Affinity Publisher and opening PPP files

[000]

3 hours ago, Mist001 said:

Well your suggestion to 'Just use Page Plus when you want to work with PagePlus files' is nonsense and bad advice for two reasons;

Absolutely agree … I'll take that under advise and when the next person asks me, I'll tell them to use MS Paint to work with their PagePlus files. ;o)

Just to clarify: This is humorous, don't take my post serious.

[Writewheel]

A long-time user of Serif products here. I'm a bit biased as I've always loved their software. I've had Web/Page/Photo/Movie/Draw Plus. I still have them, apart from WebPlus (now Wordpress), on my Windows desktop despite buying Affinity Photo.

I use the excellent PhotoPlus for quick fiddles with images and it is my default programme, but use Affinity Photo a great deal. 

I've got Publisher and have played with it a great deal. I'm sorry that PP files are not compatible, but then I do not often have to return to old jobs. If I were to ignore Publisher and move to another DTP programme, I first of all expect to get less for my money and, secondly, I expect to have exactly the same problems with the lack of compatibility.

MoviePlus is rather old now. I've moved on to Power Director, but still use MP for a quickie.

In other words, I don't see there's much of a problem. One irritation is that I'm a bit concerned that I won't be able to afford Publisher so I'm reluctant to commit to it at this time, but given Serif's historic pricing I probably will buy it. (I'll expect my loyalty to be taken into account when it goes live, maybe Serif?) If/when I do, I'll still keep PagePlus.

I've used other products, even the pricey ones. I still prefer Serif.

The market's changing all the time and Serif must go with it or else all their products will be legacy.

I'm not a frequent poster on here, although an habitual user of Serif software. I think it is great that they are moving forward.

Derek

 

 

[Alfred]

19 minutes ago, Writewheel said:

One irritation is that I'm a bit concerned that I won't be able to afford Publisher so I'm reluctant to commit to it at this time, but given Serif's historic pricing I probably will buy it. (I'll expect my loyalty to be taken into account when it goes live, maybe Serif?)

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, Derek.

All the indications are that Publisher will be the same price as Designer and Photo (i.e. US$50 or equivalent). There's also a high probability of a generous launch offer, reducing the price significantly for a week or two after the retail release.

Judging by the loyalty offer which was promised to users switching from DP to Designer or from PhP to Photo but didn’t actually happen, I don’t expect Serif to make a similar mistake in relation to PP users.

[Writewheel]

Thanks for the welcome, Alfred. I've been lurking for 6 months or so, seeing what people say about Publisher, and used to go on the previous forums.

There's no doubt I'll buy it. As I say, I'm a long-term customer of Serif, scarily long actually, and I like the business model. 

I'm still learning Photo, there's so much too it. I've got little use for Designer, but I'm tempted. 

Derek

[Blue Rock]

Just to reinforce the PagePlus compatibility issue - I have been a loyal (and happy) user of Serif products for many years and have created a number of textbooks (some over 400 pages) with PagePlus.  I had hoped to upgrade to a supported product.  But the loss of all the integrated features (indexes, table of contents, etc) makes import of a pdf impractical.  I was going to upgrade to Publisher - but now see that that is not going to work.  Fingers crossed that PagePlus will keep functioning.

[fde101]

4 hours ago, Blue Rock said:

I was going to upgrade to Publisher - but now see that that is not going to work.

You could continue using PagePlus for old projects and use Publisher for new ones.  That is where a lot of others have ended up.

[PaulEC]

When Publisher was first released I thought that it was going to be a real problem not being able to open my old PagePlus files in it. In practise it really hasn't been a problem at all. The few old PP files I wanted to use in Publisher I have been able to export using PDF, but most of my PP files are out of date and it was just as easy to redo (and update) them in Publisher. I still need PP for Mail Merge (and to open some PDFs with embedded fonts), but, hopefully, this will be "sorted" in Publisher in the not too distant future. If not, I'll just keep on using PP along  side Publisher. 

[Writewheel]

I'm with PaulEC on this. I've had Publisher almost from the start of its Beta and I'm a long term user of PP, really long.  

I publish books and reissued one of my old ones using Publisher. It was a bit of a pain at first, but I was told by a friend how to remove soft returns and everything flowed easily after that. 

I still use PP to open pdfs as well, but that's all. Having Photo and Designer integrated with Publisher is too good to ignore. I think it was an irritation not to consider users of the previous software, but it's done now. I'll probably only mention it another half-dozen or so times.

I've just published my first Publisher book, made entirely on it, without trial outings on PP. I'm just in the throws of completing the copy on my second book and then I'll prepare this on AP. I'm looking forward to it, and intend to let loose my inner graphic wolf. Publisher is rather fun, and I end up finding little tricks to make things a bit better. 

I find the Affinity how-to videos easy to understand. I've downloaded them and use them as reference. I doubt I'll buy the book if/when it comes out.

[Writewheel]

Sorry, not sure what happened there with the image. 

Derek