Footnotes/Endnotes

[Ralph]

19 minutes ago, JaviAl said:

Note 24 must automatically change if i insert more notes

Herein lies the rub! Where do we draw the line? Many contributions to this thread have asked for complex implementations of footnotes - very useful, but not part of (my idea of) a standard package. If I use an analogy from algebra - early in our schooling we learned how to solve equations by factorising {(x-3)(x+2)=0}. Later, we found that most equations would not factorise and we used an formula {b^2 - 4ac etc}. Sometimes there was no solution because (b^2-4ac) was negative and there was no such thing as the square root of a negative number (sic!). Years later still, we learned about complex numbers {square root of -1}. 

I would contend that AP should have been able to "factorise" footnotes from Day 1. (Earlier in the thread somebody said "If it doesn't have footnotes it is not a DTP!"). If your request is not in InDesign, and without diminishing its value, I would put it in one of the other categories and ask Serif to leave it out of its initial offering.

[Alfred]

2 minutes ago, Ralph said:

Where do we draw the line?

Above the footnote, of course!

[Edmund DelSol]

Helmar, as the seeming 'bitch' who started this off again, I was not, as you say 'bitching.' I was looking for help as a new user of AffPub. I am a Serif user going way back, promoted the products enthusiastically, even gave away my old copies to Developing country home schools so they could do quality work on a dime. I also bought into Affinity line 100%, AffPub being the last.

As a marketer though--one who had served as Product Marketing point person for an eight figure portfolio--I can assure you that customer sentiment is pure gold. The company must have the maturity to embrace that feedback. If we cannot raise these issue here, where should we? Maybe I am just seeing another side of Serif/Affinity that I never expected to. Live and learn.

[cyberlizard]

On 12/1/2020 at 11:19 AM, Last Chance said:

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.

I could not agree more.  If Affinity are planning on releasing version 2 with footnotes or endnotes they should simply say.  Likewise, if they are expecting these features to remain quite a way off they should give us a roadmap in terms of when (timescale) and release (version number) they expect this to become available.  I continue to want to make the leap from Adobe software, but for now I am using Scribus as I cannot bear the thought of giving Adobe any more of my hard earned money.

[Patrick Connor]

I do not have a roadmap to publish but I hope I can say this here.

The Footnotes/Endnotes feature is not currently ready and so we cannot be fairly accused holding it back on purpose. I see why it may appear that way, but I try to be as honest as possible in all my dealings here on these forums, but without breaking company confidences, and I can honestly say this feature is not being held back, it is simply not ready yet.

[Gaunilo]

Well I equally sincerely hope it will be ready soon because I am running into more and more problems without them.
The next book project will be impossible without footnotes/endnotes.
 

Please hurry up and make an update as soon as they are ready!

[Ralph]

On 12/2/2020 at 12:36 PM, Alfred said:

Above the footnote, of course!

Nice one Alfred!

[d_jan]

I would love to see footnotes very soon. However, it is sadly normal that footnotes are implemented rather late in DTP applications: QuarkXPress seems to have introduced them only in their 2015 Version, almost 30 years after its launch. Adobe InDesign  gained to support footnotes in CS2. InDesign not have a proper endnote feature up until CC2018.

So, while it is frustrating that the feature is lacking and while many understandably need this feature for projects, it is not unusual to see them not included in the essential feature set for a DTP software’s launch and first years versions, even. The prototypical use case for DTP software seems to be magazines or posters, for which other features are more essential.

Highly structured documents (which is also what I  would love to use Publisher for) seem to be a tricky market, being under pressure by quite decent word processors as well as proprietary typesetting environments and LaTeX.

[MikeW]

57 minutes ago, d_jan said:

I would love to see footnotes very soon. However, it is sadly normal that footnotes are implemented rather late in DTP applications: QuarkXPress seems to have introduced them only in their 2015 Version, almost 30 years after its launch.  ...

While very true, footnotes were available via a couple Xtensions early on. Quark eventually added them after implementing a ranked wishlist wherein footnotes ranked high, coupled with user demand. 

[Pedrober]

Quark support for footnotes is still weak. For example: export to DOC/RFT doesn't include footnotes/endnotes. Even worse: Quark tagged text (XTG files)  doesn't support foonotes/endnotes. And so on.

[cyberlizard]

On 12/3/2020 at 1:26 PM, Patrick Connor said:

I do not have a roadmap to publish but I hope I can say this here.

The Footnotes/Endnotes feature is not currently ready and so we cannot be fairly accused holding it back on purpose. I see why it may appear that way, but I try to be as honest as possible in all my dealings here on these forums, but without breaking company confidences, and I can honestly say this feature is not being held back, it is simply not ready yet.

can we assume then, from the boldened portion of the quote, that it is currently in development?

Steve

[garrettm30]

14 minutes ago, cyberlizard said:

can we assume then, from the boldened portion of the quote, that it is currently in development?

An earlier post (back in May) by Patrick would seem to confirm that it is—or at least was—in development, if we can understand "currently in processes of implementing this" to be roughly synonymous. 

On 5/30/2020 at 1:17 PM, Patrick Connor said:

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. Thank you all for your patience, it will be rewarded.

 

[Kevin Scally]

On 12/3/2020 at 1:26 PM, Patrick Connor said:

I do not have a roadmap to publish but I hope I can say this here.

The Footnotes/Endnotes feature is not currently ready and so we cannot be fairly accused holding it back on purpose. I see why it may appear that way, but I try to be as honest as possible in all my dealings here on these forums, but without breaking company confidences, and I can honestly say this feature is not being held back, it is simply not ready yet.

Having worked in software development I can only say that I'd vastly prefer to use a robust product with limited features than one that claims to have features but is buggy and crashes. Even the demand for footnotes here confirms that the rest of the program's feature make it a pleasure to use, and that it is being used.  A previous contributor to this thread referred to the first limited versions of InDesign, and I would agree. I was also happy to work with a very early version of MS Word (on the Mac before the PC version appeared) and that was lacking most of the features. The same was true of early versions of Quark Express. It takes time to build a robust product with a full array of features. Numbered footnote capability is a tricky feature since edits can affect the text flow and layout right through a long document. While it seems that endnotes would be easier to achieve than footnotes, there is a relationship between them, and coding one feature independently of the other is laying the ground for future problems and QA headaches. Affinity Publisher is a robust product with most of the features I need. I have avoided projects with footnotes and—where a choice was available—opted for endnotes and bit of elbow grease. It's fine until they get the feature working 100 per cent.

[MJWHM]

3 minutes ago, Kevin Scally said:

... Even the demand for footnotes here confirms that the rest of the program's feature make it a pleasure to use, and that it is being used.  ...  Affinity Publisher is a robust product with most of the features I need. I have avoided projects with footnotes and—where a choice was available—opted for endnotes and bit of elbow grease. It's fine until they get the feature working 100 per cent.

Sorry, but this is simply not true.

Serif has axed PagePlus, in which the algorithms work well. I would have thought there might be some lessons to be learned from the programming behind them, but I am not a programmer. I am a researcher, writer and publisher among other things. It was ill-advised to axe one program before its replacement was anywhere near as versatile. I do not use AffPub, because it is much less user-friendly than the predecessor, has a less-inviting appearance, and singularly fails to provide the range of tools I require and find in PagePlus. 
So your premise that it is 'a pleasure to use, and that it is being used' is flawed. I also take issue with the statement  that AffPub has 'most of the features I need.' Even you are acknowledging that it is lacking. I wonder whether PagePlus included the other features? If so, what benefit is AffPub? 
I don't like AffPub at present. It is not fit for my purpose, and I seriously doubt if it is fit for the purpose it claims, but put that to one side. I DO like Serif. I am therefore not turning my back on a company I have supportes for decades probably, just because they are a little lost. It does not mean I am using the Affinity programs though. Page Plus is better for publishing, I use several imaging programs which are generall more user-friendly as well. 

Sadly, I live in hope....

[Seneca]

7 minutes ago, Kevin Scally said:

While it seems that endnotes would be easier to achieve than footnotes, there is a relationship between them, and coding one feature independently of the other is laying the ground for future problems and QA headaches.

I hope that the team is working on a trio relationship: footnotes, endnotes, sidetones, rather than just the usual duo: footnotes & endnotes.

I'd love to see a discussion here on what we'd like to have regarding the footnotes, sidenotes and endnotes. I hope it's going to be more flexible than the competing offerings. Being able to format them in columns independent of the main text would be great – just an example.

[Kevin Scally]

10 minutes ago, MJWHM said:

Sorry, but this is simply not true.

Serif has axed PagePlus, in which the algorithms work well. I would have thought there might be some lessons to be learned from the programming behind them, but I am not a programmer. I am a researcher, writer and publisher among other things. It was ill-advised to axe one program before its replacement was anywhere near as versatile. I do not use AffPub, because it is much less user-friendly than the predecessor, has a less-inviting appearance, and singularly fails to provide the range of tools I require and find in PagePlus. 
So your premise that it is 'a pleasure to use, and that it is being used' is flawed. I also take issue with the statement  that AffPub has 'most of the features I need.' Even you are acknowledging that it is lacking. I wonder whether PagePlus included the other features? If so, what benefit is AffPub? 
I don't like AffPub at present. It is not fit for my purpose, and I seriously doubt if it is fit for the purpose it claims, but put that to one side. I DO like Serif. I am therefore not turning my back on a company I have supportes for decades probably, just because they are a little lost. It does not mean I am using the Affinity programs though. Page Plus is better for publishing, I use several imaging programs which are generall more user-friendly as well. 

Sadly, I live in hope....

My experience of using flakey apps is that nobody cares what features they have, or makes demands of the programmers; they just get quietly abandoned. This makes it a reasonable assumption that—for whatever purposes they need it—some users find its current feature set and price acceptable. How could you possibly take issue with another person's assertion that a program has most of the features they need? You are entitled to say that Affinity Publisher is not fit for your purposes because it doesn't include footnotes; though I discovered the absence of that feature during the free trial, before I paid any money.

As a counter example, while MS Word has footnotes and endnotes, it is an application that I avoid like the plague. I prefer to use a combination of Scrivener and Pages to write. When I need accurate page layout Affinity Publisher is doing enough. 

Regarding PagePlus, the code for every program is independent. Each new version of a program is an opportunity to build in new bugs. Some features delve into the guts of a program and can affect thousands of lines of code. Quark, with Xpress, had the advantage of seeing what Aldus got wrong with PageMaker (no text frames) but, as XPress grew, adding features became more complex and more difficult. Sometimes the only solution is to rewrite a program from the ground up, but of course that introduces a whole cohort of new bugs. Consider that Adobe bought Aldus and with it owned PageMaker but they decided to build InDesign from scratch. They also had the benefit of seeing Quark's mistakes on Xpress. Now they too have a behemoth of a program where every major feature takes weeks or months to QA.

I too live in hope that a robust footnote feature will appear soon, but I have observed that management harassment of coders has never produced a better software product.

[MJWHM]

1 hour ago, Kevin Scally said:

My experience of using flakey apps is that nobody cares what features they have, or makes demands of the programmers; they just get quietly abandoned. This makes it a reasonable assumption that—for whatever purposes they need it—some users find its current feature set and price acceptable. How could you possibly take issue with another person's assertion that a program has most of the features they need? You are entitled to say that Affinity Publisher is not fit for your purposes because it doesn't include footnotes; though I discovered the absence of that feature during the free trial, before I paid any money.

As a counter example, while MS Word has footnotes and endnotes, it is an application that I avoid like the plague. I prefer to use a combination of Scrivener and Pages to write. When I need accurate page layout Affinity Publisher is doing enough. 

Regarding PagePlus, the code for every program is independent. Each new version of a program is an opportunity to build in new bugs. Some features delve into the guts of a program and can affect thousands of lines of code. Quark, with Xpress, had the advantage of seeing what Aldus got wrong with PageMaker (no text frames) but, as XPress grew, adding features became more complex and more difficult. Sometimes the only solution is to rewrite a program from the ground up, but of course that introduces a whole cohort of new bugs. Consider that Adobe bought Aldus and with it owned PageMaker but they decided to build InDesign from scratch. They also had the benefit of seeing Quark's mistakes on Xpress. Now they too have a behemoth of a program where every major feature takes weeks or months to QA.

I too live in hope that a robust footnote feature will appear soon, but I have observed that management harassment of coders has never produced a better software product.

Fair enough. My issue is not that you are not content, but rather that you are missing aspects; I am sorry if you missed the nuance. There is no doubt that Affinity programs are inexpensive, but then so were the more fully-featured predecessors. 

Perhaps you are realtively new to the program, but I d not recall any hint of missing features when I bought. I don't object to the expenditure. It is a long time back and was not vast. My annoyance, which may or may not be fair, is in the abandonment of PagePlus. And even that is not because it was abandoned, but because there appears to have been no attempt to pass the code to others who might have continued to develop what the current Serif team consider to be a dead-end program. 

[Patrick Connor]

6 minutes ago, MJWHM said:

And even that is not because it was abandoned, but because there appears to have been no attempt to pass the code to others who might have continued to develop what the current Serif team consider to be a dead-end program. 

This is is simply an incorrect understanding. The same team who wrote PagePlus are writing Affinity Publisher. These programmers can access the legacy code (if desired), but there is no need, they wrote it and know how they wrote it. Legacy code and the Affinity code is not shared as the implementation and architecture are not similar. This feature needs writing using the current language spec and using the current OS independent architecture and algorithms. Code like this is not simply plug and play

[MJWHM]

24 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

This is is simply an incorrect understanding. The same team who wrote PagePlus are writing Affinity Publisher. These programmers can access the legacy code (if desired), but there is no need, they wrote it and know how they wrote it. Legacy code and the Affinity code is not shared as the implementation and architecture are not similar. This feature needs writing using the current language spec and using the current OS independent architecture and algorithms. Code like this is not simply plug and play

I may well have misunderstood the same coders between the two programs, but if the 'the implementation and architecture are not similar' it surely would not be an issue to either put it into the public domain like Libre Office and the like, or sell it to another company? I certainly don't seem to be wrong to say 'the current Serif team consider to be a dead-end program.' 

[Patrick Connor]

This thread is not the right place for a conversation about the availability or distribution of our legacy code

[MJWHM]

I didn't think it was a conversation. I was simply revisiting your statement. I agree. The question of the code and future or not of PagePlus (and other legacy programs) is not the issue here, except insofar as the new programs do not manage the same functions. In this case, footnotes and endnotes. I am pretty sure sidenotes never featured in PagePlus.
STrange as it may seem, we are all on the same side here. We all want a good and fully-featured program.

[JaviAl]

3 hours ago, Kevin Scally said:

Consider that Adobe bought Aldus and with it owned PageMaker but they decided to build InDesign from scratch. 

 

Not exactly. Who decided to build a new program from scratch was Aldus, not Adobe,  code name Shuksan, the future Indesign, in order to be able to compete with Quark. When Adobe bought Aldus, Indesign are in working process from Aldus and Shuksan programmers in Aldus move to Adobe to continue de development of Indesign.

 

[Radek K]

Recently my Adobe subscription ended and I decided to buy A-Designer, and try A-Publisher. So far I was quite pleased with it. Now I'm totally shocked that "professional publishing software" lacks so essential feature! This type of features are the ones thats define professional publishing software. Simple things like one paged calendars etc. can be done in any software, you dont need DTP for it.

I'm making ~100 page report in A-Publisher. But there is a ton of footnotes, infographics etc. Is there any workaround, external plugin or script, anything? I can't imagine creating all footnotes and endnotes manually. That's just not worth the time and if there is no solution, I will have to renew my Adobe subscription, but I don't want to do it.

[cyberlizard]

18 hours ago, Radek K said:

Recently my Adobe subscription ended and I decided to buy A-Designer, and try A-Publisher. So far I was quite pleased with it. Now I'm totally shocked that "professional publishing software" lacks so essential feature! This type of features are the ones thats define professional publishing software. Simple things like one paged calendars etc. can be done in any software, you dont need DTP for it.

I'm making ~100 page report in A-Publisher. But there is a ton of footnotes, infographics etc. Is there any workaround, external plugin or script, anything? I can't imagine creating all footnotes and endnotes manually. That's just not worth the time and if there is no solution, I will have to renew my Adobe subscription, but I don't want to do it.

does not look like footnotes, endnotes or sidenotes are arriving any time soon.  If you need these features then its Serif's old PagePlus, Xara or InDesign. Could not agree with you more though.   For me, footnotes and endnotes are essential, so for now I am using Scribus - excellent software but interface is somewhat dated to say the least.

[v_kyr]

14 minutes ago, cyberlizard said:

If you need these features then its Serif's old PagePlus, Xara or InDesign ...

... or QuarkXPress, FrameMaker! - And don't forget (dynamic) sidenotes too here.