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22 minutes ago, fde101 said:

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.

Exactly! That’s what Serif PagePlus does.

Quote

I like that idea.

So do I.

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I think I like the idea of a "story persona."

I do wonder about two conflicting needs and how such a persona would address each. One need is the person who wants a simplified interface for writing text. The other is for people who needs to "see under the hood" to get to the raw text without the formatting for dealing with issues. For example, there could be text that is hidden by formatting but included for the sake of running headers (well, not yet anyway). Working with such text is a scenario I sometimes encounter in the past where I use InDesign's story editor.

Those may be two separate feature requests, as I am having a trouble seeing how they could be gracefully integrated into a single story persona. Or maybe I just lack imagination. Maybe this persona would just render up the text from the currently selected story in a view that is abstracted from the actual layout, with a check box for "Show with formatting" (which would be the character and paragraph formatting of the story text. Instead of text frames and other elements outside of the story, the story would be displayed as one continuously scrolling view akin to the normal mode in a word processor.

Now that I think about, I would definitely use that, and probably very often.

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21 minutes ago, garrettm30 said:

Maybe this persona would just render up the text from the currently selected story in a view that is abstracted from the actual layout, with a check box for "Show with formatting" (which would be the character and paragraph formatting of the story text. Instead of text frames and other elements outside of the story, the story would be displayed as one continuously scrolling view akin to the normal mode in a word processor.

Again, that’s exactly what PagePlus does within its WritePlus text editor. You get the entirety of the current story, regardless of how it’s split up across one or more pages of the document, and you can toggle formatting (including the visibility of special characters) on or off.

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On 7/10/2019 at 3:46 PM, fde101 said:

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.

Exactly. That is what I was getting at in my comment. Why use some bloated external program like Word (uugh). A SIMPLE (almost as simple as text editor with AP text styles) Word Processing Style Persona would work perfectly. For example: You type some text in the Word Processing Style personna with the styles/fonts that you plan to use in the "Layout" then simply cut and paste to layout area perhaps replacing filler text. The only feature needed is the Text/Paragraph Styles so that when I cut and paste I know approximate size, text color, font etc. I can link the flow in "layout" as needed. I am sure there is  lot's of "open source" code that Serif could use, making it an affordable effort.

I use Mac Pages extensively but I am looking forward to the integrated Affinity products as I already own all 3 but I can't leave "Pages" yet because lack of EPUB format in Publisher. I am going to make feature request for more Electronic export formats, with sound files and small video files.  perhaps mp4. Do you know if some of the newer PDF formats allow multimedia?

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21 hours ago, mccluredave1 said:

For example: You type some text in the Word Processing Style personna with the styles/fonts that you plan to use in the "Layout" then simply cut and paste to layout area perhaps replacing filler text.

Not quite what I was thinking.

The "story" persona I was thinking of would present an existing story (existing text box on a layout) as if the entire page were gone but there were a scrollable text box containing the entire story matching the width of the window's content area, with the content wrapped to fit that text box.  No tools (it would be as if locked into the text tool), only the relevant studio panels available (and all hidden by default in that persona), just the main toolbar to switch back to the other persona and the context toolbar showing text properties.  Inline objects would be there; anchors could be there but the actual anchored objects would not.

 

Creating a story without a layout being present is really the domain of a separate program.  Given that Publisher supports RTF, on the Mac I would suggest Nisus Writer Pro or something along those lines, since it is a relatively lightweight word processor that handles RTF files natively.  On Windoze you might use WordPad or something like that (is that even still around?)  No need for Serif to re-invent the wheel for this particular use case when there are already good options available.

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3 hours ago, fde101 said:

Not quite what I was thinking.

The "story" persona I was thinking of would present an existing story (existing text box on a layout) as if the entire page were gone but there were a scrollable text box containing the entire story matching the width of the window's content area, with the content wrapped to fit that text box.  No tools (it would be as if locked into the text tool), only the relevant studio panels available (and all hidden by default in that persona), just the main toolbar to switch back to the other persona and the context toolbar showing text properties.  Inline objects would be there; anchors could be there but the actual anchored objects would not.

 

Creating a story without a layout being present is really the domain of a separate program.  Given that Publisher supports RTF, on the Mac I would suggest Nisus Writer Pro or something along those lines, since it is a relatively lightweight word processor that handles RTF files natively.  On Windoze you might use WordPad or something like that (is that even still around?)  No need for Serif to re-invent the wheel for this particular use case when there are already good options available.

No offense, disagree a bit. The whole concept of personas is the convenience of staying inside the main app. Imagine having a "SIMPLE" WP (with one big limitless page) Persona in AP and having your whole book text formatted and styled, spell checked, grammar checked. Then cut and paste to your page layout "template" the sections/chapters as needed,  Linking, unlinking, adding text wrapped images etc and not have to worry about losing written content because if I make a mistake I can go get the written content again in the WP persona. I absolutely do not need to "keep up" or learn another bloated  external word processor which entails the hassle of restyling when added to AP...Even if it is free,  no thanks.

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12 minutes ago, mccluredave1 said:

No offense, disagree a bit. The whole concept of personas is the convenience of staying inside the main app.

Yes, but they all act on the same document.

If you are editing a text stream outside the context of the layout in which it exists, you are effectively working on a different document, which breaks with the general behavior of the existing personas.  That is why I don't think it belongs in Publisher working the way you were describing.

A persona that focuses in on part of the same document fits, but one that works independently of the document does not.

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11 minutes ago, mccluredave1 said:

cut and paste to your page layout "template" the sections/chapters as needed

We should be able to switch seamlessly from one mode to the other, without any need for cutting and pasting. Read about how PagePlus does it.

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5 hours ago, fde101 said:

On Windoze you might use WordPad or something like that (is that even still around?)

Since you asked:

wordpad.thumb.png.3885312e90d3f1197559d13f6bd0e789.png

 

I haven't used it in ages, I had to look for it myself. On the other side it looks like a very clean/lean down to the basics RTF editor :)

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Another vote for Mellel. I particularly like the cross-referencing feature, and the exquisite search-replace function. The best I have seen in any application (ID, QXP, MSW).

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I replied years back on this thread. I am still using Atlantis Wordprocessor for typing long text. Even when it has to be imported in Jutoh, I use Atlantis. For people also interested in creating ebooks, you can create an epub directly from your text in Atlantis. When then copying or importing your text in Publisher, you have an epub and printed version at the same time.

When your styles created in Publisher are well and carefully thought out, you will deliver nice documents without too many efforts. Needless to say, planning and creating your styles is essential and can be complex at times.

Chris

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On 7/13/2019 at 6:09 PM, Daniel Geiger said:

Another vote for Mellel.

I like Mellel too, but if the purpose is to be a relatively lightweight editor for story text intended to be imported into Publisher, Nisus Writer is a better fit.  Mellel documents would need to be converted into a format suitable for Publisher to open them.  Nisus Writer uses RTF as its native document format, so Publisher can read them directly.

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While I do still think it’s kind of unfortunate that writing in any Affinity app isn’t a super great experience, I *have* found an app I really like to write in: Notion. It’s good for lots of other organizational and database-lite stuff too, but I really like how everything can be organized in a wiki like way. Makes finding stuff I write real easy, and it’s markdown-esque in its presentation.

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16 hours ago, fde101 said:

I like Mellel too, but if the purpose is to be a relatively lightweight editor for story text intended to be imported into Publisher, Nisus Writer is a better fit.  Mellel documents would need to be converted into a format suitable for Publisher to open them.  Nisus Writer uses RTF as its native document format, so Publisher can read them directly.

I have been using both Mellel and Nisus Writer Pro since many years now, and both are great tools. Also have started to use Scrivener as well, another great tool. I have, as far as I can tell, no need for an Affinity Word. My toolsbox regarding word processors are already full. 

Edited by edwardsson

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3 minutes ago, edwardsson said:

both Mellel and Nisus Writer Pro

3 minutes ago, edwardsson said:

have started to use Scrivener

 

Agree, also use all three.

 

3 minutes ago, edwardsson said:

no need for an Affinity Word

Agree here too, particularly if support for "linked" RTF files ever gets off the ground...  though I can see some value in the idea of a "story persona" within Publisher itself, as a separate writing tool, there are plenty of existing products to fill that need.

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  • 4 months later...

Another LibreOffice user here :) Great program for word processing with a great extension for epub export (writer2html, better output than native epub export). I can see why a WP persona can fit in since right know the only thing I'm missing a lot in Libre is page layout capabilities and a little less the collapsible content at headers level.

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On 7/11/2019 at 12:46 AM, fde101 said:

A "story" persona in Publisher would make a LOT of sense

Indeed it would. It is already sorely missed. Just a classic DTP story editor and style markup helper please.

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