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Affinity Publisher and opening PPP files


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Hi.  As a long established user of Serif Pageplus,  I discovered the free public beta of Affinity Publisher tonight.  I downloaded and installed it,  attempted to open a Pageplus document,  only to be met with 'This file type is not supported'.

That's going to be a bit of a problem because at the last count,  I have 54 Pageplus documents which I need to access on a regular basis.

So,  are there any plans to allow Affinity to support these Pageplus files?  As it stands a the moment,  Affinity is of no use to me.

Thanks.

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Hi.  Well your suggestion to 'Just use Page Plus when you want to work with PagePlus files' is nonsense and bad advice for two reasons;  For one,  it's a discontinued product and will eventually become obsolete thus rendering all these documents obsolete also and two,  there's no reason for anybody to buy or upgrade to Affinity.

I should really make try and make this go viral.  I've never seen any company shoot itself in the foot and attempt to lose their customer base as blatantly as this.

It's beyond my comprehension. 

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3 minutes ago, Mist001 said:

For one,  it's a discontinued product and will eventually become obsolete thus rendering all these documents obsolete also

Serif have promised to patch PagePlus as long as they’re still selling it if and when Microsoft issues a Windows update that breaks something.

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and two,  there's no reason for anybody to buy or upgrade to Affinity.

Affinity Publisher is not an upgrade of PagePlus: it’s a completely separate product which just happens to come from the same software manufacturer. For a Mac user and/or someone who wants integration with the other Affinity apps, there’s every reason to buy Affinity Publisher if it meets your needs.

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There are far more people complaining about the lack of import of InDesign documents than of PagePlus documents.  The products are targeting slightly different market spaces so the majority of the target user base couldn't care less about lack of PagePlus import.

InDesign and QuarkXPress probably can't read your old documents either.

However, you *can* export a PDF from PagePlus then import that PDF into Affinity Publisher.  It won't be perfect, but as the Serif team pointed out several times in the other thread (which was locked because of all the noise that wasn't leading anywhere), and importer for PagePlus documents wouldn't really be perfect right now either as a lot of features cannot be translated directly between the programs.  They are fundamentally different from each other.

 

It is also kind of telling that when Apple released Final Cut Pro X, it was not able to import projects from the previous version, Final Cut Pro 7, for similar reasons.  Even now Apple points to a 3rd-party product to assist with migrating projects from Final Cut Pro 7 to X; they didn't bother to provide this themselves, with a $300 program.  So I don't think your argument is going to get very far.

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7 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Serif have promised to patch PagePlus as long as they’re still selling it if and when Microsoft issues a Windows update that breaks something.

Affinity Publisher is not an upgrade of PagePlus: it’s a completely separate product which just happens to come from the same software manufacturer. For a Mac user and/or someone who wants integration with the other Affinity apps, there’s every reason to buy Affinity Publisher if it meets your needs.

That just proves my point about a company shooting itself in the foot and losing its existing customer base.  What's the ratio of Windows users to Mac users?

So Serif in their wisdom,  are losing the majority of their existing users and chasing after a niche market which is already populated with programs which from my understanding,  are far superior to Serif products.  I'm thinking things like Quark.  the Adobe programs and so on.  Firmly established Mac programs

It makes absolutely no sense at all.

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6 minutes ago, Mist001 said:

So Serif in their wisdom,  are losing the majority of their existing users

Not sure where you get this "fact" from. I would think it much more likely that the majority of PagePlus users are either still using PagePlus, moving over to Affinity or (like me) using both!

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15 minutes ago, Mist001 said:

So Serif in their wisdom,  are losing the majority of their existing users and chasing after a niche market which is already populated with programs which from my understanding,  are far superior to Serif products.  I'm thinking things like Quark.  the Adobe programs and so on.  Firmly established Mac programs
It makes absolutely no sense at all.

I suppose by niche market you mean the professional sector. There are many things that can be decisive for users: Price, sales model, modern programming, flexibility and quality, etc.

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I think you're wrong because (like me),  they wont use or buy Affinity,  they'll stop using PP eventually,  having looked for another software by a company which actually has and established roadmap.

I've already removed Affinity from my PC because it's no use to me.  How many other PP users are going to be the same?  The majority,  I reckon.

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Just now, Michail said:

I suppose by niche market you mean the professional sector. There are many things that can be decisive for users. Price, sales model, modern programming, flexibility and quality, etc.

Mac is a niche market compared to Windows,  no getting away from that.  The figures prove that.

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12 minutes ago, Mist001 said:

Mac is a niche market compared to Windows,  no getting away from that.  The figures prove that.

Humans are a niche market compared to cockroaches.  As cockroaches are unlikely to buy these products due to lack of an appropriate language translation I suppose they should just give up and stop making them?

The fact that Windows continues to outsell the MacOS seems to be evidence that most people in the world are willing to put up with inferior products.  Either that or it simply takes multiple Windows systems to do the work of one Mac.

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Without wanting to get into the whole "Windows vs. Mac" hoo-haa:
@Mist001 Looking purely at the numbers, where do you get your information about OS X being a niche market compared to Windows?
And do you mean the total number of installed copies of OS X (and variants) as compared to installed copies of Windows, or do you mean number of users on each (including distributed/server software)?
Does this include/exclude desktop, laptop, tablet, and/or phone installations and/or users for each OS?
Are you also putting those numbers into the context of the desktop publishing, illustration, photo editing or design/creative business areas?
And how do you also consider those numbers in relation to the people who might want to get into those business areas but haven't yet been able to do so because of hardware/software price/availability etc?

Basically, how do you count the number of people who might want to get into desktop publishing, for example, on a Mac or Windows - it doesn't really matter - but haven't yet because of some unknown reason? You can't reasonably count what you cannot know so you can't reasonably compare that to anything.

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LOL!!  Are you of the belief that Mac users are at least equal to the number of Windows users?

Maybe it's a Serif/Affinty thing,  but are you all daft or something?  First we have a company which releases new software which isn't backwards compatible with users existing documents and expects everyone to make the transition and buy their new software and now we get someone who thinks that Mac user numbers are on a par with Windows users?

LOL!! again.  Totally whacky forum you have here!

 

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If every Mac user was in need of APub, it wouldn't hold a candle to the number of PC user that truly had need of a layout application. That' just by going on numbers alone.

But that isn't the issue. I too believe that Serif could write an import filter. Failing that, it's been suggested that even an import filter for the WritePlus export would be of benefit (but really only for books in my opinion). As for an import filter, they only need to map what exists in both applications, which even at this point in APub's life would account for a lot of direct import.

PDF is OK from PP, but even it could be improved (and not only for PP PDFs).

However one looks at the issue, Serif is ignoring a goodly amount of former customers by not writing even a rudimentary import for PP files. But it is their call whether any particular PP user agrees with the decision or not.

I've faced this same issue with other software. The way I typically handle it is to use the different/new software going forward for new projects, use the former/old software to update existing publications and slowly, over time, port those projects that are important to the different/new software.

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I don't think anyone here has said that the number of OS X installations was - even closely - equal to the number of Windows installations.
I don't have the facts to hand but I have seen way more Windows machines being used than OS X machines and I don't think my experience is way off most people's general experiences. I think it's probably very reasonable to say that there are way more Windows machines than OS X machine in the world.

But that's not the point I was trying to make.

To try and clear things up - and I'm sure this can be sorted reasonably easily - lets go back to the start and take things slowly because I might have missed something.
In your second post you stated: "I've never seen any company shoot itself in the foot and attempt to lose their customer base as blatantly as this."

So, my first questions is: How do you calculate that Serif will be losing their customer base?

Consider these scenarios:
* Existing PagePlus customers can keep PagePlus - no loss of customer base there.
* People who want PagePlus can still buy it - chance of an increase in customer base but no loss.
* Existing PagePlus customers who want to also buy Publisher can buy it when it becomes available - they don't need to uninstall PagePlus - so no loss of customer base there, more likely an increase. Some might switch from PagePlus to Publisher (a one-to-one exchange) but no loss of customer base.
* People who are using non-Serif software could see that Publisher isn't for them yet, not purchase Publisher, and keep using their existing software - no loss of Serif customer base there either; no gain but no loss.

So where is the loss of customer base coming from?

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7 minutes ago, GarryP said:

I don't think anyone here has said that the number of OS X installations was - even closely - equal to the number of Windows installations.
I don't have the facts to hand but I have seen way more Windows machines being used than OS X machines and ...

The number of Mac/Win users has held reasonably steady at a 1:10 ratio (Mac:Win) since the 1990s. But the shear numbers that represents today is staggering no matter which side of the equation on sits.

7 minutes ago, GarryP said:

* Existing PagePlus customers can keep PagePlus - no loss of customer base there.
* People who want PagePlus can still buy it - chance of an increase in customer base but no loss.
* Existing PagePlus customers who want to also buy Publisher can buy it when it becomes available - they don't need to uninstall PagePlus - so no loss of customer base there, more likely an increase. Some might switch from PagePlus to Publisher (a one-to-one exchange) but no loss of customer base.
* People who are using non-Serif software could see that Publisher isn't for them yet, not purchase Publisher, and keep using their existing software - no loss of Serif customer base there either; no gain but no loss.

So where is the loss of customer base coming from?

It's never about holding steady at X number of users. A company will die without new users coming on-board. The customer base always has to grow. In the case of APub, Serif does need X number of its current user base to switch. Now with Mac products, though, I suspect that number isn't very high in comparison to a wholly new customer base.

But even with all that, it simply comes down to the bean-counters. Serif has likely weighed the cost to write an import filter (and who exactly would do it? Has the people largely responsible for PP's file format moved on?) against PP user adoption rate and it has likely fell short.

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1 minute ago, Mist001 said:

People that would upgrade,  won't upgrade to a Serif publishing program which isn't compatible with an existing Serif publishing program.  Why buy something if it's of no use to you?

Loss of customer base.

PP users will move to APub. X number of them anyway.

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  • Staff

@Mist001

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums :)

Please be aware that none of these replies above are from Serif Staff. You have posted in the discussions and suggestions section where staff rarely reply in order not to show favouritism on one suggestion over another. There is a long thread about this with staff replies pinned to the top of this forum.

I would say that our income from Mac and Windows is basically evenly split and that both markets are important to us.

Sorry that you are disappointed that we do not plan to load .ppp files. most of the reasons are explained in that thread. If that makes Affinity Publisher of no use to you then sorry, but as no other current (non-legacy) application can load .ppp files either I hope you consider us as a replacement application when you see what else you may wish to invest in going forward.

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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1 hour ago, Mist001 said:

LOL!!  Are you of the belief that Mac users are at least equal to the number of Windows users?

No, but many of us are of the belief that this is completely irrelevant.

What is the general percentage of Windows users that are likely to buy a DTP app compared to the percentage of Mac users that are likely to buy a DTP app?

I would expect a much larger percentage of the Windows crowd to be playing games or maybe doing simple word processing, balancing their checkbooks and the like while the DTP market is more of a niche to begin with - many people benefit from the work done in DTP applications, but relatively few are actually doing it.

Thus I would think it would be a relatively tiny percentage of Windows users who are likely to be interested in such an application (quite possibly due to a legitimate lack of need/interest) compared to the Mac market, a larger percentage of which is likely to be creatives/professionals and thus have interest in such a product.

Knowing that there are a lot more Windows users than Mac users is in and of itself meaningless.

A much more useful piece of information would be how many Windows users are doing desktop publishing compared to how many Mac users are doing desktop publishing, but I don't really have good numbers to provide on that.  At one time when the market was much smaller, the Mac had the clear lead here in terms of numbers, but with the market becoming more accessible and a lot more people jumping on board that may or may not be the case any more.

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1 minute ago, fde101 said:

No, but many of us are of the belief that this is completely irrelevant.

What is the general percentage of Windows users that are likely to buy a DTP app compared to the percentage of Mac users that are likely to buy a DTP app?

I would expect a much larger percentage of the Windows crowd to be playing games or maybe doing simple word processing, balancing their checkbooks and the like while the DTP market is more of a niche to begin with - many people benefit from the work done in DTP applications, but relatively few are actually doing it.

Thus I would think it would be a relatively tiny percentage of Windows users who are likely to be interested in such an application (quite possibly due to a legitimate lack of need/interest) compared to the Mac market, a larger percentage of which is likely to be creatives/professionals and thus have interest in such a product.

Knowing that there are a lot more Windows users than Mac users is in and of itself meaningless.

A much more useful piece of information would be how many Windows users are doing desktop publishing compared to how many Mac users are doing desktop publishing, but I don't really have good numbers to provide on that.  At one time when the market was much smaller, the Mac had the clear lead here in terms of numbers, but with the market becoming more accessible and a lot more people jumping on board that may or may not be the case any more.

That is mostly all a bunch of partisan hooey. The part I highlighted is especially funny.

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2 minutes ago, MikeW said:

That is mostly all a bunch of partisan hooey. The part I highlighted is especially funny.

I am speaking relatively.

 

Consider:

1 hour ago, Patrick Connor said:

I would say that our income from Mac and Windows is basically evenly split and that both markets are important to us.

 

If that is the case, this strongly implies that the percentage of total Windows users buying Serif products is smaller than the percentage of total Mac users buying Serif products.  That is what I was trying to get at in terms of the general market.

 

And the other thread, as mentioned, already speaks to the original thread topic, to which this was kind of on the side anyway.  I am now dropping out of the thread at least as far as this side topic goes.

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