Affinity Publisher As A Word Processor?

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I've been using Affinity Photo extensively for almost a month now and I like it a lot, both the software itself and the company.  This got me thinking about the upcoming Affinity Publisher.  Desktop Publishing software has never really been on my radar, however looking at a couple of PagePlus video's it shows editing PDF documents and creating ebooks too.  Therefore, unless I'm missing something, if it could export in a Word Processor file format is there a reason why Affinity Publisher couldn't be used as a Word Processor as well?

 

So, the feature request is to allow Affinity Publisher to both open and export documents in Open Document Text format (*.odt) too.

 

 

[Peter Werner]

Most professional publishing software actually have a counterpart for text editing that is intended for the editors in an editorial workflow, like for newspapers and magazines. For InDesign, there is InCopy, for Quark XPress there is Quark CopyDesk. Editors can write their articles while accessing paragraph and character styles and seeing the text in context of the layout, including accurate text wrap. There are also locking mechanisms so people don't overwrite each other's work. Collaboration happens either via a file server or via something like Dropbox. These programs actually make fairly decent word processing programs, though they are of course not optimized for it, hence tasks like placing images, setting margins, and other layout operations are very limited.

 

As Affinity is going to be a professional suite, I expect that at some point in the future, there will be such a software that will take what I imagine would be a text editing persona from Publisher into a separate application, intended for editors collaborating with the layout department.

 

From my perspective, I think this should be a free or at least extremely low-cost program (say, 4,99€). That way individual designers could have clients or copy writers install that program, allowing these people to work on text inside the layout before the designer then makes final formatting touches. Much better than getting new Word files every day and manually re-applying all formatting in situations where there are a lot of frequent copy changes, but work has to start on the layout.

 

It could also serve as a free viewer for Affinity file formats that would allow people who don't have Designer/Photo/Publisher to display, export and print Affinity file formats.

 

I think a system like this could have one other really important use. For instance, many Designers are in the situation that the client has to come back to them for every single copy edit. Say, you are designing a brochure for a car company, and you want every dealer to have their address and their individual prices in there. With such a copy editing/viewer program, the designer could mark the corresponding text boxes as free to edit in the copy editing software. And then every single dealer could easily print or export customized versions every time their prices change (or address). There are solutions for InDesign out there, but they usually involve complicated and expensive server-based solutions that only make sense for large enterprise workflows. If Affinity Publisher/Designer/Photo were to provide a simple solution for that, that would be a godsend for many smaller workflows.

[brunzenstein]

Excellent - exactly on the mark!

Thanks you for describing what is needed and expected for journalists as well as designers, publishers (and don't forget the correctors woking on text and correct placement of pictures to the right text) alike!

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

WritePlus is just about right for this purpose. Provide support for that format within Affinity Publisher, and make a standalone application too.