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

[Patrick Connor]

4 hours ago, GWCTas said:

As raised by @Haakoo, Serif probably need another method of responding to feature requests

This is being discussed over the next few weeks.

[Oval]

5 hours ago, GWCTas said:

To my knowledge Serif never advertised that as a "future feature" for their product

For example a year after the advertised launch of Affinity Publisher QA/Support wrote this: “Publisher should be able to import indesign files although not for the initial release”.

[Patrick Connor]

6 hours ago, Oval said:

For example a year after the advertised launch of Affinity Publisher QA/Support wrote this: “Publisher should be able to import indesign files although not for the initial release”.

Well to clarify, that is not meant to be taken as INDD and the tech support agent is not announcing that as a future feature. The answer means specifically this

Publisher (Affinity Publisher) should (if our programming is successful) be able to import indesign files (using the format IDML) although not for the initial release (which was 1.7.1)

So in that sentence "not in the initial release" specifically meant the one that you could buy at launch, not the one that comes before version 2. I understand why you might think that it meant "not in version 1.x" but it did not. You should not assume that new features in version 2 or 3 will be announced by QA or Support. If in doubt ask. Seriously, customers telling other customers what Serif will put into our software is just ridiculous. We need a better method to communicate our current thinking on our products, and if it is said by Serif there is has been said, otherwise all is speculation.

[jmwellborn]

@Patrick Connor why not just close this topic and stop the circular firing squad in its tracks?  There are certainly enough asked and answered posts for anybody considering making the switch from Adobe and in his or her right mind to grasp the subject!  I am sure that multiple thousands of us — like me — who had used InDesign are now very happily using Publisher with the PDF workaround for old files.  It may take a bit of fiddling to get those files up to speed, but it is well worth not being stuck behind the rental prison bars.  Publisher beats InDesign hands down!!

[durbanad]

23 minutes ago, jmwellborn said:

@Patrick Connor why not just close this topic and stop the circular firing squad in its tracks?  There are certainly enough asked and answered posts for anybody considering making the switch from Adobe and in his or her right mind to grasp the subject!  I am sure that multiple thousands of us — like me — who had used InDesign are now very happily using Publisher with the PDF workaround for old files.  It may take a bit of fiddling to get those files up to speed, but it is well worth not being stuck behind the rental prison bars.  Publisher beats InDesign hands down!!

Totally agree, this thread is going in circles. 

And I agree with you on all accounts. 

[Fixx]

5 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

We need a better method to communicate our current thinking on our products, and if it is said by Serif there is has been said, otherwise all is speculation.

I think people who spend some time in this forum quite soon get the gist and know what is to be expected and what not. Let people wish, demand, hope, beg, vote etc. and do not take it too personally – this is the internet. 

Of course if you invent better ways to interact the customers why not... but keep coding.

[Patrick Connor]

Our plan it to make things clearer for those who have not been around very long. Coming here as a newbie must be daunting to know where to start. So an FAQ type forum would be a good start.

[Oval]

14 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

would be a good start

The same with Help: A newbie does not find/get a/the visual reference (a really really needed basic information) … bad especially for foreigners because the link is still missing (and Introduction/Get started could be the first place, Workspace the second for the link, …). Hoping things that cost users money will be corrected before.

[jmwellborn]

9 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

Our plan it to make things clearer for those who have not been around very long. Coming here as a newbie must be daunting to know where to start. So an FAQ type forum would be a good start.

Perfect!!  Perhaps also included in each HELP, or at least a cross-reference to the FAQ in the Forums?   For all of those -- like me -- who faced the initial blank screen the first time I opened Photo (the first of the three apps I purchased) and thought, "Now what?" it would be priceless. 

[GWCTas]

12 hours ago, jmwellborn said:

@Patrick Connor why not just close this topic and stop the circular firing squad in its tracks?  There are certainly enough asked and answered posts for anybody considering making the switch from Adobe and in his or her right mind to grasp the subject!  I am sure that multiple thousands of us — like me — who had used InDesign are now very happily using Publisher with the PDF workaround for old files.  It may take a bit of fiddling to get those files up to speed, but it is well worth not being stuck behind the rental prison bars.  Publisher beats InDesign hands down!!

My sentiments exactly, I follow this and many other forums but get tired of the repetitive nature of comments, questions that eventually create and unwieldy thread that achieves little to the point you ignore the thread and potentially miss any relevant information.

7 hours ago, Fixx said:

I think people who spend some time in this forum quite soon get the gist and know what is to be expected and what not. Let people wish, demand, hope, beg, vote etc. and do not take it too personally – this is the internet. 

Of course if you invent better ways to interact the customers why not... but keep coding.

Yes it is the internet but we can try to avoid the unwarranted diatribe that is directed at Serif. Credit to them for spending the time to respond but if it continued unabated then, like many other developers, they may ignore the forums altogether and that would be a sad loss.

7 hours ago, jmwellborn said:

Perfect!!  Perhaps also included in each HELP, or at least a cross-reference to the FAQ in the Forums?   For all of those -- like me -- who faced the initial blank screen the first time I opened Photo (the first of the three apps I purchased) and thought, "Now what?" it would be priceless. 

Agree!

[garrettm30]

I think if you close this thread, people will just keep bringing up new threads, either unaware of this thread or even despite knowing about it.

It would be good for threads such as these (and bug reports too) to have an optional "Official answer by Serif" that features prominently on each page of a thread, so users can see right away what the official position is without having to find it buried among all the other discussion.

That won't stop all discussion, of course (such as the "any update?" requests), but I do think it would cut down on some of the repeats from people who were unaware that a response has been given.

[fde101]

22 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

Our plan it to make things clearer for those who have not been around very long. Coming here as a newbie must be daunting to know where to start. So an FAQ type forum would be a good start.

A Wiki might be another option to consider, with limits on who can edit it.  There could be links back and forth between the Wiki and the forum.

A public ticketing system for feature requests and bug reports might be another option to consider.  That might make it easier to keep organized.

Just some food for thought.

[Honken]

Take a look at Procreates forum. They have a great communication with the user base, when a new feature is written about the moderator/developer mark the thread a "being considerd", "being developed" etc.  Or they move the question to the right thread. Just a suggestion to take a look at their forum. 

[PaoloT]

On 11/29/2018 at 9:08 AM, Fixx said:

CS5 works in Mojave just as well as in High Sierra (or Sierra, from where I upgraded direct).

Each configuration is different, but I tested ID CS6 on Mojave, and it didn't work. It did run, but opening any panel took forever. The usual font cleaning solution didn't work. I had to go back to High Sierra. I would be happy to read of positive experiences, so that I can try again upgrading.

Paolo

 

[GWCTas]

17 hours ago, PaoloT said:

Each configuration is different, but I tested ID CS6 on Mojave, and it didn't work. It did run, but opening any panel took forever. The usual font cleaning solution didn't work. I had to go back to High Sierra. I would be happy to read of positive experiences, so that I can try again upgrading.

Paolo

 

I thought this was an Affinity Support forum? Just curious

 

[AdrianB]

FYI the 1.8 beta of Publisher has IDML import! It's a start:

Quote

This build includes an importer for the IDML ((Adobe) InDesign Markup Language) file format. Many entities, attributes and properties are not currently imported. In general if a feature currently has no native support it is unlikely to be imported entirely successfully. In addition to this, please find below a list highlighting features we know are not currently supported fully.

 

[Patrick Connor]

I don’t know how many of you have noticed but beta testing of 1.8.0 is well underway on the public beta forums, and yesterday we have released a new Affinity Publisher 1.8.0 beta which includes IDML Import and Excel import.

We would really appreciate you looking at the Affinity Publisher Beta and try using it on copies of your files, whether Excel or IDML are important to you or not.

The 1.8.0 builds are in links at the top of these forum posts

• Affinity Publisher 1.8.0.502 for Windows
• Affinity Publisher 1.8.0.502 for macOS

From the release notes there are some IDML and Excel features that have no equivalent in Affinity Publisher yet, and so are not yet supported.

From the release notes

Quote

IDML Import

This build includes an importer for the IDML ((Adobe) InDesign Markup Language) file format.

Many entities, attributes and properties are not currently imported.

In general if a feature currently has no “native support” (not implemented in Publisher yet) it is unlikely to be imported entirely successfully.

In addition to this, please find below a list highlighting the features we know are not currently supported fully.

 

IDML Features not supported (or not fully supported)

Document

• Document User details

Spread / Page Items

• Promoted master page items
• Overprint properties
• Arrowheads
• Text on path

Transparency / FX

• Directional Feather
• Gradient Feather

Text Frames

• Content transparency / FX for text vs text + frame
• First baseline offset

Story Items

• Text layout can differ due to differences in composition and metric vs optical kerning
• TOC
• Index
• Page number fields
• Hyperlinks

XLSX Import

This build includes an importer for the XLSX (Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet) file format. Excel files are placed as tables. The following are not currently supported.

• Formulae are imported as their calculated result value, which Excel stores in the file alongside the formula
• Local formatting is imported, but global Table Styles currently are not
• Overflowing cell content is handled differently in that Excel allows content of an overflowing cell to draw on top of adjacent cell if the cells are empty

 

 

[AdrianB]

23 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

I don’t know how many of you have noticed…

I did!

[garrettm30]

I will report my specific observations in the beta forum as needed, but here I will speak more generally. First, I absolutely must say, “Thank You” to the Serif team. IDML conversion is surely going to get better than it is in its very first public beta, but this version right here has already satisfied what I need out of IDML import.

By way of peremptory tempering of expectations, I think a word of caution of what we can reasonably expect of such an import might be helpful. If you expect this to provide a sort of interchange format, to freely move between InDesign and Publisher, you would be mistaken, and not just because there is currently no IDML export. Similarly, if you want to just quickly open an old IDML file and print some fresh copies (expecting it to look the same or even good enough), then you are probably mistaken there as well.

People who have used Markzware may be able to provide some context. Markzware is a company that specializes in making conversions between a few major formats, notably between InDesign and Quark, and at a price much higher than the whole Affinity suite itself. I have experience with Markzware going from older Quark files to InDesign. It is good enough to let me open old files and copy out the assets into a fresh document. In my opinion, it is not good enough to convert and pick up where the previous designer left off from the same file. That is not to disparage Markzware; it is just the nature of layout format conversion.

So rather than an interchange format, if you consider IDML import in Publisher as a means to get to the assets in an old InDesign file so you can copy them and work them into a fresh document, then I think this new capability is great.

If you want quick conversion of an old document with maybe a fix of a typo that got missed the first time around, you would generally get better results by letting Publisher convert from PDF.

Back when we were using Quark, PDFs were still new, and proprietary to Adobe. Quark could not even natively save as PDF without some sort of plugin. These days, I try to save everything with a PDF that is print-ready and a separate PDF that is made for viewing (such as to be put online). I operate with the assumption that the next time I might need to reuse a file, the original app may no longer be available to me.

[nwhit]

As a comment, I just tried the IDML import on a single page A4 magazine advert with lultiple pics, type, graphics, lines, blocks, layers. Despite a few glitches (itemized in the Beta forum), the import was 100% accurate with no adjustments needed (other than the glitches mentioned). Type, pictures, graphics, lines, etc. all imported 100% accurate. While the process still has bugs to be worked out (had a couple crash issues), I have to say that I am impressed that I could effectively take an ID file and get an APub file with a th exported PDF x4 that was same as the ID that had been submitted to the printer previously. 

Obviously, more complex documents are going to expose multiple issues with the import process. But for many production houses like ours, this will certainly allow us to work with our years of older client files. And the import was significantly better than what we get with opening a pdf version due to the text frame issues, layers, etc. with opening pdfs. We've successfully been using the open pdf capability, but from this test, I can see that the IDML might have some advantages in some cases.

Just providing some initial feedback and not suggesting the ID import issue is 100% solved. But it has taken an important step forward. 

[nwhit]

Just tried a 4-page cmyk-print brochure (2-sided A3 facing pages). I see that a benefit of the IDML import vs. pdf is the ability to keep text blocks discrete and in place, and linked blocks stay linked for proper flow, even across pages/spreads. Text is not combined into odd blocks like with pdf opening. 

Minor cleanup involved redoing a few wraps, relinking/updating in RM the PS-cmyk images ( a known bug), and tidying up the bottoms of text blocks for matching paragraph ends/positioning. Also need to change the Document setup to 300 dpi (it creates the new doc at 72 dpi for some reason, but easy to change).

Again, very encouraging. And while not a complete solution for everyone, it is quite encouraging how well it is working in this initial beta. It's just getting a lot of it right. Yes, still a fairly simple project but a common project for us over the years.

[Grosvenor Imaging]

I know that not everyone is a great fan of Markzware but their latest offering IDMarkz has the option to open indd CC documents in Affinity Publisher. I have not tried it only seen the tutorial on their website. I have only used their tools to convert CC to IDML which has worked very well.

[MikeW]

38 minutes ago, Grosvenor Imaging said:

I know that not everyone is a great fan of Markzware but their latest offering IDMarkz has the option to open indd CC documents in Affinity Publisher. I have not tried it only seen the tutorial on their website. I have only used their tools to convert CC to IDML which has worked very well.

I was a fan of ID2Q right up until 1) they discontinued Windows support and 2) went to subscription.

If one has ID files made in ID CC and doesn't have a current subscription, it is less expensive to rent IDCC for a month and run a free script by Peter Kahrel to batch convert the ID files to IDML (and might as well do to pdf and packaging at the same time) than to buy a license or subscribe to IDMarkz.

If one still has a perpetual license copy of ID and it still runs on your OS, well, the script handles it all for no cost anyway.

[ashf]

7 hours ago, MikeW said:

I was a fan of ID2Q right up until 1) they discontinued Windows support and 2) went to subscription.

If one has ID files made in ID CC and doesn't have a current subscription, it is less expensive to rent IDCC for a month and run a free script by Peter Kahrel to batch convert the ID files to IDML (and might as well do to pdf and packaging at the same time) than to buy a license or subscribe to IDMarkz.

If one still has a perpetual license copy of ID and it still runs on your OS, well, the script handles it all for no cost anyway.

It think that may depend on how good IDMarkz is on converting indd.
if it's better than Affinity's IDML import, people would buy it.
Since Affinity's psd interoperability is kinda poor, I won't expect much to IDML import.

[Patrick Connor]

4 hours ago, ashf said:

It think that may depend on how good IDMarkz is on converting indd.
if it's better than Affinity's IDML import, people would buy it.
Since Affinity's psd interoperability is kinda poor, I won't expect much to IDML import.

It cannot be better than Affinity Publisher's IDML importer as it must be using that as it's path.