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[Implemented] Data merge


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10 hours ago, fde101 said:

There is actually a mailmerge package for LaTeX: https://ctan.org/pkg/mailmerge

Depending on your documents and use cases mailmerge may indeed work. For me it was more convenient (even on the simpler jobs) to just generate a bunch of files and have the outputs organised in folders without having to do anything afterwards.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Data merge need to be definitely on the top of priorities now when the basic Idea of affinity range hes been built to finalized state. As well full screen print preview will be necessary for it to be easy to work with.

Please push   the external data (data merge) on the very top of the developers stack.

 

-pp-

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Starting to think I want to return all my Affinity products - it seems that every day I find what I consider to be pretty basic functionality in the Adobe Creative Suite, meanwhile I log in to InDesign again for the first time and see that they have added a few new great new features. I'm also beginning to think the Affinity is expensive - it's not much better than open source. 

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On 9/5/2019 at 3:45 AM, BSAS said:

Starting to think I want to return all my Affinity products - it seems that every day I find what I consider to be pretty basic functionality in the Adobe Creative Suite, meanwhile I log in to InDesign again for the first time and see that they have added a few new great new features. I'm also beginning to think the Affinity is expensive - it's not much better than open source. 

You're fed up of waiting? For what? Publisher was only released two months ago! you may have accessed the pre-release betas - but that's exactly what they were - pre-release. Mswift is right - InDesign took a couple of years to equal Quark Express and 20 years to reach the level of maturity it now achieves but Publisher has only been around for two months.

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But you have no alternative than the subscription of Indesign which hurt your pocket, I have no regrets and am sticking around till all features are implemented. Note this is a new product and is not open source product as your remarks, we followed this product through the beta period to the release and we all know what we are purchasing.

If you are here for your affiliate marketing sorry guy, go back and continue with your borrowed  time products of Adobe which you own notting but renting the platform. 

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Come on Affinity, please give your customers some idea when essential features will be available. We are all running businesses and scheduling projects in the design industry.

We don't know if a feature will be added in a few weeks or a few years, we have seen both cases.

We will not mind if you tell us a feature is difficult and is not coming any time soon. At least then we can schedule the task to different software while we are waiting.

Your software is amazing, we just need better developer/customer communication. 

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5 hours ago, spidermurph said:

Come on Affinity, please give your customers some idea when essential features will be available. We are all running businesses and scheduling projects in the design industry.

We don't know if a feature will be added in a few weeks or a few years, we have seen both cases.

Even if they did it would be a "best guess", so you still wouldn't really know.

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On 9/20/2019 at 6:25 AM, fde101 said:

Even if they did it would be a "best guess", so you still wouldn't really know.

As a professional software developer I have to say that's partially true, but don't devalue what an estimate does for us. Estimating projects is part of the job, and communicating that to customers with a worst case scenario estimate would still be great for everyone here. If they thought it would take 9 months to develop, communicating that it will take a minimum of that time would give us as customers enough to know that we need to find a different solution in the meantime.

There's a lot to Data Merge and I'm guessing that the company wants to be sure they get it right and don't miss the vital features, so maybe getting an estimate isn't super easy at this stage in time, but if they have a decent scope they could easily throw out "at least a year" or similar vague estimates.

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6 minutes ago, viability said:

Estimating projects is part of the job, and communicating that to customers with a worst case scenario estimate would still be great for everyone here.

You'd probably get something like "at least a year, worst case 4-5 years or never."

Also, what other commercial software companies do you have experience with that provide information like that? I've never seen any.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
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3 hours ago, viability said:

...we [would] need to find a different solution in the meantime...

From a business POV, if I need a particular function, I consider any time estimation a need to use another solution. Until a software has that particular functionality, and it meets my needs, an estimate/promise is still vaporware. 

People who don't have more than a single software solution are hampering their revenue potential. 

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11 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

what other commercial software companies do you have experience with that provide information like that? I've never seen any.

Serif. I feel that we were in the loop a little more with road maps to the next release. 

Side note: We are still using the data merge in Serif PagePlus as a stop gap.

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My own feeling is that there won't be any major additions/improvements (such as Mail Merge, PDF Pass through / use of embedded fonts, footnotes & endnotes etc) until version 2.

I'm sure Serif will deliberately keep features back so that they can justify charging for a new version. (I don't particularly blame them. They are a business and need to keep selling products.) 

If all the desired features were included in the current release how would they persuade people to pay for a new version in the future?

Acer XC-895 : Core i5-10400 Hexa-core 2.90 GHz :  32GB RAM : Intel UHD Graphics 630 : Windows 10 Home
Affinity Publisher 2 : Affinity Photo 2 : Affinity Designer 2 : (latest release versions) on desktop and iPad

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2 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

I'm sure Serif will deliberately keep features back so that they can justify charging for a new version.

I fully agree Paul. That used to be the Serif business model. We had a new version every 12-18 months for a reasonable upgrade fee. I think if Affinity run with this it would be a good way to keep the money coming in and give the users a good development guide.

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On 9/5/2019 at 4:45 AM, BSAS said:

Starting to think I want to return all my Affinity products - it seems that every day I find what I consider to be pretty basic functionality in the Adobe Creative Suite, meanwhile I log in to InDesign again for the first time and see that they have added a few new great new features. I'm also beginning to think the Affinity is expensive - it's not much better than open source. 

What you find in Adobe products as basic took them at least 14+ years to implement.

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57 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

My own feeling is that there won't be any major additions/improvements (such as Mail Merge, PDF Pass through / use of embedded fonts, footnotes & endnotes etc) until version 2.

I'm sure Serif will deliberately keep features back so that they can justify charging for a new version. (I don't particularly blame them. They are a business and need to keep selling products.) 

If all the desired features were included in the current release how would they persuade people to pay for a new version in the future?

Serif stated a 2 year cycle for upgrades. 

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30 minutes ago, Tourmaline said:

Serif stated a 2 year cycle for upgrades. 

Serif launched the very first versions of Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo in 2014 and 2015, respectively, and we are now nearing the end of 2019 with version 1.8 clearly still to come. Draw your own conclusions!

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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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