Open PagePlus (*.ppp) files

[Ben]

15 minutes ago, MJWHM said:

And, to quote someone, there's the rub.....

At least Ben is clear and honest about why, although my guess is that he is only right about the user base numbers if existing Serif program users have also been thrown out with their packages. I will continue to try AP (at least, I will if I can either load the new beta or reload the first, neither of which is playing currently), but I shall start looking at other publishing programs as well, which is something I have at no time felt the slightest urge to do since joining PP way back when....

How would other publishing programs make this situation any different?

 

You may decide on another package, but you would be overlooking the core reasons we began again in engineering the Affinity suite.  We have certain features that are not found elsewhere - such as our true single file format, full-scale support on iPad and being cross platform. We also aimed to redefine some tools since we were not bound by legacy requirements.  So, we've tried to put innovation first where we could.  Something that would have been impossible if all we had done was update an old application.  If we succeed with Publisher as we have with Designer and Photo, then why would you want to look elsewhere anyway??

 

Everyone may feel sad that the Plus range is coming to an end, but a lot of what drove that decision was beyond our control.  The fact is that the way people use computers has changed rapidly - the hardware people bought and the way they acquire software.  We had to look at emerging markets - iOS being a very big one.  Continuing with the old software model would only have gone on so long anyway - the net result would likely have still been the end of the Plus range, but without Affinity to offer an alternative future.

[MJWHM]

9 minutes ago, Ben said:

How would other publishing programs make this situation any different?

 

You may decide on another package, but you would be overlooking the core reasons we began again in engineering the Affinity suite.  We have certain features that are not found elsewhere - such as our true single file format, full-scale support on iPad and being cross platform. We also aimed to redefine some tools since we were not bound by legacy requirements.  So, we've tried to put innovation first where we could.  Something that would have been impossible if all we had done was update an old application.  If we succeed with Publisher as we have with Designer and Photo, then why would you want to look elsewhere anyway??

 

Everyone may feel sad that the Plus range is coming to an end, but a lot of what drove that decision was beyond our control.  The fact is that the way people use computers has changed rapidly - the hardware people bought and the way they acquire software.  We had to look at emerging markets - iOS being a very big one.  Continuing with the old software model would only have gone on so long anyway - the net result would likely have still been the end of the Plus range, but without Affinity to offer an alternative future.

I am not saying that other packages would make the situation different, but they might actually do some of the publishing stuff you seem to be lacking and disinterested in at this stage. I am thinking I want to buy a pig, but not one in a poke bonnet. 
The whizzo idea that you can cross platforms is all well and good, but ultimately you are in hock to the owners of those platform systems, and that can alter overnight. I used to have Sinclair computers, Texas Instruments Computes, and various other systems all of which have gone the way of all flesh. 

Frankly, I couldn't care less about Apple compatibility. I don't have one and will almost certainly never bother to buy one. I am probably not unique - in either direction.

Reading between the lines I suspect this is as much to do with internal challenges and self-driven ideas as it is about providing a functioning worthwhile package. It may work, but I won't hold my breath, even though I wish you luck. I have liked Serif for longer than perhaps some of its staff have been around, and don't like feeling the way I do at present.

[Alfred]

24 minutes ago, Ben said:

If we succeed with Publisher as we have with Designer and Photo

*When

Fixed it for you.

[Ben]

Just now, αℓƒяє∂ said:

*When

Fixed it for you.

Cheers.

[Ben]

12 minutes ago, MJWHM said:

The whizzo idea that you can cross platforms is all well and good, but ultimately you are in hock to the owners of those platform systems, and that can alter overnight. I used to have Sinclair computers, Texas Instruments Computes, and various other systems all of which have gone the way of all flesh. 

Frankly, I couldn't care less about Apple compatibility. I don't have one and will almost certainly never bother to buy one. I am probably not unique - in either direction.

Then you are missing the advantage of this.  We have written our new code base to be largely platform agnostic - that is the point of cross-platform - not just that the software appears on different OS.  That means we are no longer tied to the whims of a vendor OS.  Only the UI layer is platform specific - and changes to that are less impactful than reengineering core code that relied on vendor SDKs (such as MFC, for example).  All the internal workings are fully independent of any OS - written in lean C++.  So, when an OS drops a bombshell on us, and we have to roll with it, the underlying workings of our tools and file format don't need to change.  That is future proofing.

 

And, as for Apple compatibility - The Apple user base is very significant when it comes to creative software. Other big players seem to think so too.

 

Historically, apps like Photoshop were primarily Mac driven. This is evidenced by the fact the PSD file format is Big endian, where Windows OS was always little endian.  Ironically, Mac OS also now is little endian since the move to Intel - so the PSD format is saddled with the legacy overhead of supporting long obsolete hardware.

[MJWHM]

35 minutes ago, Ben said:

Then you are missing the advantage of this.  We have written our new code base to be largely platform agnostic - that is the point of cross-platform - not just that the software appears on different OS.  That means we are no longer tied to the whims of a vendor OS.  Only the UI layer is platform specific - and changes to that are less impactful than reengineering core code that relied on vendor SDKs (such as MFC, for example).  All the internal workings are fully independent of any OS - written in lean C++.  So, when an OS drops a bombshell on us, and we have to roll with it, the underlying workings of our tools and file format don't need to change.  That is future proofing.

 

And, as for Apple compatibility - The Apple user base is very significant when it comes to creative software. Other big players seem to think so too.

 

Historically, apps like Photoshop were primarily Mac driven. This is evidenced by the fact the PSD file format is Big endian, where Windows OS was always little endian.  Ironically, Mac OS also now is little endian since the move to Intel - so the PSD format is saddled with the legacy overhead of supporting long obsolete hardware.

Thank you. This clarifies things much better. What you are saying is that whatever operating system happens to come along, the Affinity range will be independent and work. That does sound good. That said, why not offer open access to the PagePlus and other legacy software, so that it can be developed alongside or independently? It is hardly likelt to affect sales of Affinity products because they are clearly going to be much better sooner or later.

[soundmanbrett]

1 hour ago, Ben said:

Speaking as the person who wrote the PSD import/export code for Affinity - I can tell you that was a MAMMOTH task, and one that will never be complete - it has already taken up a huge part of the development time over the past six years.  It is also the most contentious since it is almost impossible to do a perfect round trip import/export via a third party editable file format.  But, PSD is probably the most used third party file format for us, so made the most sense to put the effort into supporting it to the degree we have.

 

Now, in terms of our user base of the Affinity range, the percentage of people wanting to import PagePlus files compared to other formats is probably low.  If we did write an importer, we'd open ourselves up to demands for it to be accurate to PagePlus, even though it would be impossible to do a one-to-one import of some features.  As has been said before - the Affinity code base has been written from scratch.  There is no shared code with the Plus range.  To this end, it is no different to the software being written by a completely different company.  The amount of work to support import/export of what is effectively a non-native file format is very significant.

 

Another thing to take into account is that PagePlus is effectively becoming a legacy format.  The code was written for an OS and style of application that is becoming outdated.  It also would not have been possible to port the code to accommodate platforms such as iOS in the way that we have achieved with Affinity.  This means that in future only existing user of PagePlus will be creating content in it.  That user base will naturally shrink. It also means that the future requirement for a PP importer will become less and less.  Compare that to an importer for a third party format that is staying "current" - you can see where the effort is better spent with regard to the wider user base of Affinity.

This isn't directed at you, you are simply following the direction of your superiors. To me is sounds like a corporate decision that was made many years ago when Serif decided to make Publisher. From a financial perspective creating an import to attract new customers from Adobe would seem to make sense. Leaving the customer base you acquired over many years out in the cold is not a good way to get those customers to recommend your new product. Without a massive advertising budget, one of the best ways to get your product into the hands of new customers is word of mouth. If you tell your current customers they are not worth the coding time to create a viable importer from the previous version of your software they will be unlikely to promote your product to their peers. It shows a lack of commitment. I know that Publisher doesn't have all of the features of PP, like 3D objects, Warp, and mail merge. I can't even use Publisher for my company's purposes until it has mail merge. I use mail merge several times a week to create our donor receipts. I would hope that over time these new features would be added. Perhaps Serif could promise an importer once Publisher is more fully developed rather than saying they're not even going to try. The response to your current customer's requests for a direct importer from PP tells all of us who have been using it since the 1990s that you don't care enough about us to spend the time. Why should we recommend your new product to people who use your competitor's software when you haven't been loyal to us. 

[Patrick Connor]

15 hours ago, MJWHM said:

That said, why not offer open access to the PagePlus and other legacy software,

We licensed many libraries on a commercial basis and we could not now make those libraries open access. Also we have 100+ programmer-years of investment in that legacy codebase and would not wish to reveal the intellectual property of the company.

[Ben]

39 minutes ago, soundmanbrett said:

This isn't directed at you, you are simply following the direction of your superiors. To me is sounds like a corporate decision that was made many years ago when Serif decided to make Publisher. From a financial perspective creating an import to attract new customers from Adobe would seem to make sense. Leaving the customer base you acquired over many years out in the cold is not a good way to get those customers to recommend your new product. Without a massive advertising budget, one of the best ways to get your product into the hands of new customers is word of mouth.

That would depend on whether the Affinity user base (that already covers three platforms with two well reviewed applications, and mostly occupies the top ten slots in the Mac App Store) is larger than the PagePlus user base.  We are not pushing the Affinity brand on the back of the Plus brand.  Word of mouth about Affinity is already out there for a large number of people that had never heard of the Plus range. If anything we've been very careful to explain that Affinity is not a continuation of Plus.  It's an entirely new entity.

[Patrick Connor]

You should not recommend our new products .......unless

1) you think it is useful to others
and
2) you want to recommend any Serif product.

To try to address #2

When you buy any software licence it does not mean that the software will continue to be developed or supported forever. However so far Serif have kept supporting the legacy range on the CommunityPlus forums for almost 3 years now since we launched PagePlus X9, and 2 1/2 years since we announced the end of the Plus range and kept patching PagePlus for another year after that. A while ago the Head of Software Development made a commitment to patch PagePlus if a Microsoft Windows 10 update broke it. So far it has kept working fine, and as it still works on Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10 then I would hope it will continue to do so for some time longer.

So I would hope that for existing .PPP documents you could continue to use PagePlus X9. Possessing hundreds of .PPP files is not the same as needing to open and edit hundreds of .PPP  files (PagePlus can still do that). It is only if you want/need to use a feature that Affinity Publisher has, that PagePlus X9 does not have, that you would need to convert/import into Affinity Publisher.

Serif would love there to be a simple process where PagePlus files would load into Publisher and we would program it in a heartbeat if there were, but it is realistically a very difficult task as Ben has said. PagePlus is excellent software, but we knew we could do better, but that meant starting again not adding more and more to what we had. We have been honest from the start of development that we do not think PPP import is likely to happen. Some people are only finding out now, but I don't think we have tried to hide this fact when asked.

If you have (and like) PagePlus then please keep using it when needed as well as using Affinity applications. We like it and have made the Affinity Workbooks using it, [and ironically may well make an Affinity Publisher one in it too, because we have the template all set up already].

The expressions of upset in this thread are ones I have seen many times in my interactions on CommunityPlus and I really do appreciate the feelings of disappointment. Please try the Affinity Publisher beta and see if the features it has are what you are looking for for your new work going forward. If not then keep using PagePlus and come back and try a trial later in it's development. But please don't write us off as we do care about you and your custom.

[MJWHM]

1 hour ago, Patrick Connor said:

We licensed many libraries on a commercial basis and we could not now make those libraries open access. Also we have 100+ programming years of investment in that legacy codebase and would not wish to reveal the intellectual property of the company.

This is techy-speak to me. What do you mean by the first sentence in plain English? And how can you have 100+ programming years?  Are you saying that ten people spent ten years on it (in which case it is only 10 years, not 100) or are you trying to say that Serif predated Turing and his people? However you slice the particular cake, it does not seem to me to be such a giant leap to find a way to import older files. If that is too much effort, then don't be surprised by anger from existing (and possibly also new) users. I only recommended Serif to someone a few days back. I would think long and hard about doing so now.

[MJWHM]

24 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

If you have (and like) PagePlus then please keep using it when needed as well as using Affinity applications. We like it and have made the Affinity Workbooks using it, [and ironically may well make an Affinity Publisher one in it too, because we have the template all set up already].

Which kind of proves the point we are making. If AP is so brilliant, then why use PP to create the workbook? You are simply underlining the fact that a lot of us have created templates which are completely useless in AP. Sorry, but whatever the positives of AP for you and the programming team, I don't see how it can work well for the users who have become wedded to the very sophistication that has made PP so good. 

We shall just have to agree to differ on the future magical qualities of AP if all our previous work will at some time prove worthless.

 

[Patrick Connor]

14 hours ago, MJWHM said:

What do you mean by the first sentence in plain English?

Other companies make software that was used by PagePlus. We licensed it and it is not our code to make public.

14 hours ago, MJWHM said:

Are you saying that ten people spent ten years on it (in which case it is only 10 years, not 100)

No I am calling it 100 "programming years" in this case. The more people work on a project the longer it has effectively taken to produce. It would theoretically have taken one person 100 years; 2 people 50 years; 4 people 25 years; or 10 people 10 years; or 20 people 5 years to write 100 programming-years of code. They would once have been called man-years  but that is a dated term now. PagePlus did indeed have a team of between 3 and 9 people programming over 26 years. 100+ is a deliberate underestimate so I would not be called out. I have changed it to "programmer-years" to try to make it read clearer

14 hours ago, MJWHM said:

Which kind of proves the point we are making....

I'm not here to dismiss the points here and may well support parts of your posts. I just thought I would explain how we got here and tell you we do care.

14 hours ago, MJWHM said:

We shall just have to agree to differ

Yes, and I hope we come to a closer agreement in future exchanges.

[AlainP]

MJWHM, can't us see that the chances that Publisher can import PPP files some day are very slim to none. And Patrick explained very well why. I have used PagePlus since it came out and did a lot of work with it over the years, have hundreds of ppp files and I keep PP installed just in case. I recreated from scratch the last job I did in PP, and since, then I don't want to go back to PP. 

And the reason they used PP to write the workbook.... could it be that Publisher did not exist at that time... it's still in beta right now.

Over the years I spent thousands of dollars for software from companies that stop supporting their software or just plainly went out of business. Sometimes because someone came out with something new and better. This is the real world and evolution. If it wasn't that way we would still be using Commodore Vic 20 with a plain cassette player. 

[Bad_Wolf]

Lets take another example of an excellent tool which went out of business years ago. TopStyle 5 an html editor and one of the best. I did all the coding in it and never came across a better editor. When I got the news that development was ended on TopStyle it was a big shock to me. The editor I used for years, knew inside out was no longer. It took me a while to find an editor which came close. Now I am using Sublime Text and Brackets. Despite the shock, I came over it and now I am using these new tools and get used to them, I don't want anything else.

We all hesitate if there is an unexpected change because we all keep close to what we know. However, change brings innovation, creativity and keeps us sharp.

A colleague of mine swears by PhotoShop - Indesign - Illustrator on an AlienWare laptop. For her, anything less than those three is just amateurish and not worth a look. But when I take a look to the workflow for her using the Adobe suite or myself betting on Affinity, in my opinion my time is used much more economic than hers. If I only need to draw I use Designer not carrying the weight of features which I do not use on that moment. Also the smart integration of Designer - Photo - Publisher is unique and a big advantage. I am using a Fujitsu Siemens Esprimo D9510 laptop with SSD bought in January 2009. I use any of the Affinity applications without any problems. They are still fast enough. If I do the same with any of the Adobe applications, I can make a cup of coffee between two actions.

I can clearly see that the innovative Affinity suite is created with the future in mind. Designer and Photo are still in an early state too, however see what people are creating with them. See the examples coming with them, astonishing creations.

I am trying Publisher now  for a week. Today I received the second beta update. When I  see the list of bug fixes, it was hugh. The team behind Publishers surely was very busy. I already like this application despite the limitations and not full feature set. Other users made me aware that in some cases my thinking was very limited and I learned new ways from them.

We need this change and I am sure many users with me, like the Affinity team to concentrate on the Affinity range of application. For the simple reason, it is there where our future is. I want my colleague stop laughing with me because I use an amateurish tool in her eyes. But I will not succeed by continuing PagePlus. I will only succeed by working hard and learning new ways to create good looking artwork.

A Publisher workbook will be very nice. Only I hope it will be created in Publisher.

[MJWHM]

13 hours ago, Bad_Wolf said:

A Publisher workbook will be very nice. Only I hope it will be created in Publisher.

Hahah!

[KenV]

Yes please - or provide an avenue for converting PPP files

[Alan Smith]

Serif Affinity Publisher beta needs to build on regular Serif users. If no import is offered from Page plus editions why should we trust that we are not going to be ditched as Serif contemplate their next software edition? We need to have confidence that our creations and documents are going to be useful in the future. I have switched from Windows to Mac. I cannot use the original programs to create useable PDFs. I love Serif products but I need them to look after me as a customer. I do not want any programs I create to land up as unusable.

[PubGuy]

As far as I can see nobody is asking Serif to support TWO pieces of software at the same  time, updates for PP stopped a long while back.

Conversion between different software programs is not perfect and i don't think anyone expects it to be.

All we are asking is that Serif offer something that converts a PP file so that Affinity can load and work with it.

Serif know the file format of both PP and Affinity files (they designed them both afterall) so it should not be an impossible task to offer a conversion utility.

Having read many many comments, lots saying similar things since I joined in with this I am coming to the following conclusions.

Serif made up their minds right at the outset not to have Affinity read PagePlus files.

No matter how much we all Ask, Beg or Plead Serif have no intention of changing their minds even if this alienates large numbers of loyal PagePlus users.

Personally I will stick with PagePlus for as long as it continues to work, if it does stop working at some future date I will look around for an alternative.

As Serif have pointed out in great detail that you cannot use your existing PP files with Affinity and you MUST start over from scratch then for me it will not matter which software I choose to start over with.

[Ravindra]

if would be better if i could open my earlier page maker files and Abode in design templates in the publisher. (.pmd and .idd) 

[Bad_Wolf]

I follow this discussion with a lot of interest. Serif made it clear that there will come no PagePlus convertor, a decision I agree with. Still people make useless complaints and demands about it. This is a waste of energy and creativity. So I decided to think about a possible solution.

I assume the following :

PagePlus can create fixed epub files

InDesign can import those fixed epub files and process them

Affinity Publisher can import those InDesign files

To be honest, it is a theoretical idea, I cannot test it because I do not have InDesign.

First create a fixed epub within PagePlus of your document. Then import that epub into InDesign and save it in Indesign format. Then import that InDesign file into Affinity Publisher.

If it works the disadvantage is that you need to have InDesign which is expensive. However, there is a much cheaper and better replacement for InDesign in this case; Jutoh.

You can generate a Word document from your epub in Jutoh. Import your fixed epub in Jutoh and compile it to Word. Jutoh compiles to .doc and .docx formats.

Maybe someone of Affinity, Alfred, MikeW, can shine their light on this? They have more experience than I have with this subject.

Another way in Jutoh is that you place markers at every section break. A marker can be something like this : "###@###". It is very important the marker is not present in the regular text in your document. When this is done and you converted to fixed epub, then Jutoh will break your chapters automaticly with those markers. You can also generate PDF files  from your epub with Jutoh. Jutoh is really cheap, only $30 or £24 or €30. For somebody having a lot of PagePlus documents, a really cheap price to pay.

If I have more time this evening, I will import an epub (I only have reflowable epubs) and try to import it in Affinity Publisher.

Apart from all this, for me Affinity Publisher is also an important link in my chain of tools. I intend to use Affinity Publisher to create printable documents from the epubs I create with Jutoh. Also the close integration with Designer and Photo is a very hugh advantage.

Chris

 

[Patrick Connor]

Chris,

I admire your ingenuity of suggestions for a work around which may well be needed, but I think it misses the thrust of the thread. Getting content into a program by a convoluted path is not the same as having a native file importer. For example PagePlus master pages and hierarchical text styles have no equivalent in the intermediate epub epd pdf or rtf formats. Consequently a file in Affinity Publisher that has been through another file format may look the same/similar to the PagePlus original, but it would not have the same integrity and objects as if it was made using Affinity Publisher objects. It would lose much of it's editability by going through any intermediate format (including our recommended path of PDF).

No other company is ever going to make a PagePlus file importer, so these customers are rightly explaining and appealing to us to reconsider. They do not consider it a waste of time as it is the only chance they will get their existing files into Affinity Publisher "intact" or as designed. I would argue that the time and effort it would take to write such a convertor is not worth it in relation to the many other things that could be done instead, and that as PagePlus still functions that the number of documents that "need" conversion is smaller than some think. NOTE: Even a native file importer would not work 100% as there are no Affinity Publisher equivalents of many of the objects in a PagePlus document.

[blackest]

I'm wondering how designed some of these old files are, Publisher has master pages and seems really easy to create layouts. PPP users seem to be wanting to import documents instead of layouts. That doesn't seem a great way forward. 

It's kind of like how word can be used to create a well formatted document but can also be filled with lots of local formatting spaces and tabs to create a really horrible document.

If what you are doing works for you in page plus carry on with it. For indesign users its costing them every month to be stuck with indesign.  

[Alfred]

15 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

NOTE: Even a native file importer would not work 100% as there are no Affinity Publisher equivalents of many of the objects in a PagePlus document.

I imagine that most users pushing for a native PagePlus file importer wouldn’t expect it to work 100%. We already have a situation where later versions of PagePlus introduced new objects that earlier versions can’t read, but recent versions can mostly open files saved from later versions and simply discard what they don’t understand; I believe an exception to this is opening X9 files in X5, which doesn’t seem to work at all.

2 minutes ago, blackest said:

If what you are doing works for you in page plus carry on with it.

That’s good advice in general, but it doesn’t help users who, having switched to a Mac from a Windows PC, want to avoid the trouble and expense of installing Windows on the Mac.

[MJWHM]

34 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

I would argue that the time and effort it would take to write such a convertor is not worth it in relation to the many other things that could be done instead, and that as PagePlus still functions that the number of documents that "need" conversion is smaller than some think. NOTE: Even a native file importer would not work 100% as there are no Affinity Publisher equivalents of many of the objects in a PagePlus document.

Patrick, this may or may not be true, but whereas I have frequently recommended Serif as a company in the past, I now will only do so if trust can be rebuilt. You forget the truism that says that every complainant tells ten people, whereas the same is far from true for satisfied customers.
You also overlook the fact that at some point in the future we now know that PP will cease to function with Serif's deliberate policies and external influences. What would be the point of creating new documents? At present AP is NOT as good by a country mile, and I have tried to import a PDF file to recreate a document. The text turns out, if I transfer to a word processor, to be in single line paragraphs, which is not helpful, and formatted (ie lengths) as in the pdf file. It cannot be a good or probably workable way to import anything more complicated than a leaflet with four pages - if that.

Serif has made a decision. It may have been for good commercial or technical reasons, but it is a decision that is alienating a significant user base.