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Open PagePlus (*.ppp) files


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6 minutes ago, MJWHM said:

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.

It would be good if we had an importer for native WritePlus *.stt files so that we could import entire ‘stories’ with their existing formatting intact, but it doesn’t look as though this is something that Serif intends to provide.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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4 minutes ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

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.

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.

Serif never made page plus for the Mac and never said they would. If you don't care to install windows on a mac, (it does work quite well in a VM to be fair) run Windows on a PC. 

Lets say for example Affinity Publisher was to support page+, when does it get to stop supporting it?  As has been mentioned earlier there are objects in page+ which do not map to Affinity Publisher, the only way to map them in is to add to affinity publishers code base and only because of windows users who want to press a button and import an alien file format. The end result will be a buggy slow application.    

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2 minutes ago, blackest said:

Serif never made page plus for the Mac and never said they would. If you don't care to install windows on a mac, (it does work quite well in a VM to be fair) run Windows on a PC. 

Lets say for example Affinity Publisher was to support page+, when does it get to stop supporting it?  As has been mentioned earlier there are objects in page+ which do not map to Affinity Publisher, the only way to map them in is to add to affinity publishers code base and only because of windows users who want to press a button and import an alien file format. The end result will be a buggy slow application.    

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not counting myself among those who are pushing for a PP importer, although on a re-read of my previous posts I can see why you might think I am. If I ever get a Mac (and I have been sorely tempted, particularly in the light of what Microsoft have been doing with Windows 10 lately!) I wouldn’t discard my old Windows machine.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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22 minutes ago, MJWHM said:

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.

 

Totally agree...

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27 minutes ago, MJWHM said:

At present AP is NOT as good....

So given where we are I believe Serif need to concentrate on adding functionality and features to Affinity Publisher not a PagePlus importer, or else you would just be able to open your PagePlus documents in a new program that you don't wish to use or recommend either. I think you are asking for both improvements and an importer, but good developers are hard to get.

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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4 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

So given where we are I believe Serif need to concentrate on adding functionality and features to Affinity Publisher not a PagePlus importer, or else you would just be able to open your PagePlus documents in a new program that you don't wish to use or recommend either. I think you are asking for both improvements and an importer, but good developers are hard to get.

I will stick with improvements, rather than legacy support. Has page plus development finished? 

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40 minutes ago, blackest said:

I will stick with improvements, rather than legacy support. Has page plus development finished? 

Speak for yourself. I have just published two major books with PP and it would be great to be able to import them into APUB and not run two programs in parallel. Patrick the issue is not so much "Please add the PP import functionality" into APUB but to build a utility/plugin. Yes you are right for future we won't need this however by separating the import functionality, you will not need to add "Unnecessary" code to APUB. This importer can even be a converter. Do you see what I am getting at?

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15 minutes ago, Sam Neil said:

Do you see what I am getting at?

Yes I do Sam.

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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Patrick,

I agree with you. I experimented for some time with the method I suggested and it is simply impossible to get good results with that workaround. When I have a problem or something which doesn't work as expected, in whatever application, I always look for a way around the problem. At the end of the day, I have to make the job done.

My suggestion didn't work out and I admit that. Also for myself as also for Serif, a PagePlus importer/convertor is not on my list too. In this case, it seems a feedback loop we are in. People looking to their problem as if it is not solvable without importer/convertor. I am sure when they invest the same effort to find a workaround as the energy they waste by complaining here, somebody will come up with a way that works.

The first limitation on this moment is that Publisher doesn't have templates. A template is an empty framework of a publications on which you can built many other publications. I know it is not the same but lets say creating an empty Publisher document containing all the necessary styles and base objects could be a good start. Later when Publisher supports templates, we can convert that empty document into a template.

When I have long text, I always write that in a wordprocessor. Personally I am using Atlantis Wordprocessor for that which is an excellent tool for writing long texts. So when the framework of the book is completed, at least you can import the text and format it.

I know this all is a lot of work, but it has the advantage that your book or publication is completely ready for the future. Even if there was an PagePlus importer/convertor, still there should be quirks left over. Even when I import my docx documents from Atlantis to Jutoh, there are things which are not going well.

It is also said over and over again, that PagePlus will not stop working overnight. So if someone really wants to remain using PagePlus, keep with Windows 7 or the present Windows 10 and do not update. In this way, you can remain using PagePlus for years to come.

Chris

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On 8/30/2018 at 1:41 PM, Patrick Connor said:

@BtB

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums :) and thank you for your suggestion

We do not have a roadmap of future features for Affinity Publisher but I am sure your request would be popular with our legacy software userbase. You will need to export as PDF and import or try copy paste for now.

No roadmap!!  No future

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It's an opinion, I am happy to be proven wrong. 

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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@johncrisps

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums :)

58 minutes ago, johncrisps said:

No roadmap!!  No future

Sorry, I've edited my original post. I meant to say that we have no public roadmap yet

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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There you go, happy to have been proven wrong. 

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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10 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

It's an opinion, I am happy to be proven wrong. 

Let's imagine just for a minute that a company approaches Serif and says that they wish to develop a progran/utility/plugin etc to convert a pageplus file so that Affinity can open it.

Would Serif be willing (bearing in mind code protection etc) to release the nessecary information  to a third party?.

 

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3 minutes ago, PubGuy said:

Let's imagine just for a minute that a company approaches Serif and says that they wish to develop a progran/utility/plugin etc to convert a pageplus file so that Affinity can open it.

Would Serif be willing (bearing in mind code protection etc) to release the nessecary information  to a third party?.

 

The format is not documented and the code is not releasable as I have explained, so my guess is no

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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9 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

So given where we are I believe Serif need to concentrate on adding functionality and features to Affinity Publisher not a PagePlus importer, or else you would just be able to open your PagePlus documents in a new program that you don't wish to use or recommend either. I think you are asking for both improvements and an importer, but good developers are hard to get.

Not quite true.  I would like an importer to allow me to open existing hard-created documents in your bright shiny new program. Then, if the new program works as well as PP for my purposes (which are not hugely complicated) I can safely and happily move across to using that.

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1 hour ago, MJWHM said:

Not quite true.  I would like an importer to allow me to open existing hard-created documents in your bright shiny new program. Then, if the new program works as well as PP for my purposes (which are not hugely complicated) I can safely and happily move across to using that.

This probably goes for the vast majority of PP users.

As has been said conversion might not be perfect but, given the choice between doing a little tidying up of a converted file and starting over completely from scratch I know which one I would prefer.

 

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On 8/30/2018 at 6:36 PM, OGMedia said:

I opened a 32 page publication as a PDF file in AP and there were no issues other than some minor cleanup work that needed to be done, and it handled all 32 pages without memory issues.

I wonder whether you edited or altered it in any way, or simply accepted the pdf as was?

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I have to say, that I am astonished at not having any way to Import PagePlus files. I got an invite by email to download the Beta as I am a Serif Customer, the main product I use is PagePlus. I have been using it for years, first with a company I worked for, then bought it myself. I have loads of files that I update regularly.

I understand new software, designed from scratch, not on the old platform, but I don't understand that there is no way to import PagePlus files. Surely there must be a way for you to do this for your existing customers, whether a stand alone app, a plug in or integrated into Affinity, I really think this is an essential. 

I use OpenOffice, if someone sends my a Microsoft Word file, I can open it with Open Office. Though it is completely different software, not built on the same code base, Open Office realise that they need to open MS Word files, as their users will need this facility. It doesn't always work perfectly because of the differences in the software features, but it does import them. I find it really hard to understand that Serif don't realise how important it is for customers to import files from their own old software. I don't expect PP to be able to open Affinity files, but I really did expect the new software to open the old files. 

The first thing I did when I opened the beta programme was to try and open an existing PagePlus file, well that didn't go well, then I looked on the forum to find out how to do it and found this thread. :(

In business it is a know fact that it is easier and cheaper to sell to existing customers that to acquire new customers. I guess a percentage of your existing customers will look elsewhere now. If they have to start from scratch anyway, they will look for a company that will support them and all their work long term. Where you could have made easy and cheap sales to existing customers, you will loose a bunch of those and have to market to new customers instead.

Me? I will continue to use PagePlus and when I need to update in the future, I will look at what is available. Maybe I will turn to Affinity, maybe not. But, where this was an opportunity for an easy sale to an existing customer, it has backfired I think.

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These arguments seem to be becoming circular.

 

Let's be clear - Publisher is in its infancy.  As Patrick has said - we need to spend time putting in the core set of features that most people would expect.

 

The vast majority of Publisher users will not be ex-PagePlus users. Any time spent now on an importer is going to be of no value to them, and will be at the expense of features that everyone would use.

 

Since Publisher does not have the set of features supported by PagePlus, what would an importer give you right now?  50%, 40%, 30% of the features required to make an import meaningful?  So, we give you an importer now that transfers only the features we have. Are you going to be happy with the outcome, or are you then going to start asking for other features to be added that are required to import your old PagePlus document?  Where does it realistically end??  Most of the arguments being put forward for a specific importer over a PDF (or other) migration seem to rely on higher level features.

 

Right now you have a working solution - you can carry on using PagePlus to maintain your documents. That has not changed in any way due to the release of Publisher.  Anyone moving from Windows to Mac also is in no worse situation than they would have been if we had not released Publisher (so I don't see that as a valid argument either).   As Publisher matures, I would have expected users to author new content in it, supported by the features as they become available.

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I think we have received all the feedback we need for PagePlus import. I will end this thread by saying that if we did produce an importer we would wait until Affinity Publisher supports enough features that the importer would be better than our current PDF import. Sorry but that's best we can say at this time.

 

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