Footnotes/Endnotes

[MJWHM]

29 minutes ago, Helmar said:

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

I cannot see to which particular 'lots' you are referring, but put that aside.

Your own post is perhaps the result of so-called flaming. You may wish, for example, to edit out the casual racism, which adds nothing to a reasoned discussion.

The suggestion that people should not be 'bitching here' (also unnecessarily abusive) perhaps fails to accept the fundamental logic of the forum concept. They exist precisely so that people can express their views and in a forum provided by a service supplier this is in order to allow that supplier to feel the needs of his/her users. Some may not feel the need to use such elements as footnotes and/or endnotes, but clearly others do. I am not 'bitching here' because I have nothing better to do with my time. I have been using Serif products for so long that I cannot find the earliest use - certainly well before 2007 .

I am concerned that a firm, for which I have had nothing but admiration hitherto, has released into the market functional but half-baked products. I could accept that if they were still clearly identified as beta products, and the products they are intended to replace were still made available and supported. Perhaps the necessary expertise has been lost.

I want Serif to be effective and receptive to the needs of its existing user base as well as moving onwards and upwards. I want to be able to use Affinity products with the ease that I use their predecessors but this is not yet possible. 

And as the title for this particular thread is specifically about Footnotes/Endnotes, this is the right (and intended) place to push for action, surely? It was May when I first joined in: around the same time we were assured "Serif are currently in the process of implementing this. It needs to be done carefully, not just thrown in, and we do always have the issue of programming resources." Seven months is quite a long wait. My immediate requirement is ended, but for others it is ongoing.

And that is not to mention the question of finding a way to import PagePlus files .... And no, importing PDFs is not the answer before anyone suggests it. But this is not the place for that discussion.

[Last Chance]

Well said #MJWHM.

Helmar seems to overlook the very pertinent point that AP was, and still is, being promoted as a "professional" product. Foot/Endnotes are an essential part of a "professional" program. End of.

[furtonb]

8 hours ago, Helmar said:

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.

Quality reply here (and there🍷), thanks for the contribution.

That would be awesome if features that seriously affect productivity or a total roadblock wouldn't get dismissed for years, I'm sure many of us are here because of grounded reasons, and would like to use Affinity in an efficient manner - in this thread's case not renaming all the footnotes if you forgot to insert one or deleted something. Small thing, but if you edit something more than a few pages, it will drive you crazy in a matter of minutes that you waste hours on such a nonessential task. Or yeah, I'm sure I will count the extent of my documents character by character - wait, wrong thread. Or change the gazillion of imported line segments's colour to a global colour one by one - oh yeah, after 6 years we can select them with a click. But this is off-topic as well.

This is like having a spreadsheet editor that does addition, subtraction, multiplication, but forgot to implement division - but hey if you select a cell, you cange its background to a gradient!

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sure I can use my calculator to do the math for me... lol

[Bratemoj]

To cut a long story short: If Publisher had a footnote option, I would buy all Affinity apps and switch completely from Adobe. Until then, I won't spend a cent on Affinity.

[Pedrober]

I am wating too. Whuen APub has footnotes support, I'll purchase it without any doubt.

[user60]

2 hours ago, Bratemoj said:

To cut a long story short: If Publisher had a footnote option, I would buy all Affinity apps and switch completely from Adobe. Until then, I won't spend a cent on Affinity.

Right here is the problem !!! there are many who have "already purchased" AP and cannot use it as they need to create books with many footnotes .....

I bought it in 2019 hoping to abandon Adobe but I couldn't do it.

I would have preferred to save something on the cost of Adobe and I would have been willing to pay AP even a little more to have this functionality ........ now I have lost hope, I think I will not even follow how it will end.... 🖐️

[Beppe]

 

12 minutes ago, user60 said:

Right here is the problem !!! there are many who have "already purchased" AP and cannot use it as they need to create books with many footnotes .....

I bought it in 2019 hoping to abandon Adobe but I couldn't do it.

That is exactly my situation. I'm trying to wait to look for alternative solutions, but it's getting harder and harder at this pace...

[Last Chance]

Announcement of the new Affinity Publisher Workbook

Dare I ask if foot/endnotes are described within???

If not, then what is the point of issuing a tutorial book about a product that's unfinished?

[Patrick Connor]

2 minutes ago, Last Chance said:

Dare I ask if foot/endnotes are described within???

The new Affinity Publisher Workbook describes the use of the software as it currently exists (as found in the 1.9 beta), and does not include any descriptions of features not yet available to customers. It describes examples of uses of the software as it exists.

[Peter Falkenberg Brown]

Dear Affinity Staff and Programmers and Users Too,

I have a few thoughts about the "Footnotes" thread.

* To the Affinity Staff and Programmers: THANK YOU for making your programs available at a price point that is ridiculously low, but with features that have still enabled me to publish books and other things too.

I am grateful for your products and thus, for your work. 🙂

* Of course we need footnotes and endnotes, and I'm very sure that the Affinity staff have gotten the message loud and clear (REPEATEDLY) and are working on it as fast as they can.

* Some of the comments I've read here are quite unnecessarily rude and even hostile or demeaning to Affinity. But those writers, and others, think about this: Affinity is providing a program (in Publisher) that is quite excellent, in spite of some missing elements, for a Very Low Price. If you're impatient, go back to Adobe and spend more. But there's really no call to be nasty or rude.

In other words: "It is what it is." If you're so deeply unhappy with Affinity Publisher, move on. Otherwise, stay with Affinity Publisher and at least give the company and their crew moral support and send them good thoughts. That will help them *program faster.* 🙂

Just my two bits.

Peter Falkenberg Brown

[NaulisJakke]

I’ve noticed that this thread spends time in hibernation. It is usually reactivated when new people - to their astonishment - get excited about an affordable alternative to Adobe Indesign, get disappointed by the lack of footnotes and bring their amazement and frustration to the thread. I find it only natural that the conversation restarts, because every new user on this thread begs the question: how long must we still wait.

The launching of this workbook is a trigger too. It muddies the waters in that it can be regarded as a festive declaration of finished flagship product, thereby suggesting that our wait might be in vain.

I don’t buy the cheapness argument. The price is low, but when you utter the word ’professional’ in you marketing, you are expected to provide professional products and act professionally. I would gladly pay twice, thrice or even more to get the product I thought it was when I bought it. But now the company keeps professionals in constant and infinite darkness. That is unprofessional to say the least.

I am an enthusiastic APhoto and ADesigner user both desktop and ipad. It is for this reason that I more than anything would like to begin to celebrate these products by making elegant and creative products using them. But I need these products to be completed. This is why it is so important that this thread is alive.

[Old Bruce]

I do not have access to all the various applications which do allow footnotes and endnotes so I possess vast ignorance of how they are implemented in the various applications and thus how they would be exported into Publisher. Would Footnotes be easily changed into endnotes and vice versa, can numbered footnotes be turned into symbols and vice versa? Can there be Footnotes and Endnotes in one document? 

I do know that footnotes are a right royal pain. If you ever want to see what can happen with footnotes get a copy of Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism". There are pages where footnotes are continued from the previous page, and have copy with two footnotes which must each be continued on the following page(s). I fail to see how it would be possible to easily implement a footnote algorithm for that admitted extreme edge case.

Post Script: It is a brilliant work.

[Peter Falkenberg Brown]

I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't talk about footnotes and endnotes.

I'm just suggesting that at the very least we can be respectful and polite toward the Affinity company staff. No one is forcing anyone to buy the product, and the product has many good points, in spite of the lack of footnotes.

Also, new forum users should at least skim the thread of now 22 pages so that they can see what's been discussed already.

Peter

 

[MJWHM]

Old Bruce asks about the algorithm, and I cannot answer that. What I can say is that PagePlus, which this replaces, had (has) the facility to provide both footnotes and endnotes. If such a thing was possible a decade or so back, can t be really difficult? I honestly don't know.

Peter Falkenberg Brown asks for understanding, but as Naulis Jakke has indicated, the catalyst for this rising in the consciousness is the pre-order deal being offered for the handbook. If you claim that "You’ll learn everything from the necessary core skills, right up to the most powerful tools and techniques…" it suggests that a standard tool is going to be covered. "Learn everything there is to know about working with Affinity Publisher" is a bold claim as well. But the statement "the Affinity Publisher Workbook combines the vast knowledge of our own in-house experts with exciting contributions from leading designers, publishers and other creatives to help you really make the most of the app" is bound to fan the flames.

I asked about the version covered by the book and received the answer "Our workbooks are not version dependent and will be relevant no matter which version number of the apps you are currently running." I would expect the footnotes and endnotes to be enthusiastically highlighted if they were in the version now in beta testing, but they are not, which does not bode well. I must commend the person who responded for the speed of the response.

I just do not understand the apparent lack of action on this matter.

[MJWHM]

22 minutes ago, Peter Falkenberg Brown said:

I'm just suggesting that at the very least we can be respectful and polite toward the Affinity company staff. No one is forcing anyone to buy the product, and the product has many good points, in spite of the lack of footnotes.

Also, new forum users should at least skim the thread of now 22 pages so that they can see what's been discussed already.

That is fair comment. Some of us have been waiting in hope, but that hope is fading. I will again say what I have said before. Serif PagePlus is a brilliant program which is still far better and more powerful than Affinity Publisher. It was folly to kill it off before the new kid on the block could compete. 

[Granddaddy]

We often see it mentioned that footnotes and endnotes are hard and that APub is a "new" product and that algorithms must be invented, as if footnotes and endnotes have never been done before (except by Serif in its abandoned PagePlus product). 

I have been writing long documents on computers for nearly 40 years. Every product I've ever used, from GML/Script on an IBM mainframe in the early 80s, to the shareware PC-Write under DOS in the mid-80s, to WordPerfect in the late 80s, to Word for Windows beginning in the 90s, has included footnotes and endnotes. Even the free Libre Office does footnotes and endnotes.

Surely the algorithms for doing footnotes and endnotes are by now very well-developed and widely known, not something that needs to be reinvented by a company that previously implemented footnotes and endnotes in products introduced nearly 30 years ago.

[NaulisJakke]

6 hours ago, Granddaddy said:

We often see it mentioned that footnotes and endnotes are hard and that APub is a "new" product and that algorithms must be invented, as if footnotes and endnotes have never been done before (except by Serif in its abandoned PagePlus product). 

I have been writing long documents on computers for nearly 40 years. Every product I've ever used, from GML/Script on an IBM mainframe in the early 80s, to the shareware PC-Write under DOS in the mid-80s, to WordPerfect in the late 80s, to Word for Windows beginning in the 90s, has included footnotes and endnotes. Even the free Libre Office does footnotes and endnotes.

Surely the algorithms for doing footnotes and endnotes are by now very well-developed and widely known, not something that needs to be reinvented by a company that previously implemented footnotes and endnotes in products introduced nearly 30 years ago.

This comprehensive list of previous footnote capable software makes me wonder: so, is this a choice to not implement it in APub? And if this is the case, how long must we wait to hear it from the company itself?

 

[walt.farrell]

21 minutes ago, NaulisJakke said:

This comprehensive list of previous footnote capable software makes me wonder: so, is this a choice to not implement it in APub? And if this is the case, how long must we wait to hear it from the company itself?

 

From my understanding, It was a choice to prioritize the functions they implemented in the first release(s) so they could get the program out and available in a form that would be usable to some large subset of their users.

If they had waited until they had everything implemented that everyone wanted (or everything that PagePlus had) we still would not have Publisher at all. As it is, those of us who don't need footnotes (or don't need them for every project) have been able to use Publisher for about 18 months now. If they had held off releasing it until everyone's favorite functions were available then none of us would have it yet, and everyone would be complaining that Serif had still not released Publisher.

[NaulisJakke]

5 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

From my understanding, It was a choice to prioritize the functions they implemented in the first release(s) so they could get the program out and available in a form that would be usable to some large subset of their users.

If they had waited until they had everything implemented that everyone wanted (or everything that PagePlus had) we still would not have Publisher at all. As it is, those of us who don't need footnotes (or don't need them for every project) have been able to use Publisher for about 18 months now. If they had held off releasing it until everyone's favorite functions were available then none of us would have it yet, and everyone would be complaining that Serif had still not released Publisher.

MJWHM introduced a few entries back a very important concept: standard tool. Apub is a standard tool in that it falls into a specific niche and the requirements of this niche are widely known and accepted. This is not about "everyone's favourite functions". The account of Grandaddy also attests this: this niche with self-evident footnote ability has existed for 30 years.

Therefore I really don't buy the idea that the implementation of footnotes would have delayed the launch of the whole software. But again: if this is however the case, why doesn't the company come clean about this? At this point some degree of honest clarification would go a long way.

[Pyanepsion]

I believe that Serif is beginning to understand the exasperation we all feel and that the time for hagiography is over. We all know that the software will be extraordinary. It is already extraordinary in many ways and each beta update brings new miracles that were impossible just a few months ago.

This is no longer enough. We now want the software to do what we bought it for, too. DTP is never anything more than the activity of preparing documents for printing using a computer instead of the historical processes of typography and photocomposition.

I, for my part, boarded Affinity's boat in June 2019, and what was supposed to be a somewhat difficult but possible race, a sort of DTP Vendée Globe, turned into an endless wandering in the middle of the roaring forties.

How can we not be surprised by this communication which has been explaining to us for almost two years now that this feature will soon be working, and other times that nobody but us (no luck) needs it. I believe that the main dysfunction is there. We would understand all these ever increasing delays if the race management would finally change its strategy and give us a prospective with the different stages of development to come.

So that we can organise ourselves more serenely.

Courage, Saint Serif. Don't miss the last steps. Give us back our confidence.

 

[user60]

11 hours ago, Peter Falkenberg Brown said:

No one is forcing anyone to buy the product, and the product has many good points, in spite of the lack of footnotes.

You are right, no one forced us but the software was advertised for what it really is not.
It was expected, and it was natural to believe that he at least had the footnotes ...
I don't want to criticize those who worked, but I repeat this is an essential thing

[Ralph]

8 hours ago, NaulisJakke said:

MJWHM introduced a few entries back a very important concept: standard tool. Apub is a standard tool in that it falls into a specific niche and the requirements of this niche are widely known and accepted. This is not about "everyone's favourite functions". The account of Grandaddy also attests this: this niche with self-evident footnote ability has existed for 30 years.

Therefore I really don't buy the idea that the implementation of footnotes would have delayed the launch of the whole software. But again: if this is however the case, why doesn't the company come clean about this? At this point some degree of honest clarification would go a long way.

The concept of a 'standard tool' is one which has pervaded this thread from the beginning, if not perhaps so clearly expressed as such. Some of us have called it 'the basics', but however we express it, footnotes have always been a standard part of a DTP package. It's one of those features that are taken for granted. For months after I had bought Ap, I blamed myself for not being able to find the footnotes module: it simply could not, could not - not be there!

Like @Granddaddy, I have been writing long documents for decades, starting on IBM360's. From the time when the fonts list was limited to pica (+ a few), footnotes were just THERE. They had to be, because the bulk of documents came from universities where attribution of sources was (and still is) paramount.

Now it is as though the Arial font had been omitted from the fonts list. If it had been omitted, would there have been claims that "you can't do everything at once" or "if Serif waited till everything was available, we 'd still be waiting" or "different people have different priorities" or .... ? Alternatively Serif could have chosen to leave the option to flow between frames until a later date - but they didn't do either of these things, because they formed part of the standard (taken for granted) DTP package.

I just do not understand.

[Last Chance]

Is it possible that Serif are holding back this feature until v2.0 is ready? If so, then that is extremely pernicious.

Let me reiterate: implementing endnotes is not difficult. It's really just collating all the footnotes into a table, creating a space at the end of the chapter, or book, and plonking the table there. Simples. Footnotes are a little trickier as this requires creating space for each page and juggling the content to accommodate them, but it still is not rocket science.

The fact that the endnotes and/or footnotes do not even feature in a beta-test is dispiriting to say the least. That Serif cannot confirm one way or the other if/when it is appearing, equally so.

Given the amount of comments this feature alone has generated (90% uncomplimentary - being generous here) just shows the disappointment being experienced by users. I agree with previous comments: DTP without end/footnotes is not DTP.

[Beppe]

1 hour ago, Last Chance said:

DTP without end/footnotes is not DTP.

Sacrosanct.

[JaviAl]

Also a must for desktop publishing books is cross-references for notes (endnotes, footnotes, sidenotes, etc.). For example a note like this:

6 This word means differents things in differents countries. See also note 24 in page 345 for more explanation about this word.

Note 24 must automatically change if i insert more notes before, and page 345 must automatically change if the page for that note changes.

Indesign has not cross-references for notes, so it is not a valid option for the desktop publishing of my books. Only QuarkXpress and Framemaker (and Microsoft Word) has this feature.