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Span Columns


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I do appreciate everyone's concern with column spanning. I'd love to have that ability as well. Started using it in InDesign when it was introduced. Continued to use it when I switched to QuarkXpress when it seemed InDesign 5.5 would not be functioning too much longer. I've been a designer long enough that spanning would never be a deciding factor of whether or not to use certain software. Yes, I miss it not being in Publisher but it will come along at some point. For now, I will do what I always did. Separate text frames. Might be a little more work but if faced with having to pay Adobe or use Publisher (which is so well integrated with Designer and Photo) I'll take Publisher every time, no offense to QuarkXpress.

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32 minutes ago, dannyg9 said:

I do appreciate everyone's concern with column spanning. I'd love to have that ability as well. Started using it in InDesign when it was introduced. Continued to use it when I switched to QuarkXpress when it seemed InDesign 5.5 would not be functioning too much longer. I've been a designer long enough that spanning would never be a deciding factor of whether or not to use certain software. ...

Yep. Spanning columns (and some other gotta have or else features) seems a funny line-in-the-sand function. Like you, I've been around long enough that building these by hand was how it was done. I can think of a few others areas that are a deciding factor for me, but spanning columns isn't even a consideration for that list.

32 minutes ago, dannyg9 said:

... no offense to QuarkXpress.

🤣

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I think it depends on your work. For people whose text/article blocks can move or be rearranged during production, it's a must. Also, it just seems like a basic function that got overlooked and now programmers aren't sure how to implement/integrate it. It's not a sin. Things get overlooks. Maybe it's hard to implement. Who knows? However, without it, I cannot make Publisher my production program and have to stick with ID. That's just me. It would be nice if they would let us know where it is in the roadmap. 

I do want to point out that the greatest, most powerful yet easy-to-use page layout program, Corel Ventura, which was cruelly euthanized by its owner, had the span column feature back in the 1990s, over 20 years ago. It was, like most things with Ventura, elegantly implemented and easy to use. It just seems that 20 years later a program that deigns to be a professional tool would include Span Columns as a matter of course. Again, just my view. Don't freak out, people, I actually own and (try to) use Publisher whenever I can.  

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

I realize that everyone has a wish list, but spanning columns is not a wish-it's a requirement. Creating a separate frame for a heading (for example), linking that frame to one that follows creates text flow nightmares. 

As others have mentioned, much older programs handled this well. I was a beta testers years ago for Ventura and  Aldus, both of which had this feature. Requiring additional text frames is not only cumbersome and costs layout time, measurements are infinitely more difficult to calculate with regard to lead, spacing and such. 

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Ah, Ventura Publisher, a favorite of mine.  I dearly wish Corel had spun it out or sold it off to another software company nstead of letting it simply die.  I have an install of VenPub that just barely runs on Windows 7 with lots of screen update glitches.  There is no hope of getting it running reliably on Windows 10.

Yes, there are lots of things you can (could) do in VenPub that you can't yet do in AffPub.

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53 minutes ago, sfriedberg said:

Ah, Ventura Publisher, a favorite of mine.  I dearly wish Corel had spun it out or sold it off to another software company nstead of letting it simply die.  I have an install of VenPub that just barely runs on Windows 7 with lots of screen update glitches.  There is no hope of getting it running reliably on Windows 10. ...

I use it on Win10 to transfer manuals, etc., to QXP still. As long as I use real TrueType fonts, everything works through to PDF. But it needed a complete rewrite to keep going and none of the then-present Corel programmers could take it on. But yep, the investors could have sold it on back in 2002. But no one would buy the code today. It would be wasted money.

54 minutes ago, sfriedberg said:

... Yes, there are lots of things you can (could) do in VenPub that you can't yet do in AffPub.

There are things VP did that no layout application has ever done. Like the no-break attribute for paragraphs...

Capture_000654.png.0509713d5525add6d5d0887519a1f560.png

 

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13 hours ago, Clayton King said:

I realize that everyone has a wish list, but spanning columns is not a wish-it's a requirement. Creating a separate frame for a heading (for example), linking that frame to one that follows creates text flow nightmares. 

As others have mentioned, much older programs handled this well. I was a beta testers years ago for Ventura and  Aldus, both of which had this feature. Requiring additional text frames is not only cumbersome and costs layout time, measurements are infinitely more difficult to calculate with regard to lead, spacing and such. 

@Clayton King
Even MS Word can do it.

I produce a regular magazine in Word. In preparation for an intended future progression to Publisher I switched the latest Word version to 2 columns.

In MS Word, if you do Insert/Section Break/Continuous it achieves the effect that I would like to see in Publisher (which previous posters have been calling Span Columns).

It starts a new left-hand column and balances the text in the columns above it, so that the new article/story fills the page from that point down, across multiple columns. 

Then if you add or remove content from before the section break, the columns above the break rebalance as necessary.

 

 

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Having resumed work on a large manuscript, and continuing to fight this battle, I also noticed something else that gets in the way of easily using separate frames for spanned headings. 

If the single column frame (for the heading) is less than 1" in height, the arrow at the bottom right to link the frame doesn't show up. So if you have a long document and are dynamically creating frames, you have to drag one for headings that is much too large, link it, go to the next one. Change the size of the first, etc., etc.

This is not efficient time use and certainly not effective workflow.

I really like Affinity products. There are some quirks which I've begun working through, but overall they are good products. However, having spent a few years obtaining my Adobe Certification, I know the difference between a "nice to have" function and something that fits into a daily workflow.  Spanned column text is one such thing.

As another user indicated, the other amazing feature the (literally) first version of Ventura had was multi-line hanging indents in the form of a zero line feed paragraph attributes. That's too much, apparently, to ask of anyone because no current application that I know of (Quark, InDesign, MS Publisher, MS Word, etc.) has this ability. 

But spanned column text? It's fairly standard among the more robust publishing apps.

12 hours ago, MikeW said:

I use it on Win10 to transfer manuals, etc., to QXP still. As long as I use real TrueType fonts, everything works through to PDF. But it needed a complete rewrite to keep going and none of the then-present Corel programmers could take it on. But yep, the investors could have sold it on back in 2002. But no one would buy the code today. It would be wasted money.

There are things VP did that no layout application has ever done. Like the no-break attribute for paragraphs...

Capture_000654.png.0509713d5525add6d5d0887519a1f560.png

 

 

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19 hours ago, Clayton King said:

I realize that everyone has a wish list, but spanning columns is not a wish-it's a requirement. Creating a separate frame for a heading (for example), linking that frame to one that follows creates text flow nightmares. 

As others have mentioned, much older programs handled this well. I was a beta testers years ago for Ventura and  Aldus, both of which had this feature. Requiring additional text frames is not only cumbersome and costs layout time, measurements are infinitely more difficult to calculate with regard to lead, spacing and such. 

 

12 hours ago, MikeW said:

I use it on Win10 to transfer manuals, etc., to QXP still. As long as I use real TrueType fonts, everything works through to PDF. But it needed a complete rewrite to keep going and none of the then-present Corel programmers could take it on. But yep, the investors could have sold it on back in 2002. But no one would buy the code today. It would be wasted money.

There are things VP did that no layout application has ever done. Like the no-break attribute for paragraphs...

Capture_000654.png.0509713d5525add6d5d0887519a1f560.png

 

Glad to see the old Ventura Publisher get some well-deserved and past due love. It was very powerful, intuitive, and easy to learn and use. RIP.  I used the No Paragraph Break feature all the time back in the day. The Affinity Publisher programers could learn a lot from revisiting the features of VP :-). Be that as it may, also glad to see Span Columns for AP getting more attention. Needed. 

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Corel destroyed Ventura in the sake of CorelDRAW. They claim CorelDRAW has layout capabilities. LOL 

All the latest releases of Designer, Photo and Publisher (retail and beta) on MacOS and Windows.
15” Dell Inspiron 7559 i7 Windows 10 x64 Pro Intel Core i7-6700HQ (3.50 GHz, 6M) 16 GB Dual Channel DDR3L 1600 MHz (8GBx2) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 4 GB GDDR5 500 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD UHD (3840 x 2160) Truelife LED - Backlit Touch Display
32” LG 32UN650-W display 3840 x 2160 UHD, IPS, HDR10 Color Gamut: DCI-P3 95%, Color Calibrated 2 x HDMI, 1 x DisplayPort
13.3” MacBook Pro (2017) Ventura 13.6 Intel Core i7 (3.50 GHz Dual Core) 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3 Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 1536 MB 500 GB SSD Retina Display (3360 x 2100)

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@Petar Petrenko While I am no fan of Corel's terminal neglect of Ventura Publisher, it's not at all accurate to say they destroyed it in favor of CorelDRAW.  At the time Corel acquired Ventura Publisher, CorelDRAW already had substantially all of the "layout" capabilities it has presently.  No really suitable for multi-page documents unless the whole thing is more "illustration" than text.  And, while they didn't do a lot, Corel did make some enhancements to VenPub while they were working on it.  They certainly did not cripple it or remove functionality.

I can't imagine that Corel ever saw VenPub as any sort of threat whatsoever to CorelDRAW.  Their strengths and weakness are simply too different for one to cannibalize sales of the other.  Obviously, they didn't see sufficient value in the pair as a complements for one another, either.

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https://www.coreldraw.com/en/pages/old-brands/ventura-publisher/

There was, not so long ago, a call from Corel to Adobe suite users to switch to Corel suite. While I can, somehow, understand about Photoshop and Illustrator, it is hard to believe they could compete to InDesign. It's simply ridiculous.

All the latest releases of Designer, Photo and Publisher (retail and beta) on MacOS and Windows.
15” Dell Inspiron 7559 i7 Windows 10 x64 Pro Intel Core i7-6700HQ (3.50 GHz, 6M) 16 GB Dual Channel DDR3L 1600 MHz (8GBx2) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 4 GB GDDR5 500 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD UHD (3840 x 2160) Truelife LED - Backlit Touch Display
32” LG 32UN650-W display 3840 x 2160 UHD, IPS, HDR10 Color Gamut: DCI-P3 95%, Color Calibrated 2 x HDMI, 1 x DisplayPort
13.3” MacBook Pro (2017) Ventura 13.6 Intel Core i7 (3.50 GHz Dual Core) 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3 Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 1536 MB 500 GB SSD Retina Display (3360 x 2100)

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

Hi, I'm new to Publisher, but this REALLY needs text spanning in columns.
I'm a little disheartened to flick through these forums and see how many years this feature has been requested.

I produce a couple of product catalogues a year and bought Publisher (along with Designer) as a way of escaping the costs and rolling monthly commitment to Adobe.

I've just started my first 'conversion' catalogue with Publisher (using imported IDML file) and had to abandon it for InDesign.
Every product has a pricing grid with a spanned headline. Luckily, I've only spent an hour but i'm gutted not able to use this.
Maybe when I get time I can start again from the ground up and work round this, but this is something I would consider key, especially as Affinity are obviously targeting Adobes customer base.
 

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On 7/3/2020 at 8:35 AM, Anton Deck said:

how many years this feature has been requested

I'm among the list of people who have been requesting this feature, but for the sake of fairness, I wish to note that total number of years is a little less than two, since the first public beta was released at the end of August 2018, when this thread was started. Or if you choose to count by when the Publisher was first available for purchase, then it would be just over one year (released June 2019). "How many years" makes it seem longer than it has been.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

Well, despite the lack of the "Span column" feature, I made the move to Affinity Publisher five issues ago for our monthly publication. I love it. Great decision. First month of transition was a challenge, but after that, it has gone fairly smoothly. Haven't really missed the Span Column feature, once I got used to simply putting in a Text Box for each headline. Still looking forward to it being added, but it has not been the deal-breaker for us that I thought it would. Great program, Affinity!

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10 minutes ago, whitewolf7070 said:

Haven't really missed the Span Column feature, once I got used to simply putting in a Text Box for each headline. Still looking forward to it being added, but it has not been the deal-breaker for us that I thought it would.

My experience is a shade different, but still basically the same. I have been using Publisher for a number of our publications, and I still do miss column span when I felt it could have been used (and even have avoided Publisher on occasion because of it), but I also have had happy results for some of our other publications.

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