Various suggestions & bugs

[Helmar]

First post. Greetings!

Generally, the folks at Serif should think long and hard if they want to create an Indesign clone, or rethink the way books, brochures etc are being designed. There are some things Indesign does incredibly well, and master pages are one of them.

SUGGESTIONS:

1: One thing I like in particular is the ability to "transfer" objects placed on the master page for editing on the page itself via Shift-Cmd-Click. Otherwise one is limited to how the master page has been set up. EDIT: Ignore. I noticed that this is possible as the master page objects become accessible on their own layer. Well done!

1a: The master key objects become accessible on the page through a separate layer, but this then applies to all the pages using that particular master page. One should be able to disconnect the objects from the master page, so that they become independent and editable.

2: Many other suggestions like anchors, improved and automatic text flow between text boxes have already been made. That applies to the master page, too. If I create linked text boxes on the master page, they should become "hot" on the actual page, so that I can just paste long text into it. 

3: Another thing is text variables. There are some already, although a bit obscure under Studio > Fields, but they should be made more prominent and extended to allow the user to set up his/her own.

4:  What I like about Indesign is the placement of page guides, because I get an input box where I can set the exact location of the guide. Yes, there's the Guides Manager, but that's another window on the screen. It would be nice if selecting or dragging a new guide would show its position right on the status bar at the bottom or somewhere at the top. Indesign solves this elegantly. 

EDIT: That's solved. A popup shows the exact location.

5: Indesign also has a good if somewhat awkward way of handling tabs, showing a tab bar above the text. Perhaps a fixed tab bar (toggleable) can be placed right ontop of the text frame, so that one can easily place and adjust the tabs, the indents etc.

EDIT: That's solved, too. Frame Text Ruler. BAM! Awesome!

BUGS: 

1: The way adding tab stops works is buggy, and not properly thought-out, although the idea of incrementing it has merit. The preset (in my case 10mm) is only applied the second time. The first one is still the old setting, in my case 8mm. The question is whether this should be relative or absolute needs to be answered, because if I put in 8mm, I mean 8mm, not 8mm from the last tab stop. Perhaps it's better to add a second button for this purpose. EDIT: The bug with the wrong units ONLY applies to a manual input/change of the unit. If you click on the arrows, all is fine.

2: Please have a look at the Guides, because I had created one, but that didn't show up in the Guides Manager. Only after selecting it, it became visible in the Guides Manager.

That's just a brief feedback after installing Publisher last night. Can't wait for the final release, and with it the possibility of dumping Adobe's products. Never liked them as a company, although Indesign is a fantastic product. Affinity Publisher is on the right track, and I for instance would pay a lot more than just $45.00 for a finished product that equals or surpasses Indesign.

Cheers,

Helmar

[Helmar]

Another bug: showing a master page text frame / object on an empty space. See attached screenshot.

[Helmar]

Should it really be possible to link master page text frames to one another, even though they are not individual objects?

Why: because if I paste text into one text frame, it will apply to all pages using that master, totally voiding the logic behind linking text frames on the master layer across different pages.

In the second screenshot I added lorem ipsum to the left (first) text frame, and it did it (see layer "name"), yet nothing is visible.