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Ian B's investigation and thoughts


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Long-time PP user, so I've been waiting for Publisher for a long time!

Started up okay.

Initial thought was to open some of my PP docs to see how they appear in AP...but that's not supported. :-(

Okay, export one to PDF and import.  Seems basically okay...but there are some dots appearing on one page.  I'll report that separately once I see how far down I can trim the example.

Question in my mind - does it import the styles as well, or will I have to re-create all that?

Now, where are the Open and New toolbar buttons.  Not obvious - let's customise the toolbar and add them. Oh - not there either.  Why?

Hmmm.  No "Open" on the start wizard either, just advertising, "Close" and "New Document" - it would be good to have Open like there was in PP, otherwise this pane is much less useful.

 

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New day, new start.  Oh - there's a new version, let's upgrade.

Strange, why isn't it installing?

Try again - ah, "Okay" doesn't mean "go ahead" - that's a separate button "Download".  Counter-intuitive.  Let's go for the download.

Still isn't installing.

Oh, it's taken me to the web page where I need to download it for myself. In this day and age that's a definite backward step.  PP and that family could auto-download and install, and so do most other programs.  Please can we have this for AP as well?

 

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Now creating a dance programme flyer.  Copy the dances from the Excel spreadsheet and paste into AP.

Comes in as a single text box :-(

Surely PP managed to insert it as a table - quick check, yes indeed.  Please can we have this for AP as well?

Oh, well. Create the table manually.  How do I do that...ah, table text tool.

How do I choose the number of rows and columns?  It appears it just decides for me.  It's come in 6x16.  6 across works, but I only need 8 rows.  How do I fix that?

Let's try selecting the rows, right-click. No delete :-(

Okay, hit Delete. Nope. Backspace...nope.

Finally found it in Table->Delete Rows, but that seems too hard for my taste.

It's an A5 flyer, and I created it with 25mm margins, but that's too large for A5. How do I change it?

Look in the Document menu.  Nothing obvious there - Section Manager maybe?  Nope that's just dividing the document into sections.

What's under File? Document Setup... seems plausible.  No - only colour format, layout just changes facing pages settings, Bleed isn't it either.

What else.  File->Spread Setup... - ah, finally.

Right, now to enter the dances.

Copy from the spreadsheet and paste into the top corner - all goes into the one cell.

Select the right number of cells - yay! Finally it pastes the way I want, although it seems to have created a new (unused) row.

Oh well, now paste the second half.  This also works but creates a new column. Strange.

Let's delete the new column. Go to the pointer...why can't I select it?  Maybe I have to still be in table mode. Yes ,that's it.  I can select the column now, and a right-click now offers me Delete Column(s).  I wonder why I couldn't do Delete Rows before.  Delete.

Somewhat annoying - the table has now expanded each column to preserve the table size, so since it added the spurious column it's now too wide.

Oh good - Shift+Mouse scroll still takes me horizontally. Quick check - Ctrl+Mouse scroll also does zoom. Good!

Right, now how do I adjust the column widths to suit the contents?  Ah - auto-fit to contents.  That sounds right.

Yikes - that's horrible.

Before:

image.thumb.png.c1b24cb6912c97d9c7e783e2c1583499.png 

After:

image.thumb.png.c4320162de2a8da46cb37005f20186fe.png
 

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Okay, now got the sizes right with some manual moving around.  How do I turn off the borders?

Select all, border, click all to try to turn it off (usually a toggle). Hmmm.  It appears not now.  And there's no preset for "no borders".

A bit of playing around - eventually found I had to select a certain border set then set it to "none" - that wasn't obvious, and is slow for such a common operation :-(

Adding footer with charity details and links. Text added - check. Select email address and hit Ctrl+K - standard shortcut (on Windows) for hyperlink.  What has that done?  It seems to have taken me to the layers, not opened something where I can add a hyperlink :-(

In fact, I can't find a hyperlink anywhere!  That seems a huge omission to me!  I've created a Print document, but I also want to export to PDF and have hyperlinks in that version.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Just downloaded and installed 133. It would have been nice if AP had told me there was another Beta, rather than saying "this Beta has ended", but at least it took me to the right web page where I could find it.

Installation all very smooth, and clicking on my taskbar button set up with the previous version still works (which I can't say for other products I've used - iTunes seems to regularly break this).

I opened it and was prompted that "unsaved work has been found. Do you want to restore it?".  Which is good...but I felt left a bit in the dark.  What was this unsaved work?  Did I care about it or not?  What relationship does it have to other documents, and will opening it overwrite or confuse matters in some way?

It would have been nice to have a bit more information about what the work was before making the decision whether to restore it.

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  • 1 month later...

Just installed 157 - nice and simple, though again I had to go through and download for myself.

Working on another flyer based on the previous one (though now portrait A5 instead of landscape)

Copied and pasted logo. Fine

Copied and pasted text box with a couple of different styles and about 30 words - seemed to take a long time to paste in :-S

Now editing the text; I want a subheading, so change style to Heading 2. Where do I do that? Ah - using the Paragraph tab.  A bit confusing, but I'm sure I can get used to it.

Oh, that's left-justified, I want it centered.

Making this paragraph centered is easy enough once I work out where to look, but I want to change the style itself.

 - click on the style drop-down in here - no, there's no option there to edit the style or update it to match current.

Oh - there's a text style tab as well.  Can change it from there.

Rummaging around in preferences, I see there's a light style as well as dark  - much preferred.  Also gray level for pasteboard - though it would be better if it had some indication of which end was which - I assumed left was lighter, and hence that my changes weren't happening live.

Interesting.  I had changed something which meant I needed a restart.  When I came back, everything was back to dark UI...until I went into preferences and made a change, at which point it suddenly snapped to the preferences I had set up previously.

Also, everything looks very pixellated in the document in this version.  I don't remember that previously.  See attachment.

AffinityPixellated.png

Though it prints fine and looks fine when exported to PDF.

Going across to PagePlus to see if it is the same there. Copy-paste of everything just comes in as a bitmap - strange.  Surely there should be some other formats?

Okay, copy/paste the text - that also just comes in as a bitmap!  That should CERTAINLY be rich text as well.  ...but at least it's a cleaner bitmap than AP manages to show in the editing.

More playing around - hmmm.  I miss the box at the bottom of the selected set of objects to allow me to group there directly.

I also find it confusing that I can't click on the border of the text box to stop being in text mode and go back to selection mode.  It's annoying having to go all the way back to the toolbar.  In fact, I find the tool selection less obvious here, because it seems to try to keep the same tool unless told otherwise, whereas I'm used to it reverting to the pointer tool much more.

---

Oooo - that's not very helpful:

Just went to check the Body text paragraph spacing and change it if necessary.  I get presented with a box saying "[No change]" and no indication of what is being inherited.  Also no easy way of going to the base style the setting is inherited from.

---

Went to add a new page.  Unintuitive icon - I only knew I had the right one because of the tooltip.  Why no + sign?

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Adding a table.  It's all too tight - how do I add spacing between the rows?

  • There doesn't seem to be anything in the Table menu.  
  • Table->Format only has one entry - Default
  • Nothing obvious on right-click.  There's Increase Leading, but that doesn't seem to do it.
  • Spacing affects the character spacing within a line.

:-(

Okay, I managed by stretching the table.

---

Applied "No line" style to the table with all cells selected - only affected the outer border, not every cell.

I can't get rid of the lines above and below row 2 of 3!  Nothing I try affects them.

Now found the "stroke" toolbar.  Useful...but where's "none"?  And that doesn't seem to affect row 2 either.

Okay, the only way I seem to be able to do it is to select the cells I want a border round (or don't want a border round) with multiple cells selected, and then specifically change the line to something different and then to the option I want. Yuck!

Another slightly counter-intuitive thing. I had row three (of four) selected. I right-clicked on row 2 and selected Insert Row.

  • I expected the new row as row 3 (after my right-click row) with the selection still remaining on what has now become row 4.
  • I actually had the new row inserted as row 4 after the selected row.

I've managed to get spacing around the table rows by stretching the table.  But I've now gone onto a second line on one table row, and it's lost the spacing :-(

Arrgghh! Tried to copy and paste a table since I've got it set up how I want it.

Pasting works fine, but drops it in the middle of the page (and doesn't replicate the width).  I want to move it.

Of course, I can't, because I'm in table mode, not pointer mode!

Switch back to pointer mode and move it...now I can't select the columns by hovering above the table!  I have to explicitly switch back to table mode first.

Another example of making it too hard with modes, and not giving me ways to switch mode where I'm working (PagePlus managed this much better).

More on modes: why do I have to double-click to start editing in a text box. A single-click in the box should be sufficient. (At least a double-click does work)

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Just added an email address, and hit Ctrl+K to make it a hyperlink. This didn't work - in fact, I can't quickly find how to make it a hyperlink at all.  Looked under right-click while selected. Looked under Text.  Looked under Text->Insert.  Looked under Edit.

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Went to print my A5 document with 2 pages on A4.  Tried to work out how to get both pages side-by-side.

  • Single didn't work (I suppose that can be argued)
  • Tiled didn't work either (why not?)
  • N-up seems to be trying to fit multiple pages, but fails because it doesn't rotate the A4 to landspace and so only one A5 page fits.
    • Oh - it was set to 1x1; when I set it to 2 across it gets it right.  But it shouldn't be this difficult!  This is a very standard thing to do - there should be a print option that just works this out.

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So I pretty much managed to get the flyer I wanted, but had to compromise on the table lines.  And it took me about 3 hours, instead of the 15 minutes it would have taken in PagePlus.

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