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Affinity Publisher Wish List


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I am a long time very heavy user of InDesign for everything from brochures and signs to very long books, and I am hoping that Affinity Publisher lives up to the excellence that I've seen in Photo and Designer. Are you soliciting feature ideas for Affinity Publisher? If so, can you direct me to where I can go to peruse what has been suggested and add my two (or more) cents? Are you going to put out a general Beta call, or are you looking for people to sign on to a Beta program? Are you going to put out an Alpha?

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  • 1 month later...

Hey Sam Neil: I'd love to learn more about what you mean by "taking the existing Page Plus users into account and do not churn out an InDesign clone" -- What are the features in Page Plus that you want to see, and what is it about InDesign that you hope they don't do?  I ask because i'm hoping for an InDesign clone. 

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Kathleen Why are hoping for a clone? then why not use the real thing. I have been using PP since version 3! One of the best features for PP is its ease of use. Now I am expecting a PP clone but something in between for the rest of us who did not use Adobe products, By all means have some of the ID features but not ignore the PP followers esp since they have discontinued PP with the promise of APub.

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Heh heh heh.

 

Me thinks that ID adherents, PP adherents, QXP adherents, or insert one's fav layout application here ______ adherents, will have some items they can relate to and love that those are in APub. And there will likely be a lot of head scratching from all camps that wonder why this or that function is like that!

 

And the first version may only please the Serif Affinity Line lovers...

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Well said Mike, I am hoping when it is launched I am not going to say: "WTF!!!!??????". I understand Serif are gunning after Adobe and its PRO users but when it comes to DTP, Hopefully they will remember us little people (PP Users) too! It will be a hard act as Serif have a more DTP users than any of their other legacy products....

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1 minute ago, Sam Neil said:

Hopefully they will remember us little people (PP Users) too!

 

I can only echo Kathleen's question. What do you mean by taking existing PP users "into account"? And what would you see as evidence that they "remember us little people"?

 

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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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What is there not to understand by this statement? It's simple I do not want to pay an get an InDesign clone, If that's the case I go to Adobe. That is what I mean. Serif should take its PagePlus user's into account when designing APub. So which part is not clear? Taking into account the ones have been using PP from the beginning. Hopefully this is clear. Why Kathleen wants a clone is beyond me but I certainly don't want to. She comes from an ID background I don't, I am from a PP background so you where the issue starts. Let's just see when comes out first before we judge them. 

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The Affinity products are marketed differently than the Plus products. But that doesn't necessarily make them so.

 

Now, I'm not saying that professional quality wasn't possible from PagePlus. It was possible and still is. But in terms of certain features it has in comparison to other layout applications, it falls short in several areas not the least of which is usability.

 

Serif has the grand opportunity to rectify some of these things with APub. I hope they do so.

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I use InDesign professionally -- my career is pretty much built around it. I use it for pretty much everything, from 1-page brochures all the way up to 100+page books. I use it all day every day. I used to also use Photoshop and Illustrator, but every month I would get so angry about the Adobe cost: I don't want to RENT my software. This is the reason I became an Affinity user, and I'm very glad i did because now that I'm used to them, I like Affinity Photo and Designer BETTER than the Adobe products.   I am looking forward to when Affinity Publisher comes out -- but because my career is dependent on the professional layout features of InDesign, I will not be able to become an Affinity Publisher user unless it has those features. The list of long, but at a minimum it must have detailed and robust style and GREP features. I have never used PagePlus and in fact have never heard of it -- this is why I was asking about the features. Frankly, we should all talk in terms of the features we want.

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Heh. And to be a bit more fair & balanced (sort of), I would hope that APub would correct some of ID's areas where it falls short. And QXP's areas where it falls short. And ...

 

My fear is that Serif has little to no real-world experience with applications outside its stable of products. Kathleen seems to have real-world experience (sorry for sounding disparaging, Kathleen. I don't know you and you don't know me and so apply my statement to me, too). I use ID & QXP nearly every day. I write, nearly, because some days are full of contacting clients, uploading, or making assets and color-correcting images for use in one of the two.

 

GREP (search & styles) is one example that APub likely will not have in version 1, maybe not in v.2. JavaScript support? I don't think so and maybe not for X versions. Neither of these were possible in PP. Swatches in PP? Not good though they did become better working in X9. Agnostic PDF export (by this I mean PDF/X4 that uses tagged images, etc.)? Dunno. It's not possible using the X4 PDF type in AD (nor in the current QXP to be honest). Text styles? Absolutely robust in ID and QXP. Not so much in PP. Not in AD, either.

 

AD's OpenType Feature support surpasses ID's (AD & CD have the best, fullest OT Feature support that just works). QXP's feature support is greater than ID's but fails on certain complex OT Features (stops processing too early) whereas ID fully process the OT Features that it does support. 

 

But the errors in AD may well make their way into APub as well. I have to remember the Affinity line is a set of immature applications. Hopefully Serif takes all feedback (regardless of how forcefully it is expressed at times) and make these applications more robust, fuller and able to compete with Adobe & Quark products' output. In print work, at the end of a job, what matters is output. But getting to that stage is every bit as important and that applies to both work-flow and capabilities.

 

Mike

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I totally agree, but I too use PP on daily basis and have done it may surprise you that you can achieve some good results  with it. All I am saying to have a balance, however we are not going to get anywhere until they roll out the software first. We don't even know what it looks like or any roadmap/feature list.

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As for desired features, Kathleen, Post actual desired features in separate posts. It makes it easier for Serif to keep track of them.

 

But do note that if APub will really be ready for beta testing sometime after the New Year, it may well be feature-frozen by now. There will be an official post as regards what Serif will try to accomplish during the 1.x series (just like there is for AD & APhoto). And as features get added, that first post's list will grow shorter.

 

Mike

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2 hours ago, Sam Neil said:

What is there not to understand by this statement? It's simple I do not want to pay an get an InDesign clone, If that's the case I go to Adobe. That is what I mean. Serif should take its PagePlus user's into account when designing APub. So which part is not clear? Taking into account the ones have been using PP from the beginning. Hopefully this is clear. 

 

I'm sorry to say that it still isn't clear! We've been told that we won't be able to open our native PagePlus files directly in APub, and it looks very much as though we won't even able to import WritePlus *.stt files (which would have taken care of a lot of formatting issues) so PP users aren't going to be given any special treatment. If there's any other "taking into account" of their PP users that Serif could do, I'm afraid I don't see what form it would take.

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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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