Affinity Publisher - Sneak Preview

[JET_Affinity]

Quote

So my question to you is: What do you think they do?

My assumption was that they're just sensible "jump to" or "edit original" conveniences. For example, select an imported vector graphic on the page. click the Designer icon. The graphic opens in Designer. Edit it, save it, jump back to Publisher and the graphic updates accordingly.

And I'd actually be fine with that. But, of course, if you guys have something significantly more powerful / elegant / innovative than that, I'm not against being delighted. Unlike most, I can appreciate many things I can get for "free".

JET

[Rick G]

12 hours ago, Bri-Toon said:

Am I getting off topic again?

HAHA thanks for the response. My needs in the web development area are low end. 

Anyway they are not going to handle that which is ok 

[bor]

OK, so there is some possibilities like:

1. Merging all purchuised software into one (like a hub)
2. Making easier switch to "Edit originals"
3. Fully featured editors inside Publisher like: Raster and Vector Editors
4. More awesome solution, we don't even imagine...

I hope, in AP there will be functions like:

1. Fast and robust preflight (this is must have)
2. View Modes (from fast previews up to print previews)
3. Ability to work on hundreds pages without problems (well optimized)
4. Spell checking (in many languages)
5. Many master pages
6. Tool like data merge (or it's better brother :))
7. Styles for: Objects, paragraphs, characters and so on
8. Easy end fast media containers to use
9. Advanced font and acharacter proporties
10. Saving and exporting in background
11. Clean grouping solution
12. Easy link manager
13.  

And also I am affraid of:

If it would be as powerfull as we love to be, have many great features AND would be integrated with other software (damn You @MattP) AP would be  much expensive than rest of Affinity software family, or it would be insubscription plan. If not, holly molly, there will be no brainer to switch for Affinity in whole. 

[MEGraphicDesign]

Since we are all talking about new software, I have a serious question I would like to ask. Maybe something like this already exists, but I would love to hear what, if any, Affinity Products (or Affinity Compatible Applications) are in the works for organizing files and digital assets (along the lines of Adobe Bridge)? 

[Pedro Dias]

On 12/14/2017 at 1:03 PM, TonyB said:

Affinity Publisher sneak peek! Just to prove we're not making the whole thing up, check out this early build of our DTP app. Still lots of perfecting to do; expect the beta next summer. Enjoy.

 

We will try and answer any questions here.

 

 

 

Nice!!!! 

 

It will have Phonetic Guide texts / Ruby (Furigana) for Japanese Texts?

[Charles Jenkins]

There doesn't seem to be a forum yet for AP feature requests, so I'd like to mention one here. The one feature besides general ease of use that makes me feel trapped in InDesign is "optical character margins." I'm still using a pre-CC version of Creative Suite so I don't have to pay a huge monthly fee, and in my old version the option is found on the "Story" palette. This feature lets some characters like quote marks stick out over the margins a tiny bit, so word wrapping makes paragraphs look less ragged, much more even and professional. I think Quark and Scribus both have the same feature but with a different name, but other more modern programs seem to lack the feature. I'm hoping AP includes this feature and is otherwise as fluid to use and logical as InDesign.

[MikeW]

Hanging punctuation in QXP. One can also define in Q what characters are used.

 

A fun exercise is to try to find modern publications that use it. Excepting your own, of course. 

[Hokusai]

6 hours ago, myclay said:

 it mimics a hypervisor and loads the needed parts of those programs into the UI and offers a vector/Draw persona and photo persona and publishing persona?

 

MattP,

 

Publisher looks great and as far as the question that you asked, I'm siding with @myclay's guess that the icons on the top will allow users to use parts of Designer and Photo within Publisher. If it is just a link to them, that isn't different from what has been available from Adobe since CS 1 but you said it was something nobody else offers and they can't because their programs don't have a common code base like Designer, Photo, and Publisher. Whatever it is, I'm very excited to see it! 

 

Hokusai

[Tom Schülke]

its very very easy..    The personas in the top are:

1. Make the Perfect suggestionPersone, based on machine learning using the needs and wishes of all potential customers that could and finaly will by your text, Book ore what so ever....

2. Thelepathic Agreement Persona, to convince each and every client, boss and or beautifull woman , to love you endlessly for your work charcter and butiful hair...

3. Shorten work script.. Persona, to reduce your worktime to 2 days a week and convince your boss to do so by paying you the whole wage for a 40 to 50 hours week .

 

am i right ?  sure... iam

[Tom Schülke]

i am right sure, this will integrate affinity Photo and designer abilities very thight under the hood of affinity publisher. much smoother than the workflow of photoshop , illustrator and indesign.

 

[Rick G]

25 minutes ago, Tom Schülke said:

its very very easy..    The personas in the top are:

1. Make the Perfect suggestionPersone, based on machine learning using the needs and wishes of all potential customers that could and finaly will by your text, Book ore what so ever....

2. Thelepathic Agreement Persona, to convince each and every client, boss and or beautifull woman , to love you endlessly for your work charcter and butiful hair...

3. Shorten work script.. Persona, to reduce your worktime to 2 days a week and convince your boss to do so by paying you the whole wage for a 40 to 50 hours week .

 

am i right ?  sure... iam

YES! Features we have all waited for are finally here!!!

[Rainer101]

Feature requests for Affinity Publisher:

 

I'm interested in the new publisher too to substitute FrameMaker, using it a long time since NeXTStep until shutting it down, while Adobe hadn't offered it for macOS or OS X at all. I hope Affinity Publisher can and will succeed FrameMaker in its functionality. I used FrameMaker as a word processor too and it was the best word processor at that time and there is still no adequate word processor coming near to that program. It was not only reliable for long documents versus Microsoft Word especially.

 

It had great concepts like master pages and reference pages, at least for a word processor. With master pages you have the opportunity to change the background of different templates with just changing only one master page with a simple update function. Think of a letter paper you have to change for many different documents. Master pages and reference pages are two major important feature requests.

 

An easy and good working (!) link back function was another great function while updating the linked changed document. I used it most for updating spreadsheet, in that time with Lotus Improv, for those who remember that multi dimensional spreadsheet program on NeXTStep.

 

An import possibility for FrameMaker documents would be nice.

 

Not to mention the many other functions of the DTP program.

 

I would instantly switch to Affinity Publisher for a "word processor" as an substitute for FrameMaker on macOS if possible.

[ostonica]

I really liked what I saw in the preview. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that it will include exporting documents to the Epub format. That's my main use for Indesign CC which I use daily. 

 

 

[Aurelio]

12 hours ago, MattP said:

I just want to bring this post back to the top and dwell on it for a little while... You know I can't help but say a little too much most of the time, but I've been told in no uncertain terms that I'm not allowed to confirm or deny the function of these buttons... So I was trying to think what I could say about the subject, so: They're not there by accident. They're not placeholders. They're awesome. Nobody else offers this, nor could they.

 

So my question to you is: What do you think they do? 

 

 

When you purchase Publisher, you also get Designer and Photo, yes! And all integrated... One Ring to rule them all.

[Bri-Toon]

It sounds like those persona buttons are getting everyone curious. MattP's post of, "Nobody else offers this, nor could they," is certainly a wake'r up'r.

 

Hee! Hee! Hee! I'll get them to spill be the beans. Observe! Any posts of guesses in which the staff gave a +1 is on the right track.

 

Matt, want to try my hypnotizing test? I promise, it's a game in which no one has to speak.

[mirabeau]

In the email announcement of the Publisher Sneak Preview, there was an offer of a free set of paint brushes for Photo (DAUB brush pack). Was that strictly for those who bought the app from the Affinity store or is it also available to those who bought through Apple's App Store?

 

TIA

[MattP]

16 hours ago, MBOROWIEC said:

OK, so there is some possibilities like:

1. Merging all purchuised software into one (like a hub)
2. Making easier switch to "Edit originals"
3. Fully featured editors inside Publisher like: Raster and Vector Editors
4. More awesome solution, we don't even imagine...

I hope, in AP there will be functions like:

1. Fast and robust preflight (this is must have)
2. View Modes (from fast previews up to print previews)
3. Ability to work on hundreds pages without problems (well optimized)
4. Spell checking (in many languages)
5. Many master pages
6. Tool like data merge (or it's better brother :))
7. Styles for: Objects, paragraphs, characters and so on
8. Easy end fast media containers to use
9. Advanced font and acharacter proporties
10. Saving and exporting in background
11. Clean grouping solution
12. Easy link manager
13.  

And also I am affraid of:

If it would be as powerfull as we love to be, have many great features AND would be integrated with other software (damn You @MattP) AP would be  much expensive than rest of Affinity software family, or it would be insubscription plan. If not, holly molly, there will be no brainer to switch for Affinity in whole. 

 

I really liked the sound of one of your 'possibilities', but couldn't possibly say which... I can definitely ease your mind on your worries though - same price, no subscriptions. We want to make software that we would buy and use (and yes, I've bought all variants myself through the App Store just to make sure I get the same experience as other customers) and we want it to be priced to not exclude anyone - we think that's the fair thing to do

[MattP]

5 hours ago, mirabeau said:

In the email announcement of the Publisher Sneak Preview, there was an offer of a free set of paint brushes for Photo (DAUB brush pack). Was that strictly for those who bought the app from the Affinity store or is it also available to those who bought through Apple's App Store?

 

TIA

It's for everybody - just follow the link you were sent and Affinity will send you the brushes

[Patrick Connor]

1 hour ago, MattP said:

It's for everybody - just follow the link you were sent and Affinity will send you the brushes

When claiming the content from the email newsletter via the Affinity Store, use the option "New to Affinity". Purchases from the Mac App Store/iTunes is invisible to us and does not make you an account in our Affinity store. Quite rightly Apple do not share their customer data with anyone who sells through the Mac App Store or the iPad Store, so as far as Serif are concerned owners of the Mac and iPad versions of Affinity software are a "new" customer to our store. Our email/newsletter database is also not the store database, so getting an email does not mean that you have a Store account.

 

If you get the Newsletter email, you are still welcome to claim the content. Also, if you actually do have an account the "New to Affinity" option will prompt you to use it, so in fact all customers can use that if they wish.

[Ian]

On 14/12/2017 at 5:35 PM, pioneer said:

Really good news at long last, thank you, a question at this early stage, will the UI be available in both light and dark?

 

Yes that's the plan

[Alfred]

31 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

Also, if you actually do have an account the "New to Affinity" option will prompt you to use it, so in fact all customers can use that if they wish.

 

Which, as I mentioned in a previous discussion about this, is a very good reason to do away with the separate tab and the confusion it causes for Mac users who (quite rightly) say to themselves, “I’m new to the Affinity Store, but I’m not new to Affinity”.

[Patrick Connor]

14 minutes ago, Alfred said:

 

Which, as I mentioned in a previous discussion about this, is a very good reason to do away with the separate tab and the confusion it causes for Mac users who (quite rightly) say to themselves, “I’m new to the Affinity Store, but I’m not new to Affinity”.

Changing any aspect of a checkout process is never done lightly, we are talking about taking customers money. We know the current shop is not perfect and those problems will be addressed carefully, but not for a while so please don't keep saying when I try and help new users.

[Alfred]

25 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

Changing any aspect of a checkout process is never done lightly, we are talking about taking customers money.

 

That’s a very fair point! I wonder whether there’s room to make a simple change to the wording (e.g. from “New to Affinity” to “New to this store”).

[Kev D800]

2 hours ago, MattP said:

 

... - same price, no subscriptions. We want to make software that we would buy and use (and yes, I've bought all variants myself through the App Store just to make sure I get the same experience as other customers) and we want it to be priced to not exclude anyone - we think that's the fair thing to do

 

This means a lot.

Also makes me feel that I made the right choice in my move from CS6.

 

[Larsene]

4 hours ago, MattP said:

 

I really liked the sound of one of your 'possibilities', but couldn't possibly say which... I can definitely ease your mind on your worries though - same price, no subscriptions. We want to make software that we would buy and use (and yes, I've bought all variants myself through the App Store just to make sure I get the same experience as other customers) and we want it to be priced to not exclude anyone - we think that's the fair thing to do

 

Just want to thanks about that. I've bought Affinity Designer, then Affinity Photo. I 'll probably buy Affinity Publisher then. This idea is for me a kind of customer respect, with a good product. Some of my friends use a not so legal version of Illustrator, none of them makes illegal copies of Affinity Products.

 

Thanks for this, really.