Footnotes/Endnotes

[NorCor]

Footnote support is essential for about 90% of books in Germany.

Not added to actual beta version 1.9.0.767

I assume we have to wait till version 2.0 (couldn't be so far). Please inform us about your timeline in this case.

[garrettm30]

29 minutes ago, NorCor said:

Not added to actual beta version 1.9.0.767

I assume we have to wait till version 2.0 (couldn't be so far).

We still have just the first beta of Publisher, with the promise that other features are still slated for inclusion in 1.9. We don't know which, so it could be footnotes. It might also not be footnotes, as there are a number of other popular feature requests still unfulfilled, and we understand that it can't happen all at once.

Also, you linked to the beta for Designer. When footnotes finally land, I anticipate they will be one of the features that is only available in Publisher.

[Last Chance]

The jump to version 2 should include more significant changes rather than just addressing bugs and tweaking the code. I'm not expecting anything till then, but I'll be damned disappointed if it isn't included by v2.0.

[Patrick Connor]

1 hour ago, Last Chance said:

I'm not expecting anything till then, but I'll be damned disappointed if it isn't included by v2.0.

As it's written by the same team I would expect Version 2 to be developed like version 1 has been, with more features added in each major update (2.0, 2.1, 2.2), not everything arriving in the first 2.0 (this is a generic statement, not one about the timeline of this specific feature)

<edit> rereading your post I don't think you were suggesting that there would be all the new features in 2.0, sorry </edit>

[Lambswar]

I am new to Affinity Publisher and not a professional designer. I have been Using Serif PagePlus X9. I am putting together a small publication and I have been laying it our on both Affinity Publisher and Serif PagePlus. I imported text with footnotes into PagePlus with no problems, but when I tried to import it into Affinity the footnotes did not import. What do I need to do to get the footnotes to import?.

[MJWHM]

Sadly, there is no sign of a footnotes (or endnotes) system arriving unless it is in the new version due to come - but it does not seem to be featured in the Beta version mentioned above. I also am not a professional designer, although I publish stuff professionally. 

While there are some decent things in APub it is still a long way from the complex techniques of PagePlus9 - and even earlier PagePlus versions. I have been trying to create stuff in APub, but on the whole it does not seem to be as functional as PP9 unless you are seriously into the other Affinity stuff. My own tendency is to use the program which works, which is sometimes an Affinity version (APhot is good, for example, for lighting but often it is not the best for my work - Photoshop Elements or Corel Paintshop Pro is).  There used to (and still is not, in my view) an affordable program to touch PagePlus9.

The issue really is that Serif jumped the gun by dropping PagePlus too soon. I suspect that there may be a face-saving problem as a result. Either that, or they have lost the people who understood PP9 and the pther Serif products.

Just about to publish another book with something like 360 pages including hundreds of images and a good number of footnotes. I may have succeeded with some of it in Apub, but I am not confident and I certainly could not have done the footnotes and made them move with text or pagination changes. 

I am trying to give APub a chance, so I am experimenting with simple publications, but so far the endnote/footnote thing is a serious obstacle for my sort of work. If you are producing comics, or novels, or even simple picture books, fine, but not for 'academic' works. Even comics can be done simpler with other programs. It is not clear to me who Serif is targetting with this software, but i suspect they are more interested in a slice of the apple pie than in those who have remained loyal for decades. I used to regularly get calls from Nottingham asking me if I wanted something they were promoting, but that has also disappeared. 

Sic transit gloria mundi....

[Last Chance]

Have you tried importing/exporting the file as a PDF or RTF? I think either of those should carry over the foot/endnotes.

[furtonb]

+1 for footnotes and endnotes

On 10/10/2020 at 6:44 PM, MJWHM said:

It is not clear to me who Serif is targetting with this software

with a few additional features I would certainly be included - this and the missing word count are holding me back from putting together bigger documents - especially if they require representing sources 

[Pedrober]

I hope footnotes/endnotes and word count will be added now after the universal edition is ready.

[Edmund DelSol]

It is November 2020 and this issue has been around for *more than* a couple of years now. I've been a user of Serif products for almost a decade, and owner of A-Designer and A-Photo--since their inception. I recently purchased A-Publisher to take me beyond MS Word and save me from MS Publisher. I honestly did not expect to find a publishing product without an end-notes/footnotes capability. This is not just a feature gap. It is a defect. Please fix this.

[Patrick Connor]

@Edmund DelSol

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums  

34 minutes ago, Edmund DelSol said:

...this issue has been around for *more than* a couple of years now.

This thread was made during the long Publisher public beta. Publisher was launched in June 2019. We appreciate that Footnotes and Endnotes are going to be useful to many customers and we plan to add many more features like this in future versions and releases, sorry that this has disappointed you but Publisher is being used in it's present form by many users, though perhaps not for your use case.

 

[Pyanepsion]

On 11/24/2020 at 5:05 PM, Patrick Connor said:

[To Edmund DelSol] Publisher is being used in it's present form by many users, though perhaps not for your use case.

In which parallel world do you live? These words are very similar to the denial of an obese president of a distant banana republic close to Canada who claims for months, even before the elections, to have been re-elected despite the difference of 6 million voters for his opponent and 306 electors against 232.

Publisher is very promising and has seen many new features appear since its public launch. I don't regret buying the whole suite. Nevertheless, it still shamefully lacks the indispensable and necessary functionalities for such a product. You seem to have forgotten that DTP software is intended for the printing industry. Printing is essentially books and posters (and similar). It is inadmissible that we still can't find :

1. the management of footnotes and similary,
2. the management of all kinds of fonts delivered free of charge by Microsoft and Apple,
3. the correct conversion of an Affinity file into an Adobe File which is THE software used by all printers,
4. the opening of the necessary information to companies manufacturing extensions,
5. the management of spaces relating to punctuation (how can you suffice it to believe that only the English typography exists and in addition only to the one you have chosen exists),
6. the complete index management,
7. a translation made by real professionals and not this horror,
8. Etc.

Because of your delay, I was forced, and many other buyers like me, to delay and then finally transfer projects with your software to another less exciting, Adobe, but more respectful of its clients.

Who could have imagined such blindness on your part?

[PatrickOfLondon]

Pyanepsion,

Well said.

Of course, Affinity Publisher is still a relatively young product; no doubt the features many people want will be added over the years. But in a product that purports to be a professional publishing package, some of these features have been a long time coming.

[fde101]

6 hours ago, Pyanepsion said:

In which parallel world do you live?

The same one I do, apparently.

 

6 hours ago, Pyanepsion said:

the management of footnotes and similary,

There are plenty of use cases for Publisher which do not require footnotes.  The publishing industry is not limited to the creation of books and scholarly works.

 

Consider just for starters:

• Calendars
• Advertisements
• Church bulletins
• Product brochures (some have footnotes, many do not)
• Most works of fiction that I have seen do not have footnotes

 

6 hours ago, Pyanepsion said:

management of all kinds of fonts delivered free of charge by Microsoft and Apple,

This is not a publishing task but a font management task best suited to a dedicated application.

 

6 hours ago, Pyanepsion said:

an Adobe File which is THE software used by all printers,

This is hopefully a temporary situation.  Printers should not need InDesign files - they should only need the PDFs, which Publisher already does.

 

6 hours ago, Pyanepsion said:

the opening of the necessary information to companies manufacturing extensions,

I'm assuming by this that you are looking for a plugin or scripting API?  That is currently missing but is being discussed already on another thread.  It is not relevant to many users who are working solo/independent or in a smaller business (as opposed to corporate) setting.

[Beppe]

52 minutes ago, fde101 said:

The publishing industry is not limited to the creation of books and scholarly works.

Is not limited, but certainly the publishing professional industry includes books and sholarly and academic works.

If Apub is released as a professional DTP software (From Serif website: "Affinity Publisher is the next generation of professional publishing software"), it can't fail to handle functions like footnotes/endnotes.

[fde101]

18 minutes ago, Beppe said:

Is not limited, but certainly the publishing professional industry includes books and sholarly and academic works.

The premise of the thread that I was replying to was that no one was using Publisher because it was missing these capabilities.

My reply indicates that these capabilities are not needed for all use cases and it is perfectly reasonable that:

22 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

Publisher is being used in it's present form by many users, though perhaps not for your use case

 

[NaulisJakke]

16 minutes ago, Beppe said:

Is not limited, but certainly the publishing professional industry includes books and sholarly and academic works.

If Apub is released as a professional DTP software (From Serif website: "Affinity Publisher is the next generation of professional publishing software"), it can't fail to handle functions like footnotes/endnotes.

I agree 100 %. Without footnotes you simply cannot call it ’professional’ let alone ’next generation’. You just can’t. 

[danzefirelli]

I would call footnote basic. It is at least weird why is not implemented yet. What is the difficulty for inserting it in Publisher?

[PaulEC]

As others have said, it does depend very much on what work you are doing. I normally manage perfectly happily without footnotes/endnotes. BUT, having said that, I've recently started on a new project where I actually need footnotes and must say that it is a real ****** not having them. It does seem a strange omission not to have this function. Hopefully, when it is added (I assume it will be sooner or later) it will work really well!

[MJWHM]

I have watched with interest the conversation. It does seem to me to be moving forward - not at all. The official response seems to have failed to grasp the simple logic that if the program is sold as a professional DTP program, it is reasonable for buyers (especially long-standing Serifomanes) to expect it to be capable of performing as a professional DTP program. It is not significantly different from a glorified word processor currently, except for the cross-program functionality which seems to be the be-all and end-all of Affinity - which is of course doubtless the reason for the name.

I have just published my latest 350-page book using Serif PagePlus, which was put out to pasture far earlier than it should have been, and frankly knocks spots off the young pretender. I have been a longterm user of PagePlus, and still find it does things I had not realized were available. It is a truly world-class program. The only issue I had was that the resolution of grouped images when output to PDF were showing as 150DPI, despite being 300+. They were apparently at the required resolution, but in full Adobe Acrobat were showing incorrectly.

Affinity, in whatever form, has a way to go yet. Photoshop is simpler to use than AffPhot, and is there any real need for a designer program to mesh in with Publisher?

I did, in case it is thought to be sour grapes, try to do what I wanted to do in AffPub, but it was just not up to it, despite some good points (none of which surpasses PagePlus.

It is a little like the Emperor's new clothes. A mistake has been made, but admitting it and at least restoring the older programs until it is remedied, seems beyond the mindset of whoever is running Serif.

It is very sad.

[PaulEC]

On 10/10/2020 at 5:44 PM, MJWHM said:

I used to regularly get calls from Nottingham asking me if I wanted something they were promoting,

So did I – thank goodness they have stopped pestering me! 😁

[NaulisJakke]

3 hours ago, MJWHM said:

I have watched with interest the conversation. It does seem to me to be moving forward - not at all. The official response seems to have failed to grasp the simple logic that if the program is sold as a professional DTP program, it is reasonable for buyers (especially long-standing Serifomanes) to expect it to be capable of performing as a professional DTP program. It is not significantly different from a glorified word processor currently, except for the cross-program functionality which seems to be the be-all and end-all of Affinity - which is of course doubtless the reason for the name.

I have just published my latest 350-page book using Serif PagePlus, which was put out to pasture far earlier than it should have been, and frankly knocks spots off the young pretender. I have been a longterm user of PagePlus, and still find it does things I had not realized were available. It is a truly world-class program. The only issue I had was that the resolution of grouped images when output to PDF were showing as 150DPI, despite being 300+. They were apparently at the required resolution, but in full Adobe Acrobat were showing incorrectly.

Affinity, in whatever form, has a way to go yet. Photoshop is simpler to use than AffPhot, and is there any real need for a designer program to mesh in with Publisher?

I did, in case it is thought to be sour grapes, try to do what I wanted to do in AffPub, but it was just not up to it, despite some good points (none of which surpasses PagePlus.

It is a little like the Emperor's new clothes. A mistake has been made, but admitting it and at least restoring the older programs until it is remedied, seems beyond the mindset of whoever is running Serif.

It is very sad.

 

 

Thank you MJWHM for your excellent and well laid-out in-depth writings on this matter. To me as a newcomer to the field it is utterly interesting and enlightening to be able to dive to the historical background of this. Indeed, in the light of what you write, the absence of footnotes in APub becomes curiouser and curiouser. 

I also want to point out that when you refer to APub as ”not significantly different from a glorified word processor currently” it should be remembered that in a word processor like Pages footnotes are a self-evident and functional tool.

 

[PatrickOfLondon]

43 minutes ago, MJWHM said:

... I have just published my latest 350-page book using Serif PagePlus, which was put out to pasture far earlier than it should have been, and frankly knocks spots off the young pretender. I have been a longterm user of PagePlus, and still find it does things I had not realized were available. It is a truly world-class program. ...

100% agreed — and reminiscent of over a year ago...

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/65541-footnotesendnotes/&do=findComment&comment=536959

 

[Jowday]

The development team behind the entire Affinity suite / effort is way, way too small to deliver these programs. Publisher was delayed and delayed and then the first version was too little too late.
Marketing however is loud and sells budget software for the little guy like it is or could be the professionals choice.
If it was open source no one would lift an eye brow... but the city market marketing is too far out. And causes frustrations out there.

You wont fool the real professionals out there (and never did) anyway Serif so why not adjust the marketing to the real customers.

And yeah Designer is an odd program together with Publisher. It is for digital artists - not publishers. At. All.

 

[Helmar]

On 11/25/2020 at 7:51 AM, Pyanepsion said:

...lots

Affinity Publisher may be and is lacking a lot of things necessary for professional publishing. That, however, doesn't excuse your attitude, even if the French are known for that. Or do you think the folks at Affinity don't know what's lacking? They aren't Gods either, so the stuff comes when it's ready. Either it suits your needs, or it doesn't. If not, use Adobe's products, but for goodness' sake stop bitching here in the forum about all its shortcomings. As if that would change anything to the better.

Helmar