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Before exploring some of the more imaginative parts of Affinity for Windows, I thought I'd play   experiment with an existing WORD file and base my research on results from other software (such as InDesign and CorelDraw). So far I can't find how to:

  • import a WORD file for editing
  • flow text to another frame
  • wrap text around an image
  • create additional pages

IF: it's all there in a tutorial I apologise - and could I have a link please? 

ELSE: can anybody help?

 

In the (extensive) search process so far, I have to say that the app has some awesome features - and should really benefit from the Beta testing :rolleyes:

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Hi Ralph,

 

The features you describe are commonly found in a word processor or desktop publishing application. Affinity Designer is an illustration / graphic design application - so does not support things like multiple pages, flowing text between frames, text avoidance etc.

 

Currently, Affinity does not make an application with those features - but in future, Affinity Publisher will be released to fill that gap.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Andy.

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Thanks Andy, that answers the question.

I've been using CorelDraw for over 20 years (which is, of course, a graphic design application) and was hoping/expecting to find similar capabilities.

I'll wait for Publisher - any idea when??

HOWEVER, I see I number of people want to create multipage PDFs and would have thought that text flow was an essential.

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Artistic text box issue Windows Beta 1.5.0.4 - when typing in the text box, pressing the space bar results in a line feed. Only way to bring everything onto the same line is to move the cursor to the end of previous line, press [DEL] key, then space bar.

 

I'm a long time user of Serif MoviePlus. Have other editing/authoring software but MoviePlus is my goto editor. Affinity Designer is my first attempt at vector graphics and realized I have a lot to learn about this app. Hopefully, your tutorials will speed me on my way.

 

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Hi Ralph,

Hi Ralph,

 

I'm also using CorelDraw for many years (since Version 3, now X7). I work in CorelDraw usually with text. So I hope, that AD contains text-basics like CorelDraw.

Now I try to use my cdr-files in AD. I want to save my layers.

 

How do you import cdr-files in AD?

 

Export in CorelDraw as ai-files does not work (ai-files are empty). Is this a fault in CorelDraw X7 or do I make a big mistake somewhere?

 

Export as eps-files: It works - at first glance. Unfortunately text will be altered into single letters. That means: You cannot properly work with the text. A dotted line in Corel will be altered into single points !!!! So you get many many many layers in AD.

 

KoBu

Win10 HP i7 - AD (Win), AP (Win), APub (Win), AD (iPad), AP (iPad),
Affinity Photo for iPad Pro - the best app I ever had
excuse my bad English

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Oooh, there's going to be an Affinity Publisher? I haven't yet found a reasonably priced Desktop Publishing program. I use Microsoft Publisher, which is at the upper level of what I consider affordable.

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I'm empathising with all the issues being found with text manipulation, and am also experiencing the strange behaviour reported by DGillbert. Text handling really is awful, even for a graphics design application!

 

Like KoBu I've been using CorelDraw since Version 3 and have watched text management progress over the years to something which competes with DTP applications. I rather expected AD to parallel its capabilities albeit at a lesser degree of penetration in each area. "Leading" is a perfect example - AD allows leading but only at a very simple level. This is not what I am seeing.

 

For example, I have another active post about the Paste command which imports any and all (I think) text blocks as images. To my mind, not only is this bizarre, but it suggests that another application can't be used as a text editor before importing to AD .... but since AD majors on layout (the essence of a vector graphics package), importing a rectangular text box is pretty useless. And why can't I convert an object to a text box? (This would also provide a work around to there being no frame wrap capability, another graphics feature which has even made its way into WORD!).

 

I don't want to diminish the effort the developers have put into AD, but I'm sorry to say that I am having real problems seeing it as a fully functioning application. I'm going to persevere because when it is good it is very,very good and I'm an optimist. Maybe Affinity Publisher will solve all these problems, but one has to compare the cost of multiple Serif applications against one out-of-date Corel package (Versions X4/5 can be picked up quite cheaply)

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I don't want to diminish the effort the developers have put into AD, but I'm sorry to say that I am having real problems seeing it as a fully functioning application.

 

Please don't forget that you are using the first public beta of the product. There are bound to be problems, which we will aim to fix before the official release.

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"Leading" is a perfect example - AD allows leading but only at a very simple level. This is not what I am seeing.

Our leading is actually pretty sophisticated. We have it as a paragraph attribute, to help ensure leading is consistent over the whole paragraph, but we also have a per-character leading override for the rare occasions that's necessary. In the paragraph panel, you can set leading to an absolute value, or a percentage of the text's pointsize, or a multiple of the "ideal" leading specified by the font designer, or to "at least" an absolute value (where the leading will increase if some text is taller, but won't decrease). It may not work how you are used to (Adobe apps tend to rely on per-character leading override and don't have much at the paragraph level, so most people ignore it, while in Affinity it is key), but if you look into it you should find it is quite capable.

 

 

For example, I have another active post about the Paste command which imports any and all (I think) text blocks as images.

 That sounds like a bug. This Windows version is a beta so you should expect some teething problems. We'll get them fixed.

 

And why can't I convert an object to a text box?

You can. Layer > Convert to Text Frame should work on any vector object.

 

(This would also provide a work around to there being no frame wrap capability, another graphics feature which has even made its way into WORD!).

Text avoidance areas, or wrapping frames, will be a feature of the forthcoming Affinity Publisher. Our approach is to offer a suite of programs, each specialised in different areas, that all work together and share a common file format. No one of our programs is trying to be a jack-of-all-trades.

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Please don't forget that you are using the first public beta of the product. There are bound to be problems, which we will aim to fix before the official release.

Understand that, Mark, having cut my IT teeth about 50 years ago with Hollerith cards! It's just that I haven't got anything much involving text to work yet! As I say, I'm going to keep trying and the patient feedback which you guys provide is enormously helpful. Another problem I'm having is distinguishing between my inability to find something (see Dave's reply about leading) and a missing/broken feature. 

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Our leading is actually pretty sophisticated. We have it as a paragraph attribute, to help ensure leading is consistent over the whole paragraph, but we also have a per-character leading override for the rare occasions that's necessary. In the paragraph panel, you can set leading to an absolute value, or a percentage of the text's pointsize, or a multiple of the "ideal" leading specified by the font designer, or to "at least" an absolute value (where the leading will increase if some text is taller, but won't decrease). It may not work how you are used to (Adobe apps tend to rely on per-character leading override and don't have much at the paragraph level, so most people ignore it, while in Affinity it is key), but if you look into it you should find it is quite capable.

 

 

 That sounds like a bug. This Windows version is a beta so you should expect some teething problems. We'll get them fixed.

 

You can. Layer > Convert to Text Frame should work on any vector object.

 

Text avoidance areas, or wrapping frames, will be a feature of the forthcoming Affinity Publisher. Our approach is to offer a suite of programs, each specialised in different areas, that all work together and share a common file format. No one of our programs is trying to be a jack-of-all-trades.

 

I haven't quite mastered the Multiquote yet, so please forgive this shotgun approach!

LEADING:

I had found [Text]>[Paragraph Leading] and was basing my comment on that. Now you have made me look further (!) and I've found it in the Spacing option of the Paragraph panel. It is - excellent! Mea culpa 

I'm sure a lot of what I see as a bug or missing element is because I can't find it - or it might even be your intention to have it that way. Only by hovering my mouse over a drop arrow did I discover Leading in the Paragraph panel. In fact, most of the cases where I'm having problems Help (F1) doesn't help :)  much -- SO I forgive myself to some degree! Please continue to be patient. As I said in my reply to Mark, I've been around IT for about 50 years, and do understand Beta issues.

CONVERT TO TEXT FRAME: 

Very nice - hadn't spotted that. But you can't paste text into it from the clipboard!  That creates a new rectangular frame. If you type more than the frame will hold, it overflows into a rectangle and you can't flow into another frame .........!!! It does, however, provide a optional workaround for the lack of frame wrapping. Possibly fixing the PASTE bug may help some of these anomalies.

PUBLISHER: 

I take your point, but I first encountered the features I'm looking for in CorelDraw - a graphics design package. I'm not looking for tables, indexing, table of content, section & page numbering etc. However the border between DTP and Graphics is very blurred as the extent of your text capability (now that I've found it!) demonstrates.

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Export in CorelDraw as ai-files does not work (ai-files are empty). Is this a fault in CorelDraw X7 or do I make a big mistake somewhere?

 

As I wrote in your earlier thread, I believe you need to explicitly choose PDF compatibility when saving the file.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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Thank you Alfred,

 

In Corel I cannot choose PDF compatibility when exporting into ai (please look at the attached file).

 

But now I export to pdf (a good advice of our member vonBusing). There are many setting options.

Text will be adopted an can be changed. Wonderful.

Unfortunately, the layers in Corel will be lost. But you can not have all.

 

KoBu

post-32342-0-14645700-1467550019_thumb.jpg

Win10 HP i7 - AD (Win), AP (Win), APub (Win), AD (iPad), AP (iPad),
Affinity Photo for iPad Pro - the best app I ever had
excuse my bad English

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CONVERT TO TEXT FRAME:

Very nice - hadn't spotted that. But you can't paste text into it from the clipboard!

Paste text works for me, from WordPad, if I have a text caret showing, and I use Paste Special and RTF or Unicode Text. So the basic mechanism works and there is probably some silly bug like trying to paste it as a metafile or something. We'll get it fixed. If it is creating a new text frame, that means it didn't have a text insertion point, and you need to switch to one of the text tools and click in the text where you want the paste to go.
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Wait....you can't flow text around an object? I didn't realise this (early days of using the Windows Beta).

 

As a graphic designer, text flow is not just a publishing attribute - I've used this many many times for all sorts of layouts. Control of text is a key aspect of any design and 'reserving' features like this for Publisher seems a little odd.

 

Dont get me wrong, I'll happily buy all three apps once they're available (very good price!) But I don't want to design an entire poster or something in Designer and then have to open Publisher just to flow some text around an object.

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Paste text works for me, from WordPad, if I have a text caret showing, and I use Paste Special and RTF or Unicode Text. So the basic mechanism works and there is probably some silly bug like trying to paste it as a metafile or something. We'll get it fixed. If it is creating a new text frame, that means it didn't have a text insertion point, and you need to switch to one of the text tools and click in the text where you want the paste to go.

 

Clipboard contents PASTED into a document always seem to go in as an image. That is, it can't be edited but it can be zoomed. If I create a text frame in advance, complete with blinking insertion point, PASTE ignores it and produces its own frame.

 

Why would I think of using Paste Special to paste simple text from the clipboard? However, if I do:

 

[Ctrl][C] from a .doc file then Paste Special > RTF produces paste01.afdesign 

[Ctrl][C] from a .docx file then Paste Special > RTF produces paste02.afdesign             (There's another thread with comments about this feature, but I don't know how to link to it!)

 

From WordPad [Ctrl][C] then Paste into Affinity produces - nothing. no import at all;

Paste Special>RTF produces the same (or similar!!) to paste01.afdesign

Paste Special>Unicode sort of works - a frame appears on the screen but it does no enclose the text. The text can be edited using the Text tool.

From Notepad (to the clipboard), it works OK.

 

If I create an object, convert it to a text frame and make a text insertion point, PASTE creates its own frame elsewhere on the page, Paste Special>RTF works perfectly. With the proviso that if there is too much text for the object it overflows into a rectangular area immediately below the object. It can be edited but not flowed - as we know.

 

As you say, Dave, the fundamentals are OK but there is/are silly bug(s) screwing up the fine detail.

So far as the Paste bug is concerned, it might be quite nice to have an option which allows text to be zoomed within its container (!), but you (Serif) would need to document it. 

 

Hope that's helpful.paste01.afdesignpaste02.afdesign

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(There's another thread with comments about this feature, but I don't know how to link to it!)

 

In the top right-hand corner of each posted message there's a post number (e.g. '#17') and a Share icon_share.png icon. Right-click either of these and choose 'Copy Link Location' or 'Copy shortcut' (or whatever your browser calls it). You can then use that URL in conjunction with the Link button on the toolbar, or simply paste the URL into your message.

 

I believe this is the thread to which you refer.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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  • 4 months later...

Our leading is actually pretty sophisticated. We have it as a paragraph attribute, to help ensure leading is consistent over the whole paragraph, but we also have a per-character leading override for the rare occasions that's necessary. In the paragraph panel, you can set leading to an absolute value, or a percentage of the text's pointsize, or a multiple of the "ideal" leading specified by the font designer, or to "at least" an absolute value (where the leading will increase if some text is taller, but won't decrease). It may not work how you are used to (Adobe apps tend to rely on per-character leading override and don't have much at the paragraph level, so most people ignore it, while in Affinity it is key), but if you look into it you should find it is quite capable.

 

 

 That sounds like a bug. This Windows version is a beta so you should expect some teething problems. We'll get them fixed.

 

You can. Layer > Convert to Text Frame should work on any vector object.

 

Text avoidance areas, or wrapping frames, will be a feature of the forthcoming Affinity Publisher. Our approach is to offer a suite of programs, each specialised in different areas, that all work together and share a common file format. No one of our programs is trying to be a jack-of-all-trades.

Then in the end like xara make a Serif- Affinity Quadro Pro ..Like xara all are built in except for the video editor ..which is understandable.. This way , people like me that want this option. Get a great deal on getting a truly integrated program. all three plus the websdesign program ..yes the word wrap works internal ..I mean the pro will be a little more so u get extra,but hey its worth it.

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