app. 

Anyway, I doubt the designers will change their minds on my account, so at least I now know that I'm not missing anything; and I know how to get around the problem.

Thanks.

[carl123]

3 minutes ago, Benwiggy2 said:

Unless you're talking about....

Studiolink

[walt.farrell]

41 minutes ago, Benwiggy2 said:

'd hardly call having text flowing between frames and columns a "vast improvement" to Publisher:

He didn't say it was an improvement to Publisher, but an improvement implemented in Publisher.

And it's just one. Publisher also gives you Find/Replace, Fields, running headers, indexes, and a bunch more that is needed for working with large amounts of text but not (or less so) than for dealing with the amounts of text a Designer document is intended to have.

[Benwiggy2]

Well, yes: the StudioLink is a great idea. I just wouldn't have considered text flows to be outlandish in a vector drawing app. 

 

Thank you.

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, Benwiggy2 said:

That does seem contrary to the whole app-linking/persona thing, whose very nature is to provide everything in one app. 

StudioLink in Affinity Publisher does not "provide everything in one app." It provides a novel way to access many (but not all!) of the features of the other two apps from the APub UI, but only if those other two apps are installed.

See for example https://affinity.help/publisher2/en-US.lproj/pages/Introduction/about_Personas.html more about that.