Affinity Word?

[Paul Michael Bales]

I am loving Affinity Publisher, but I am hoping you can add an Affinity Word App to challenge Microsoft Word. Affinity Publisher feels great for the design aspect of ebooks, but what about just simply writing an ebook? I would love an Affinity Word Processor. Just like Adobe Microsoft has become Subscription based, it annoys me having to pay money every month to use Word. I would like a one time payment of Affinity Word, an app where I can just simply write, import and export as pdf or word document etc I could write with Affinity Word, then place the finished document into Affinity Publisher where I can add pictures and art, design etc Think about it Affinity, I know it is more work for you guys, but because you already have Affinity Publisher it shouldn't be too hard to turn this into Affinity Word. Rather like we have a Microsoft Publisher and a Microsoft Word. Also would love to see an Affinity Font app in future, an innovative font creation and font viewing tool and Affinity Video, an innovative video editing tool. 

[Petar Petrenko]

Something like Adobe's InCopy.

[Seneca]

On 9/3/2018 at 11:53 AM, Paul Michael Bales said:

 Just like Adobe Microsoft has become Subscription based, it annoys me having to pay money every month to use Word.

You don't have to use Microsoft Word.

There are free alternatives to it and just as good: LibreOffice, OpenOffice and many more.
In fact, affinity can read paragraph and character styles form one of these programs. So that's an extra bonus.

I don't think Affinity will ever want to go in that direction. But hey, who knows.

[Bad_Wolf]

I am using Atlantis Wordprocessor with great satisfaction. Also for ebook creation like epub it is very good.

It is not bloated like Microsoft Word but does what it has to do.

[- S -]

On ‎9‎/‎3‎/‎2018 at 11:53 AM, Paul Michael Bales said:

Just like Adobe Microsoft has become Subscription based, it annoys me having to pay money every month to use Word. I would like a one time payment of Affinity Word…

One-time payment, non-subscription versions of Microsoft Office are available, they just heavily promote the subscription version (Office 365) instead.
Microsoft Office Home and Student 2016
Microsoft Office Home and Business 2016

Non-subscription versions of Microsoft Office 2019 will also be available, although the product lifecycle has been reduced from 10 years to 7 years:
- Office 2016 has a 10 year lifecycle (5 years mainstream support, 5 years extended support) and is therefore supported until October 2025.
- Office 2019 will have a 7 year lifecycle (5 years mainstream support, 2 years extended support).

I'm not sure whether there will be non-subscription versions beyond Office 2019 though.  Microsoft's [non-committal] official statement is as follows:
"As standard practice, Microsoft will continue evaluating customer needs and industry trends to determine the need for future versions of our products and services."

So long term (beyond Office 2019) I share your concerns about it moving to subscription only, as there is a distinct possibility that could happen, but that isn't the case at the moment. 

[Cineman]

Libre Office works pretty well. Google Docs can be OK too as long as you're not talking about long-form documents. As for Microsoft, at least on the Mac side, it seems with each new version their installers become more and more complex and less reliable. And often the initial releases are buggy as sin, despite MS having years between versions to test and stabilize things. I understand sometimes it's unavoidable (we're moving to 365 where I work) but I encourage anyone who can get away from MS office to do so.

[Rod N]

Sorry to appear dumb..(I am good at it ) but there seems to be a lot of Mac users, using 365... I have slowly converted most of the people I work with, to Pages...(and Numbers actually even the crusty accountants)  

Again I apologise if there is some hidden problem that I have not encountered but Pages etc, work fine (in the Mac world), and can export to anything and more to the point can open anything in prep to sending it off to be played with by Publisher. I have dragged some text direct from Pages, and it works fine.  

Again sorry If I am missing the point BUT Occam,s Razor ... 

By the way... great job Affinity

 

[Fixx]

16 hours ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Something like Adobe's InCopy.

There is not much market for Word clone but for editors ability to edit Publisher text content without Publisher application would be nice. Then again, Publisher is probably so inexpensive that editors can buy their own copies..

[Paul Michael Bales]

I think it is a good idea because it would be part of Affinity's ecosystem, instead of having to use Microsoft Word or another word processor, Affinity would have their own in Affinity Word and it can integrate with photo, publisher and designer. A simple text editor with the same features as Microsoft word but not bloated, so we can just focus on writing. Affinity Publisher makes me focus on design, I find it hard to just sit down and write with. 

[Paul Michael Bales]

On 9/4/2018 at 5:39 PM, Bad_Wolf said:

I am using Atlantis Wordprocessor with great satisfaction. Also for ebook creation like epub it is very good.

It is not bloated like Microsoft Word but does what it has to do.

Thank you for the recommendation, I have never heard of this one. I downloaded it and it looks good, nice and simple. 

[fde101]

I use Mellel, but looks like Atlantis is only for the inferior platform, so that may not help much if you are looking at that one.

[Renzatic]

After a couple of days of poking and prodding, I find you could almost use Publisher as a Word alternative, but a few missing features keep it from being straightforward enough to work as a standard no frills, no muss text editor. Granted, I could be missing something amazingly obvious here, but from what I've seen, the biggest stumbling block that prevents it from working as a decent word processor is that you can't currently define linked text frames from a master page. You can set them up, and they do appear throughout the rest of your document, but the program refuses to allow you to input any text into them. You end up having no choice but to define a new frame for every page you make.

Even if this feature were in place, it'd still require more busywork on the front end compared to Word, Pages, and the like, but you would eventually get to the point where you could just start hammering text into it without any fuss or worries.

[SDLeary]

4 hours ago, fde101 said:

I use Mellel, but looks like Atlantis is only for the inferior platform, so that may not help much if you are looking at that one.

Mellel is good, as is Nisus Writer Pro, especially for their language support, though I can't stand their interface design (flying pallets or floating pallets).

I've taken to using Scrivener, nice and flexible without the flexibility getting in the way.

SDLeary

[Uncle Mez]

What a nice talk here !

i believe you are all right but i would propose Serif to develop (if possible) a kind of persona that will be used like a word processor for editors.
What i'm talking about here is, editors would click that persona button and switch to an interface dedicated to edition only (similar to what we see when we switch to develop persona) into that mode or persona they have to able to type/write, create paragraphs etc. i mean everything related to writing then when it's done they just click on the publisher button to switch back to normal publisher functionality and find the text there.
Organization would depend on two factors, the work done in editor mode and choice made in publisher mode.
Editor mode should help with everything text when Publisher mode would be more focused on publishing/design mode.

Also if this is implemented one day, make it possible for editors to collaborate in the content edition; collaboration is a must in the actual days and i believe it can be handled in two format : local and over internet (like invasion does with its design platform) it will allow to hire writers, designers and more peoples from all around the world to have them work on the same project and get the best result ever wanted.

This is just me talking and sharing.

Blesings !

[Seneca]

Similar functionality exists in inDesign and QuarkXpress, so, obviously, one would hope that this persona (which by the way is a great way to deal with that) will eventually show up in Publishers as well.

[Uncle Mez]

11 minutes ago, Seneca said:

Similar functionality exists in inDesign and QuarkXpress, so, obviously, one would hope that this persona (which by the way is a great way to deal with that) will eventually show up in Publishers as well.

Exactly !
It should (if well managed and implemented) bring Publisher among the big rulers of the publishing category.
The real dream is not to see Affinity Line of products not die or be stopped, not simply mimic the already existing softwares but stand on the pantheon among the best.

Serif Team, this is what i believe: Market presence is not enough ! make the weapon even good and soldiers will make use of them and win every battles they face.

[fde101]

20 hours ago, SDLeary said:

I've taken to using Scrivener, nice and flexible without the flexibility getting in the way.

Scrivener is great, and I use that as well, but it is not a word processor in the same sense as the other programs we are discussing - different type of beast.

[toupee]

Rather than a separate app, I would really dig it if this was instead a Persona in Publisher.

You could directly link text to frames this way...and have one place to edit without having to scramble across overflow frames.

Would be cool to have the ability to write in Markdown* (and define text styles accordingly), or typical Word Doc style, or plain text.

Even better if you can do a mass import of common documents that it would then display as a nice set in this persona. You know how APub has that panel where you can import multiple images, and then drop them in frames one after another? Would be sick to have that feature for text.

*oops, MarkDOWN, not Markup

[Alfred]

3 minutes ago, toupee said:

Would be cool to have the ability to write in Markup

... or Markdown!

[toupee]

2 minutes ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

... or Markdown!

That's what I meant! 

[mccluredave1]

Hello!

I use Pages on Mac. It has a document mode and page layout mode. In document mode (word processor style) there are no text boxes. The text flows from page to page in 1.2,3 columns, whatever and will do automatic TOC with Chapters, sections, etc. If I add text to middle of book, the whole book gets resized automatically with page numbers etc. APublisher appears to be only a page layout style program. Please help. I don't get the difference. I do PDF documents of 200 pages etc with lots of pictures, chapters, TOC and index. Basically a PDF book. I need auto page numbering etc. Will AP do what I want or did I make a dumb purchase? They advertised TOC and index so I assumed it would do technical manuals. Thanx.

[Old Bruce]

2 hours ago, mccluredave1 said:

Hello!

I use Pages on Mac. It has a document mode and page layout mode. In document mode (word processor style) there are no text boxes. The text flows from page to page in 1.2,3 columns, whatever and will do automatic TOC with Chapters, sections, etc. If I add text to middle of book, the whole book gets resized automatically with page numbers etc. APublisher appears to be only a page layout style program. Please help. I don't get the difference. I do PDF documents of 200 pages etc with lots of pictures, chapters, TOC and index. Basically a PDF book. I need auto page numbering etc. Will AP do what I want or did I make a dumb purchase? They advertised TOC and index so I assumed it would do technical manuals. Thanx.

You are best served by using Pages to write the text and then add it (the text) to Publisher. The underlined stuff in the quote is what Publisher was developed to do. Start with a very small book, a couple of very short chapters say eight to ten pages and see how the ToC and Index features work with that. Pictures can go in amongst the text by using Picture Frames or just on their own.

[78deluxe]

A persona would make some sense.  A seperate program, I don't see a lot of value to Affinity.   

 

You can buy a legitimate copy of an older version of Word for practicly nothing that does anyting one would reasonably need Word to do and it would be fully compatible with the industry standard.  

 

 

 

[Amateur John]

Almost every body who uses a computer learns how to use Word. It may not be the best, but it is ubiquitous. Even primary school children use it to do their homework. I would think that Affinity's next venture might be asset management for their Designer, Photo, and Publisher files. The database behind Lightroom is useful if one can be bothered to use it properley. Even as an amateur I feel that the big thing missing from the Affinity suite of applications is the database. It does help that the Designer, photo, and publisher files are really just the same format, but with different filename extensions. I am not stating that it would be trivial to develop, but it could be a lot more difficult, if the present three applications were not really just three different personas based on the same structure.

 

[fde101]

4 hours ago, 78deluxe said:

A persona would make some sense.

A "story" persona in Publisher would make a LOT of sense actually...  you would select a text box that may or may not be linked to other text boxes to form a story, then switching to the story persona would give you a more word-processor-like interface to edit that story in isolation from the rest of the layout.

I like that idea.