Decisions to make - Affinity Publisher or MS Publisher

[John Bateson]

Just a thought

I bought Qty 5 PP4 quite a while ago for distribution among a team. Although the team has effectively disbanded I am still using PP9 quite extensively for relatively minor skilled publishing work, mainly instruction books with lots of diagrams.

I hate using old software and while PagePlus X9 doesn't quite reach that line, it will in the future. There are many examples of such things happening, when support disappears and the programs become unstable and unusable over time.

Given the uncertainty about being able to import from PP X9 (and all the older versions) and given the expected price with all the chargeable updates as we work through the versions, it is now likely that Microsoft Publisher as part of my Office 365 suite must become a candidate. It has its critics and is not wonderful for artists, but it has very acceptable layout tools and I may as well train myself in that rather than a new package such as Affinity Publisher and save the extra pension money. After all I am rapidly, (and far too fast in my opinion), approaching my own use-by date!

I fully understand and respect the decisions made by the developers and I have argued many times with software projects that it is often better to start from scratch rather than cover all the bases and over complicate the final package - there are still Windows 98 users out there unhappy because they have been cut-off but sometimes you just have to bury the old stuff, its too expensive to keep. However, if the community is large, the tears of dismay will cause a flood.

I wish the developers the best of times and not the worst of times - they will get a lot of stick whatever they do.

John

 

 

[Bad_Wolf]

If you rather prefer to put your fate at Microsoft instead of Affinity, go ahead. If you want to use bloated software based on a decades old codebase; it is your decision. I know why I am choosing for the whole Affinity range for sure. When you compare Microsoft Office 365 then you have to admit that Affinity is cheap. Most updates of the Affinity range where free.

If you already have Designer and your DTP needs are not so demanding, you better use Designer. I used it to create one or two page documents and it works fine. Also Affinity Publisher has a more comprehensive toolset for images and drawing than MS Publisher.

As you said yourself, you are doing minor skilled publishing work. Why not keep your old publications in PagePlus and do any new work in Affinity Publisher? On this moment it is in beta stage but I have the feeling Affinity Publisher is on the right track.

Give Affinity Publisher a chance, download and try the beta. Only then you can make the right decision.

[PaulEC]

Quote

I hate using old software 

I really don't understand the problem with using old software, as long as it works well and continues to do the job you need it to do. 

Personally I wouldn't touch MS Publisher with a barge pole! I'd go with Bad_Wolf – Keep using PagePlus for old projects and gradually move over to Affinity Publisher for new work.

[t94xr]

I've used Publisher for years, but I have no idea what Microsoft seems to be doing with it.
Im a computer technician - even this confuses me.

It's a PC exclusive but they have every other Office application on macOS except Publisher, I see they now include it with Office365, but the fact that it's never been ported to macOS is somewhat confusing.

From a longevity aspect, AffPublisher seems like a more logical choice because of it being Windows & macOS, whereas MSPublisher is Windows only, with no conversion options to other applications.

[jmwellborn]

Chacun a son goût.  (IPad refuses to enter the accent mark for the a.).   I am buying Affinity Publisher the moment it is available.  

[MikeW]

MS Publisher gets a worse rap than it deserves. 

You have MS Publisher already. Try using it for your needs. If it works well for your needs, keep using it. You pay for it already. 

If you run into issues, then check out other potential candidates. There is no real rush, only self imposed ones.

[RickyO]

Just about one bit in your post:

If anyone is still using Win98, or anything earlier than Win7 for that matter, I hope you consider the issue of your workstation being vulnerable to a host of security issues which not only affect you, but in some instances, everyone else your machine can connect to directly or indirectly.

It's a matter of security; and when a previous version of an OS or even an application is dropped from being supported (as all Windows prior to 7 have been), it means no one is monitoring whether it is vulnerable to being hacked and used in hundreds of nefarious ways.

Please, if you are using unsupported offerings, please update or replace.

Thanks.

[Tams]

MS Publisher is great for quick and easy projects.  It quickly becomes bogged down if you have lots of images though.  It doesn't flow very well with adjusting images though, as you need to remove each image, edit it elsewhere, and then add it back in.  Affinity has the "personas" to make it flow much better.  

I still use MS Publisher as it's text support (especially for non-Romance languages) is great.  A lot of it's great features come from it sharing a base with the other Office programmes.

My main gripe with it though, is that while Microsoft still support it, they have added almost nothing to it in years.  With Office 2019 being basically a sum up of the changes to Office 365, Microsoft only mentioned Publisher as a "it also includes this" thing.  I get the feeling they don't see it as a serious publishing programme and consider it 'done' now.  To be fair, as a casual programme it is fine and actually quite feature rich.