Affinity Publisher

[Mithferion]

Transparency or the lack of it are both hard to deal with:

 

 - If they say something about the progress (sneak peeks, for example), or publish (pun intended) a road map, when something changes, people will get upset because they have to wait longer (but noone can say how long).

 - If they say nothing, then people will be upset and more questions will arise.

 

So, it's complicated. My only advice for the community is to stay calm. Impatience has never got me where I want be. It's better to be supportive and encourage the Dev Team.

[Petar Petrenko]

Why are text styles confusing and unusable? What should we be doing differently?

 

Options for Character and Paragraph styles are identical. Where did you see in Quark, InDesign, VivaDesigner... that there are elements of paragraph formating inside character styles?

You MUST remove them.

 

Example:

Quark has paragraph styles without character formating options so you have to link separate character style.

InDesign has paragraph styles WITH included character formating options AND separate (blind) character styles.

BUT no one has character styles WITH included paragraph formating options inside.

 

It's up to you what are you going to do next, but if you decide to make changes it is not so important which type of character/paragraph styles you will choose -- InDesign's or Quark's. If you don't make any changes then I am not interested in buying Publisher.

[Oval]

they have to wait longer

 

Perhaps Serif did not stop stating “Affinity Publisher coming soon” because Serif want to stir impatience.

[Mithferion]

Perhaps Serif did not stop stating “Affinity Publisher coming soon” because Serif want to stir impatience.

 

It may be a marketing move. All I know is that waiting is the worst part of anything. :P

[InfoCentral]

Its a small team. They are building from scratch and everyone wants AP to have InDesign capabilities right out of the gate. Its going to take time as expectations for 1.0 are extremely high.

[R C-R]

Options for Character and Paragraph styles are identical. Where did you see in Quark, InDesign, VivaDesigner... that there are elements of paragraph formating inside character styles?

You MUST remove them.

Where do you see this in Affinity? In the styles popup for the Paragraph panel I get [No Style], Body, Heading 1, & Heading 2. For the Character panel I get [No Style], Emphasis, Strong, & Strong Emphasis. Nowhere in either panel do see anything identical, other than what can be applied on a per paragraph or per character basis, respectively.

[Petar Petrenko]

This is exactly the same window for defining character / paragraph styles.

untitled.afphoto

[MEB]

Petar_MK is referring to the options on the left side on the Edit Text Style dialog. They are the same for the three types of text styles (character, paragraph and group).

[Petar Petrenko]

I work with DTP apps 20+ years and it is the first time I see this combination of defining styles and it is very unusual (not to repeat myself).

[Seneca]

It's up to you what are you going to do next, but if you decide to make changes it is not so important which type of character/paragraph styles you will choose -- InDesign's or Quark's. If you don't make any changes then I am not interested in buying Publisher.

 

Hi Peter_MK

The difference between the Character Styles and Paragraph Styles are subtle as you know. You may argue that the distinction is very clear.

I explored the Text Styles options in Designer extensively. As a matter of fact they are more powerful than any of the 2 you mentioned in your post.

You have the power to keep the distinction between the Paragraph Styles and Character Styles as in inDesign or QX or you can share certain characteristics between Character and Paragraph Styles if you so wish.

 

What I'm saying is that you can model the inDesign/QX styles quite easily and you can choose to model another approach that shares certain characteristics across text and character styles. This is something new and if you don't want to use it you don't have to. 

 

Best regards

[Petar Petrenko]

Thank you very much Seneca, but it is too hard to decipher Affinity approach rather Quark's or InDesign's.

At least, for me.

[A_B_C]

I must admit that I am struggling with the logic of text styles in Affinity Designer as well. And that might prevent me from appreciating the full potential of the chosen approach. Maybe someone can enlighten me a little …  :unsure:

Among the points I cannot fully understand is the following: As is well known, we can duplicate a Paragraph Style and turn the duplicate into a Character Style afterwards by ticking the respective radio checkbox on the Edit panel. However, there are some text attributes of the former Paragraph Style that will not translate, for obvious reasons, to the new Character Style, namely all the attributes under “Paragraph” (see below).

So what is the particular reason for including these in a Character Style? Just to secure the translatability, viz. the option to re-translate the Character Style into a Paragraph Style later? If that should be the case, I would at least expect that the paragraph attributes are somehow marked as irrelevant when applied in the context of a Character Style. There should be some visual indication that would tell the user that he or she cannot expect any changes by making tweaks to paragraph attributes in this case. Hmm …  :unsure:

[Petar Petrenko]

So, it seems I am not the only one?  :)

[MikeW]

So, it seems I am not the only one?  :)

 

No, you're not as I mentioned in this thread and the one below...

 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/36854-affinity-publisher-feature-request/

[R C-R]

Ah, now that I know this is about the editing text style options, I can see how it could be confusing. However, the two Affinity Photo help topics, Creating and managing text styles & Text style types clear up much of that. From the latter:

There are no restrictions on what text attributes and properties can be applied to a text style, regardless of its type. Instead, the type determines the predominant purpose of that text style.

{...}

Although text styles are assigned a type, Affinity Photo gives you the option of applying paragraph and character text styles flexibly. For example, you can set paragraph styles to selected glyphs as if they are character styles, without affecting the style applied to the paragraph. To activate this feature, you must set the text style to Show in both panels.

 

So I gather the idea is to allow users to share style attributes freely among the types however they want. Unconventional, but potentially useful for some users, I suppose.

[Petar Petrenko]

No, it does not help at all. It just explains that they are really confusing.

[R C-R]

No, it does not help at all. It just explains that they are really confusing.

I think most users probably can figure out on their own which paragraph style attributes can be applied to selected characters & which cannot without further explanation. They just need to consider that in Affinity, character styles are not restricted to the properties of individual glyphs. They also can be applied to words, lines or sentences inside paragraphs. (This is mentioned in the Text style types help topic.)

 

So it is not necessarily true that a paragraph attribute like spacing, tab stops, or justification cannot be applied to a group of selected characters. It all depends on what is selected.

 

A little experimentation should make it more obvious why this can be useful.

[Petar Petrenko]

Thanks for clarifying it to me R C-R. I just wonder how to use styles.  ;)

[R C-R]

Thanks for clarifying it to me R C-R. I just wonder how to use styles.  ;)

As Seneca mentioned in an earlier reply & I believe the help topics make reasonably clear, you can use them however you want. If you try a little experimentation, as Seneca did, it should make it even clearer why it is set up this way & why in practical terms it can be quite useful.

[Petar Petrenko]

No, this kind of styles are absolutelly unpractical. If someone is good programmer, it does not mean that he is a good DTP artist or designer. They must ask experienced user what tools he needs for work and how to do that so it can serve the best to him. It is absolutelly wrong to make something their way because they think it is the best for them and for others -- well, maybe if only they plan to use the app for themselves.

[R C-R]

No, this kind of styles are absolutelly unpractical.

Why? There is no reason users should not be able to apply a paragraph style to part of a paragraph. It is an artificial limitation, imposed only because the name "paragraph style" suggests it is intended to be used only on entire paragraphs. But as the help says, in Affinity the name only determines the predominant purpose of the style.

 

If it helps, think of the type name as "predominantly for paragraphs" style, truncated to "paragraph" to better fit into the UI.

 

And again, as Seneca mentioned, there is no reason you can't set up your styles exactly like you would with an older DTP app & never use the flexibility of Affinity's text styles. Affinity leaves that choice to the user, as it should.

[A_B_C]

Actually, I must agree with Petar. I think the whole conception – as well as the user interface – is muddled.

• Unless I am doing something terribly wrong, it is simply not true that you can apply a paragraph style to a string within a paragraph without affecting the paragraph as a whole (see my video below). A “Paragraph” style will always act as a paragraph style in the traditional sense of this word.
• Furthermore, as I pointed out earlier in this thread, you cannot apply paragraph attributes like leading, space before, space after etc. etc. to strings within a paragraph, and so for obvious reasons. Once again, there is no “flexibility” in actual use.

So the only reason for abandoning the traditional – and sensible – distinction between paragraph and character styles seems to be the fact that you can easily transform one style type into the other. However, a simple menu entry would suffice for that (“Copy relevant style attributes”).

 

We need not advocate a new solution simply because it is new. And rather than reinventing the wheel in this case, I would suggest that we keep a longstanding and useful interface logic. I would really like to hear the arguments of the developers in the present instance.  :(

 

Cheers, Alex

[R C-R]

Unless I am doing something terribly wrong, it is simply not true that you can apply a paragraph style to a string within a paragraph without affecting the paragraph as a whole

Actually, you can. In the Text Styles panel, click on the 'hamburger' menu icon for the paragraph style. The second item is "Apply {style name} To Characters."

[A_B_C]

Gosh, thank you for that! I have been mistaken about this feature … sorry about my remark.  :(

 

(But again, what is actually gained by keeping the nominal – and partly functional – distinction between paragraph and character styles on the one hand, while adding all these “translation” features on the other hand? The approach still feels confusing to me, but maybe I have spent too many years within the traditional framework. It would be very welcome if the developers could shed some light on this … :unsure:)

[Oval]

Why are text styles confusing and unusable? What should we be doing differently?

 

If we get modifier key functionality, colours and more indicators the usability of the text styles grows and strange claims like “completely confusing and unusable” hopefully will end.