[IDML Implemented] How can I open Indesign (indd and idml) Files in Publisher?

[3Dshark]

On 1/9/2019 at 8:21 PM, fde101 said:

How did you manage that?  As far as I can tell 2018 is still current.

Well spotted! It was 2018 not 2019.

[ChrisBorry]

On 9/6/2018 at 12:58 PM, woefi said:

Well, I'm hanging on CS5, which I managed to get to work in Sierra, In High Sierra it worked too, but crashed every time when quitting the program...

I work in Mojave with CS5 and it still functions. Then: Save before quitting, Quit…  and then get an “unexpected error”, That’s all. I did partition my disk so I also have High Sierra with all CS5 installed. So, worst case scenario, I can switch to HighSierra for CS5 and expect The Unexpected (or unknown) Errors on quitting. 

[Petar Petrenko]

11 hours ago, ChrisBorry said:

I work in Mojave with CS5 and it still functions. Then: Save before quitting, Quit…  and then get an “unexpected error”, That’s all. I did partition my disk so I also have High Sierra with all CS5 installed. So, worst case scenario, I can switch to HighSierra for CS5 and expect The Unexpected (or unknown) Errors on quitting. 

Can't you run it under an older version of OS X installed on some virtual machine?

[Steps]

MacOS 64-bit can't run 32-bit software in a compatbility mode like Windows 64-bit does?  Wow... that would annoy me.

I use PSE 12 which is only 32-bit but can be run under Win 10 64-bit.

[Alfred]

19 minutes ago, Steps said:

MacOS 64-bit can't run 32-bit software in a compatbility mode like Windows 64-bit does?  Wow... that would annoy me.

I use PSE 12 which is only 32-bit but can be run under Win 10 64-bit.

That would annoy me, too. I occasionally use PSE 13, and numerous other 32-bit applications, on my 64-bit Windows 10 system.

[Steps]

I just figured out that they have this compatbility mode in Mojave and will drop it to enforce development of 64 bit apps.

That's typical for Apple politics. They want to achieve something and apply force ignoring if that means serious problems to someone. That's why I have no Mac. Finding out that otherwise perfect working CS6 is just cut-off by such a decision would enrage me. But let's stop here. This is not about Apple.

I wondered and see now why there is such a high demand on InDesign import/export.

Until now I was thinking it's just people that want to unsubscribe Creative Cloud. Now I see that there is a number of people that until now never subscribed CC but stayed with the Creative Suite which will stop working now on Mac. Yes, that's a problem.

I think it's unlikely a virtual machine will help here. Apple want's by purpose to kill 32-bit software. Why should they leave a way back open if that's their mission?

And on a side note: I understand why they want it. Keeping up the support is surely a complex thing to maintain in the code. So they want to delete it.

Edited January 13, 2019 by Steps
Corrected, thanks to mac_heibu: Not with but after Mojave

[mac_heibu]

That is completely wrong! 32 bit compatibility isn‘t dropped with Mojave. 32 Bit applications are running as they did before. If you start a 32 bit app for the first time, you will be alerted once, that future(!) systems may not support it any more.

By the way: Apple began the transition to 64 bit hardware and software technology over a decade ago and is working with developers to transition their apps to 64 bit. If an application wasn‘t migrated to 64 bit up to now,  would you really trust the developer? I definitely wouldn‘t.

[ChrisBorry]

3 hours ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Can't you run it under an older version of OS X installed on some virtual machine?

I’m sure there must be options under virtual machines, but I have no experience with that. I did try parallels Lite but I couldn’t get my Mac running on a functional level and I’m quite unbothered by the Error message after quitting . Occasionally I get a message on opening CS5 that the app’s aren’t up to date with the 64-bit but there are no consequences. So I continued with CS5, update after update, and have now a HighSierra partition on the side, just in case. It looks to me that Affinity Publisher will master the problems, but I find it difficult to part with was my favourite application since the late eigthies: Aldus Pagemaker, which was later on bought by Adobe & enhanced. Partitioning (Mojave) is very very easy nowadays, so all that went very smoothly. I don’t see the problem. I did not upgrade CS because of the subscription thing, and frankly I was quite happy with what CS5 could do, I could not imaginaire what improvements I wished. It’s stable, and I also had low expectations on Adobe being able to follow up Apple’s upgrades. By the way, I’m a “newbie” since 1987. (To Mac Heibu: After all, what did Apple ever did for us ? See Monty Python)

[Steps]

29 minutes ago, mac_heibu said:

That is completely wrong! 32 bit compatibility isn‘t dropped with Mojave. 32 Bit applications are running as they did before. If you start a 32 bit app for the first time, you will be alerted once, that future(!) systems may not support it any more.

By the way: Apple began the transition to 64 bit hardware and software technology over a decade ago and is working with developers to transition their apps to 64 bit. If an application wasn‘t migrated to 64 bit up to now,  would you really trust the developer? I definitely wouldn‘t.

You're right. I misread it. Mojave is the last version to support it. I corrected my posting above. Thank you.

I took my information from here:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208436

Apple began the transition to 64-bit hardware and software technology for Mac over a decade ago, and is working with developers to transition their apps to 64-bit. At our Worldwide Developers Conference in 2018, Apple informed developers that macOS Mojave is the last version of macOS to run 32-bit apps.

29 minutes ago, mac_heibu said:

TIf an application wasn‘t migrated to 64 bit up to now,  would you really trust the developer? I definitely wouldn‘t.

This is not the point. Adobe switched, but of course they did not update the old versions. This would be unusual.

People used that old versions of Photoshop to avoid CC.

But if Apple should kill 32-bit they have to switch to CC or need to stay with Mojave.

 

[ChrisBorry]

19 minutes ago, Steps said:

You're right. I misread it. Mojave is the last version to support it. I corrected my posting above. Thank you.

I took my information from here:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208436

Apple began the transition to 64-bit hardware and software technology for Mac over a decade ago, and is working with developers to transition their apps to 64-bit. At our Worldwide Developers Conference in 2018, Apple informed developers that macOS Mojave is the last version of macOS to run 32-bit apps.

This is not the point. Adobe switched, but of course they did not update the old versions. This would be unusual.

People used that old versions of Photoshop to avoid CC.

But if Apple should kill 32-bit they have to switch to CC or need to stay with Mojave.

 

Not accurate. Please read my previous postings. 

[Steps]

30 minutes ago, ChrisBorry said:

Not accurate. Please read my previous postings. 

I did. What point do you refer to? That you can make backups of your system before upgrading? Yes, of course...

But there will be the point where you can't use the latest MacOS with CS.

[ChrisBorry]

Well it's all a bit academic.

Today,  I still use without any problems CS5. What the future will bring or be, we have no clue. That's why I made a different partition,  to be on the safe side, and that is why we are all here, looking at Affinity, to see if they can come up with a good replacement. But in the meantime, CS5 works fine. And for CS6, it's clear that Adobe can not keep up with MacOsX. The fact that this problem might not exist in Windows, may have opposite reasons. Maybe Microsoft does an excellent job with developers, maybe Windows10 is just a polished WindowsXP.

But that Adobe after ten years still can't cope with a reasonable development in IT is not a good omen. That is why I was not happy with your propositions: «…typical Apple politics… that's why I use Windows…»

[Steps]

4 hours ago, ChrisBorry said:

That is why I was not happy with your propositions: «…typical Apple politics… that's why I use Windows…»

It's true. I don't mean to start one of these old Windows vs MacOS flame wars and I won't go there anymore, but one thing in the mindset of Apple is that it's okay to force people to what they want. There is a really long history on that.

One day they decided that there are annoyed by Flash and just dropped support. And know they do the same for 32-bit support. Their thinking about word processor document backward compatibility is also very similar. And they dropped native Java support because they don't like it.

As a developer I understand many of these points. Keeping compatibility is a hassle. Supporting legacy stuff like Flash is also both securtity risk and costly to maintain.

While on the one side they force development of newer replacement technologies like YouTube to switch from Flash to HTML5 after Steve Jobs rant about Flash and announcement to drop all support on the other side they just don't care who will suffer being forced.

I personally am incompatible with Apple because I hate being forced. I want to decide for my own when I want to change something.

In this case if I were a MacOS user I would like to decide for myself when I want to switch to alternatives like Affinity to have the benefits of 64-bit software and not being forced to do so.

Microsoft has another mindset here. They really try to be always compatible with everything and not to "piss off" people like Apple does. Yes, the downside is that without any even slightly force there may be no movement at all.

I liked the middle way Apple initial planned to go: Only accept NEW apps if they are 64-bit and use new technology. This way no user would be forced but the devs have reason to keep up. That was okay for me.

But Apple has proven that they just can't resist using their powers to force people doing what they want. Sorry, I really don't like this attitude.

4 hours ago, ChrisBorry said:

But that Adobe after ten years still can't cope with a reasonable development in IT is not a good omen.

What do you expect from Adobe? Do you want them to upgrade the old product CS4 to 64-bit? They will not because they want you to use Creative Cloud which is already 64-bit.

For Adobe Apple's decision to let CS4 stop working is a godsent.

But as said before: Apple did that to you, not Adobe. They released CS4 at a time where having a 32-bit build was way more common than today.

This is some of Apples magic that does not translate for me: They go and punch prople in the face, but never get blamed for that. But all others do.

 

And regarding Windows 10: It's an polished version of Windows Vista. Windows 7 was the first good Windows ever and I consider Windows 10 to be a pretty good OS.

Personally I like Linux the most and used it for years, but you are there limited if you want to play games or use software like Photoshop or Affinity. Until Windows 7 I always had a dual boot setup with Linux with my data , programming and other work and Windows just for gaming. With the new stability & reliability of Windows 7 to the franchise I made the switch. But also I don't like Microsoft politics either, for example all that spying on you.

To be a fanboy of anything is never good. There are always upsides and downsides to all things and one should praise the things they like and critize what they don't. It is really that easy.

 

Edited January 13, 2019 by Steps
Prolonged, typos

[Whitedog]

1 hour ago, Steps said:

It's true. I don't mean to start one of these old Windows vs MacOS flame wars and I won't go there anymore, but one thing in the mindset of Apple is that it's okay to force people to what they want. There is a really long history on that.

One day they decided that there are annoyed by Flash and just dropped support. And know they do the same for 32-bit support. Their thinking about word processor document backward compatibility is also very similar. And they dropped native Java support because they don't like it.

As a developer I understand many of these points. Keeping compatibility is a hassle. Supporting legacy stuff like Flash is also both securtity risk and costly to maintain.

While on the one side they force development of newer replacement technologies like YouTube to switch from Flash to HTML5 after Steve Jobs rant about Flash and announcement to drop all support on the other side they just don't care who will suffer being forced.

I personally am incompatible with Apple because I hate being forced. I want to decide for my own when I want to change something.

In this case if I were a MacOS user I would like to decide for myself when I want to switch to alternatives like Affinity to have the benefits of 64-bit software and not being forced to do so.

Microsoft has another mindset here. They really try to be always compatible with everything and not to "piss off" people like Apple does. Yes, the downside is that without any even slightly force there may be no movement at all.

I liked the middle way Apple initial planned to go: Only accept NEW apps if they are 64-bit and use new technology. This way no user would be forced but the devs have reason to keep up. That was okay for me.

But Apple has proven that they just can't resist using their powers to force people doing what they want. Sorry, I really don't like this attitude.

What do you expect from Adobe? Do you want them to upgrade the old product CS4 to 64-bit? They will not because they want you to use Creative Cloud which is already 64-bit.

For Adobe Apple's decision to let CS4 stop working is a godsent.

But as said before: Apple did that to you, not Adobe. They released CS4 at a time where having a 32-bit build was way more common than today.

This is some of Apples magic that does not translate for me: They go and punch prople in the face, but never get blamed for that. But all others do.

 

And regarding Windows 10: It's an polished version of Windows Vista. Windows 7 was the first good Windows ever and I consider Windows 10 to be a pretty good OS.

Personally I like Linux the most and used it for years, but you are there limited if you want to play games or use software like Photoshop or Affinity. Until Windows 7 I always had a dual boot setup with Linux with my data , programming and other work and Windows just for gaming. With the new stability & reliability of Windows 7 to the franchise I made the switch. But also I don't like Microsoft politics either, for example all that spying on you.

To be a fanboy of anything is never good. There are always upsides and downsides to all things and one should praise the things they like and critize what they don't. It is really that easy.

 

Flash still works in the Mac OS. It's in iOS that Apple banned Flash, primarily because when the iPhone was first released it didn't have the horsepower to support Flash, which was and is resource intensive. Now that the iPhone does have the horsepower, Flash has been deprecated, even by Adobe, who plan to kill it off entirely in the near future, because, well, the Internet has moved on, just as Steve Jobs said it would. You may still be able to buy a PC with a floppy drive, but you'll have a hard time finding any media to use in it. Apple is not often ahead of the curve any more, but they pioneered the idea of abandoning inefficient technologies for newer and better ones. 

As for Apple forcing people, that is particularly true with the iOS ecosphere. Of course they do so on the Mac as well, but not quite as extensively. But then, Microsoft used to have that reputation, in spades, and they were liberally sued over restraint of trade issues and had to pull in their horns dramatically. But then Apple does not, even now, have the kind of market dominance that Microsoft did and still does. Not even close. Even so, Microsoft still gets off on denigrating Apple, even though they have much more serious competitors, like Google. Windows fanboys still have the habit.

A lot of the seemingly inscrutable business decisions in Big Tech have to do with keeping their products competitive. Oh, and stealing your personal information and selling it. Something, by the way, that Apple, alone among the bit 5, does not do.

By the way, not even Adobe CS6 is all 64 bit. Photoshop and Illustrator are. Dreamweaver and InDesign are not. If Adobe were going to upgrade any products to 64 bit it would be those. Not CS 4 or 5. There would be not profit in upgrading those. If you want to continue using CS4, install OS X 10.9 in VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop and run CS4 from there. That's what I will probably be doing, eventually.

The real problem with companies not serving the interests of their customers has to do with the size of their business, not actual intention. Small companies are usually more light on their feet as regards customer concerns. The bigger they are, the higher off the ground the executive suite is and the more isolated executives are from their user base. So they get careless, though only occasionally does that result in damage to the company, as was the case with Quark and Blackberry. Others run into trouble with the government, as happened with Microsoft and now is happening to Google, Facebook and Twitter. The days when the Google motto to do no evil was in vogue are long gone. One could say that they ended with Google's IPO. Socialism provided some leverage against capitalist excess, but then we had socialist excess, as in the 35 hour work week in France, which they are unwilling to give up, even for the obvious good of the country. But I'm getting off topic. I only wanted to explain why companies so often seem to be deaf to their customers's concerns. And gigantism is the main cause, in my opinion.

[KenzDen]

Excuse me, I know I'm a newbie, here, but …

In spite of the declarations of not getting into a spitting war of WinDozers vs. MacAholics, that seems to be what this thread has developed into.

Can we please move back to discussing the development of Publisher (and other Affinity products) as they relate to real-world usage and start a different thread for Mac v. Wild, 64-bit v. 32-bit, and company politics? 

I, for one, will greatly appreciate it.

Thanks to MEB for the actual Publisher updates on p. 12!

 

[Steps]

4 hours ago, KenzDen said:

Excuse me, I know I'm a newbie, here, but …

In spite of the declarations of not getting into a spitting war of WinDozers vs. MacAholics, that seems to be what this thread has developed into.

Can we please move back to discussing the development of Publisher (and other Affinity products) as they relate to real-world usage and start a different thread for Mac v. Wild, 64-bit v. 32-bit, and company politics? 

I, for one, will greatly appreciate it.

I feel not that way, but of course I totally agree with moving back.

Nobody wants to fight such an old war, nobody did, imho the thread noway did turn into that and there is no need to even start a new thread about that.

It was just a short excurse into why there is now such a pressing need for people to switch from InDesign CS6. I was not aware of that.

I understood that this is because InDesign CS6 is 32-bit only (while PS CS6 was already 64-bit; which is confusing) and support for 32-bit will be dropped in the next MacOS release.

This was not clear to me. Someone could have said that explicitely at the beginning and I would not have asked.

Edit: Re-reading the topic I saw that @Whitedog mentioned that fact already some pages ago. In such a long thread like this with repetive comments such a single important information easily gets lost. I feel a bit sorry now for making this thing even longer.

Edited January 14, 2019 by Steps

[kirknurse]

As someone who used InDesign from 1.0, I remember how buggy and the same complaints that people are expressing about Publisher were there as well. While it would be nice for the import compatibility it is not a deal-breaker (for me). If anything new I use publisher and anything old I can either rebuild the file or edit in InDesign 

[Gaffer]

Can an Affinity moderator please provide an update on when Publisher will be able to import, read, and work with INDD files? This is a VERY essential and decisive capability. Not many designers will switch to Publisher without this ability. Thank you.

[Patrick Connor]

@Gaffer

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums

9 hours ago, Gaffer said:

Can an Affinity moderator please provide an update on when Publisher....

Sorry, but we do not tend to report on progress of features (at least not until those features are in internal testing, which this is not). Affinity Publisher when launched will have a certain set of features (most likely all of the features currently in the beta and some more to be added to the beta before release) and at that point we may make a roadmap available of other features that will be added in free updates.

9 hours ago, Gaffer said:

...Not many designers will switch to Publisher without this ability.

Perhaps so, but that does not mean we can complete it quicker than we are.

[Mike Lewis]

Well, here I sit running Adobe CS4 on my 2014 Mac running OS 10.10. Illustrator works, but only with warnings at startup, and I must be very careful about how I open and save files. (The file dialogs don't remember last location, and if I pick folder from the "Recently Used" list, 75% of the time I crash the program. Which sucks during an initial Save As...) Photoshop seems to hold up well, and I can't say I've had any problems with InDesign either. Yep, I've got some pretty great mileage out of CS4 since we bought it in early 2010. 

I remember learning Quark at college (and used it until about 2004), as at the time that was the industry standard... When I first tried InDesign, I wasn't so sure about it, and I wasn't impressed with importing Quark files, but I eventually got over it.

My problem is that I need to upgrade my OS by demands of other unrelated software that I use. (CS4 starts breaking on 10.11, from what I've read.) At one time, the thought of getting CS6 might have been a possibility... but how long will that last me before I'm faced with the same challenge again? A year? Two? Maybe three if I'm lucky? I need to be looking forward, but a subscription model is not in the interest of my company. So, goodbye Adobe... I am an in-house designer for a company very much not in the Graphic Design industry. I like to pay for my software once and squeeze functionality out of it to the extent possible before I have to face the budget committee and ask for another upgrade—or—present all the great reasons and new features that are needed to justify it. We are faced with paying thousands of dollars for our CAD software every few years, and rightly so since that is what really makes us money around here.

I'm excited to take Publisher for a spin. I had the company purchase Affinity Photo and Designer last month, and am starting to use those on a regular basis as my Photoshop and Illustrator replacements. I hope to do the same for Publisher, but it will be a tougher pill to swallow if it takes a lot of work to convert many of our company documents—currently in InDesign format—over to the Affinity format. Several of these are in-house books and manuals ranging from 60 to 200 pages. Even if the import isn't perfect (like it was back in the day from Quark to InDesign), or if I need to use some intermediary format like IDML... as long as I can get most of the styles and formatting imported, I can tweak and clean up the rest.

My $0.02.

[MikeW]

27 minutes ago, Mike Lewis said:

...Even if the import isn't perfect (like it was back in the day from Quark to InDesign), or if I need to use some intermediary format like IDML... as long as I can get most of the styles and formatting imported, I can tweak and clean up the rest. My $0.02.

Try setting up the APub document the same as a particular ID document. Copy and paste the text from ID to APub. Your styles will come in as well as the text. There may be things dropped, but few things I would think with ID CS4. Images would be one thing that might be dropped and there is currently no real ability to in-line link images if you use any.

Another issue, depending upon illustrations/images you may use is that currently there is no proper linking and so publications might have a hefty size on-disk.

IDML import would/will be best once available.

Mike

[Whitedog]

17 minutes ago, Mike Lewis said:

Well, here I sit running Adobe CS4 on my 2014 Mac running OS 10.10. Illustrator works, but only with warnings at startup, and I must be very careful about how I open and save files. (The file dialogs don't remember last location, and if I pick folder from the "Recently Used" list, 75% of the time I crash the program. Which sucks during an initial Save As...) Photoshop seems to hold up well, and I can't say I've had any problems with InDesign either. Yep, I've got some pretty great mileage out of CS4 since we bought it in early 2010. 

I remember learning Quark at college (and used it until about 2004), as at the time that was the industry standard... When I first tried InDesign, I wasn't so sure about it, and I wasn't impressed with importing Quark files, but I eventually got over it.

My problem is that I need to upgrade my OS by demands of other unrelated software that I use. (CS4 starts breaking on 10.11, from what I've read.) At one time, the thought of getting CS6 might have been a possibility... but how long will that last me before I'm faced with the same challenge again? A year? Two? Maybe three if I'm lucky? I need to be looking forward, but a subscription model is not in the interest of my company. So, goodbye Adobe... I am an in-house designer for a company very much not in the Graphic Design industry. I like to pay for my software once and squeeze functionality out of it to the extent possible before I have to face the budget committee and ask for another upgrade—or—present all the great reasons and new features that are needed to justify it. We are faced with paying thousands of dollars for our CAD software every few years, and rightly so since that is what really makes us money around here.

I'm excited to take Publisher for a spin. I had the company purchase Affinity Photo and Designer last month, and am starting to use those on a regular basis as my Photoshop and Illustrator replacements. I hope to do the same for Publisher, but it will be a tougher pill to swallow if it takes a lot of work to convert many of our company documents—currently in InDesign format—over to the Affinity format. Several of these are in-house books and manuals ranging from 60 to 200 pages. Even if the import isn't perfect (like it was back in the day from Quark to InDesign), or if I need to use some intermediary format like IDML... as long as I can get most of the styles and formatting imported, I can tweak and clean up the rest.

My $0.02.

I have the same issue, on a smaller scale. I have CS6, but InDesign and Dreamweaver are still 32 bit apps, so they will not work in the next iteration of macOS, which only supports 64 bit apps, like Photoshop and Lightroom. You can get an affordable subscription for Photoshop and Lightroom CC, at $20 a month. But there's no discount for InDesign, so I'll have to move on eventually. Quark is too expensive, compared to what we can reasonably expect to pay for Publisher. So I am hoping they have IDML import when the final release comes out, though Serif haven't confirmed if they will. They have only said that they delayed the release to work on some features that many people have requested, but that's all rather vague. So we will have to wait and see. Without IDML import Publisher will not be the InDesign replacement we hope it to be.

[Gaffer]

I was running CS5 with 10.10.4 on a 2011 17" MacBook Pro on which the logic board finally failed, an d Apple no longer sells replacement parts for older MacBook Pro. I bought a new one with Mojave, transferred all apps and data from back-up external hard drive, and now when I try to launch Photoshop, InDesign, or any apps in the CS, an error message appears saying I need to remove and re-install. But how can I re-install? I no longer have the original DMG files from the initial download. In any case, given the comments of others on this blog, the apps won't work on Mojave anyway. So, like many others, I've installed Affinity Photo and Publisher, which appear so far to be very well-thought-out apps. EXCEPT that it seems that the plans are for Publisher to eventually accept IDML files, but perhaps not INDD files, which all of mine are. Seems like Affinity may be shooting itself in the foot on this one, given the huge potential market base composed of those who have happily continued to work with CS4,5, and 6, and therefore have INDD files. Any news/comments?

[fde101]

37 minutes ago, Gaffer said:

Seems like Affinity may be shooting itself in the foot on this one

Is Adobe shooting themselves in the foot by not supporting opening Affinity Publisher documents in InDesign?

(They probably can't easily do that as Serif is not publishing the file format - similarly, Adobe does not publish the file format for INDD, so Serif should not be expected to be able to access those files any more than Adobe can support the Affinity ones).

[Gaffer]

Backwards thinking. Quark Xpress can open InDesign files, so Affinity Publisher could have the same ability.

As to "shooting itself in the foot": Serif is counting on taking as much market share as possible from Adobe, not the other way around.