Export to WMF/EMF

[roman_emin]

Hi,

 

I was looking at the thread about the requested features for next versions. In the output formats I saw that the WMF/EMF format is missing. This is crucial in my workflow as most of my graphics are for MS Powerpoint and some other apps that use this format. In the meantime I have to go back and keep working with Inkscape to be able to export to this format, which breaks my workflow and adds a lot of extra work.

 

Please, consider this format in the export options. Even if Powerpoint is a MS product consider that is widely use in Mac system.

 

Thanks.

[Mithferion]

Affinity Products can export to those formats (I just don't know how well, comapred with other programs).

Best regards!

[roman_emin]

49 minutes ago, Mithferion said:

Affinity Products can export to those formats (I just don't know how well, comapred with other programs).

Best regards!

 

Thanks for the reply,

 

I'm still new with Affinity. Unfortunately the only export options I found are:

 

PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, PSD, PDF, SVG, EPS, EXR, HDR

 

Maybe I'm missing something. I work on a Mac system and currently use AI and found that even Inkscape is able to export to these formats.

[MikeW]

Might be limited to the Windows version, which I have and it's there.

 

Should be included in the Mac version if it isn't. 

[Mithferion]

Oh, I use it on Windows.

That might be the reason why I see it.

Best regards!

[Mark Ingram]

2 hours ago, MikeW said:

Should be included in the Mac version if it isn't. 

 

That won't happen because those formats rely on Windows APIs to write them.

In this day and age, there really is no need to use WMF or EMF, there are many better formats to choose from.

[MikeW]

Understood. 

 

But in this day & age, MS still hasn't made the ubiquitous Office products accept broader vector formats and those it does accept in Word & Publisher (to one faulty degree or another) are not applicable to PP.

[roman_emin]

5 hours ago, Mark Ingram said:

 

That won't happen because those formats rely on Windows APIs to write them.

In this day and age, there really is no need to use WMF or EMF, there are many better formats to choose from.

 

Hi,

 

I'm not planning to discuss MS programs or which formats are better. What I was asking was for Affinity to include support for this formats. This formats are the ones we use for our workflow. 

 

5 hours ago, Mark Ingram said:

 

That won't happen because those formats rely on Windows APIs to write them.

In this day and age, there really is no need to use WMF or EMF, there are many better formats to choose from.

 

I really don't see the problem to implement this option in the export option as AI and Inkscape for Mac support those formats. In order to jump from AI to Affinity this is a must.

 

Thanks for your answers and your time.

[Mark Ingram]

13 hours ago, MikeW said:

Understood. 

 

But in this day & age, MS still hasn't made the ubiquitous Office products accept broader vector formats and those it does accept in Word & Publisher (to one faulty degree or another) are not applicable to PP.

 

I agree, to check, I tried to load an SVG into Powerpoint and pretty shocked to see that it wouldn't import. I see this more as an issue for Microsoft, only supporting legacy file formats.

[Mark Ingram]

8 hours ago, roman_emin said:

I really don't see the problem to implement this option in the export option as AI and Inkscape for Mac support those formats. In order to jump from AI to Affinity this is a must.

 

The problem is, implementing things costs time and money. As such we have to prioritise the jobs that are done. Implementing WMF/EMF export on Mac isn't going to be a big earner, so the incentive for us to implement it is close to zero.

 

You should export your content as SVG, then import that into Powerpoint instead.

https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Insert-SVG-images-and-icons-in-Office-2016-e2459f17-3996-4795-996e-b9a13486fa79

[Patrick Connor]

8 hours ago, roman_emin said:

I really don't see the problem to implement this option in the export option as AI and Inkscape for Mac support those formats. In order to jump from AI to Affinity this is a must.

The "problem" was touched on by Mark.

14 hours ago, Mark Ingram said:

That won't happen because those formats rely on Windows APIs to write them.

As Mark explained we have not written much code on Windows to export as WMF and EMF, we have "drawn" to the software application interface that Microsoft provides, which results in a metafile that can be exported to file. This is what most Windows applications will do to export or put WMF onto the clipboard. To write our own for Mac would take a long time a lot of resources and thus far is not requested often, so does not seem a good use or our limited resources, sorry. While Affinity range lacks this feature on the Mac, you could always have a (cheap) windows device whose purpose is to export in EMF/WMF as that is clearly important to your workflow.

 

<Edit> I see mark has beaten me to it, and with a better and more practical suggestion. </Edit>

[Medical Officer Bones]

Perhaps install LibreOffice on your mac, and save an SVG from Designer, then import into LibreOffice Draw, and export to EMF/WMF? I tested this, and it seems to work fine.

[roman_emin]

18 hours ago, Medical Officer Bones said:

Perhaps install LibreOffice on your mac, and save an SVG from Designer, then import into LibreOffice Draw, and export to EMF/WMF? I tested this, and it seems to work fine.

 

Thanks for the tip. It works fine. The company decided to continue with Adobe as its fits nicely in our workflow, maybe in the future Affinity will commit to improve the Mac app and support this formats.

 

Have a good day.

[Mark Ingram]

8 hours ago, roman_emin said:

 

Thanks for the tip. It works fine. The company decided to continue with Adobe as its fits nicely in our workflow, maybe in the future Affinity will commit to improve the Mac app and support this formats.

 

Have a good day.

 

As I said previously, why not just import SVG into Powerpoint?

[Gurn Smile]

On 2018. 1. 13. at 2:34 AM, Mithferion said:

Affinity Products can export to those formats (I just don't know how well, comapred with other programs).

Best regards!

When importing an EMF file from Korean language PowerPoint, PowerPoint is terminated abnormally.

I hope this issue is resolved.

[Mark Ingram]

3 hours ago, Gurn Smile said:

When importing an EMF file from Korean language PowerPoint, PowerPoint is terminated abnormally.

I hope this issue is resolved.

 

If PowerPoint is crashing, that's an issue for Microsoft to resolve.

[jdarmstro]

The reason why you can't just use an SVG in PPT is that it's not editable. My workflow as an example (macOS):

 

I have graphics in PPT that I want to edit...I don't like PPTs tools so I used Designer instead. Copying from PPT to Designer works great - I get vectors and text that match what was on the PPT slide.

 

I edit the graphics and then want to put back in to PPT. Today with Designer (& Photo) every option for exporting that works with PPT simply ends up putting everything as a single merged image back on to the slide. Fine for me, personally - I can always edit in Designer and copy/paste...but there are hundreds of other people in my company and the vast majority use only PPT so would be better to paste in vectors & text elements, which any of my colleagues can edit directly in PPT.

 

SVG support was just added to PPT within the last week or two, so that tells you where MSFT is on solving this problem. Still, even the SVG format is a merged image. Better because it scales a little smoother, but still not editable as individual elements.