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What is Affinity Publisher For?


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On 9/24/2018 at 12:07 AM, walt.farrell said:

OK, so you don't  consider Word, or LibreOffice, to be (or include) text editors either. Only simple things like Notepad or NotePad++, etc.

Thanks.

No, Walt.farrell, the context was text editors within the programme such as Serif PagePlus has always had. Besides, Publisher can't handle *.docx files,  so the not-unreasonable option of using Word is made clumsy by having to save text as *.rtf.

I've said elsewhere that this is a key difference in approach - is it a "graphic artist's layout pad" or a "book editor's word processor" and the split goes all the way back to the 1980s and Aldus PageMaker or (Corel) Ventura.

I rather suspect the "Mac side", i.e.dyslexic graphic artists, is winning here. :)

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Perhaps we should just agree that we put different interpretations on the phrase "text editor". As it happens, I get my of my content supplied in Word and I edit it there first for word count, spelling and grammar, but if you have to make substantial late changes, you don't really want to have to export as a text file, delete the original text and then re-import the revised text.

As Powderizedbookworm suggests, it's a lot more critical when there' 50,000 words involved...

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On 9/23/2018 at 1:20 PM, powderizedbookworm said:

Basically the question. What is this program for?

If I'm missing something, I would be so grateful if someone could point me right!

The problem that I have always had with Word or other Word Publishing programs when doing graphic design layouts is that they use objects poorly.

Instead of long strings of text, a graphic design uses objects, including text blocks to be place attractively on the page. Programs for weddings, flyers, brochures can certainly be done in Word Processing programs but they are awkward. Apple's Pages is probably the only exception I have seen. It can easily be changed into an object-oriented graphic design program.

Design programs Like Affinity Design can certainly be used to create a multi-page book or program, but they are awkward in handling multiple pages. Creating one page at a time and then printing them one at a time is pretty painful.

Enter Publisher. It has the ability like Designer to create cool pages but it has multiple pages and each page has its own layers. (A feature I am extremely excited about.) At the end you print out a 10-200 page booklet or wedding program with ease.  For me Publisher completes the trilogy.  

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  • 5 months later...
On 9/23/2018 at 1:45 PM, Fixx said:

LaTeX is very special software. If you are happy with it continue using it by all means. MS Word is not fit to produce printed matter.

At the moment, if aim is to design in Publisher a simple book there is nothing to stop creating a 500 page book. Autoflow will typeset it in no time. Styling the text takes some time, but there is nothing in other competing apps to make it quicker either. Further refinement in tools is needed of course as designs grow more complicated but everything is doable with long documents even now. It just takes some manual work.

I am an avid LaTeX user and a scientist, and I think one of the issues that LaTex handles well is references. I use BibTex to produce a bibliography from \cite{} commands in the LaTex sources code. I’d like this compiled referencing to integrate with a publishing app so I can add references, even to figure captions that are associated with artwork that comes in from Designer, etc. What LaTeX does not do well is wrap text around figures and give easily customizable sizing, etc. But the design programs seem to be harder to integrate with the references, and of course any special symbols and mathematical formulae. How do you import and manage bibliographies with Publisher if you have, say 150 individual citations to specific sources in the bibliography?

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9 hours ago, Mas_C said:

How do you import and manage bibliographies with Publisher if you have, say 150 individual citations to specific sources in the bibliography?

Publisher does not currently have citation/bibliography features.

 

No footnotes or endnotes yet either, though they are expected to be added in some future version.

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