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Two items which would serve my publishing needs


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There are two areas where changes to Affinity Publisher would serve me well. 

  • I've always used PagePlus to design advertisements and mail merge them to get them to my customers. The last really useful version for mail merge was PagePlus 6. it had great database integration with many import formats. From PagePlus 7 on, most of the file formats had disappeared. I keep PagePlus 6 installed for my advertising. Truth be told it is still a very good product and functions just fine on Windows 10 Professional... Affinity Publisher has no mail merge that I can see.
  • The way Affinity Publisher handles books is to allow me to "section" portions and allow a differing numbering format for each section. PagePlus 9, and previous versions, also had this feature although it is hidden in the menu system. This "section" feature has limited usefulness in publishing a book, especially a long one. Pageplus 9, and previous versions, has a feature called BookPlus, in the File menu under "new". This allows me to assemble a group of chapters, control the page numbering, add a table of contents, an index, and change the order of the chapters at will. I cannot speak as to how effective it is but I am building a current manual with 12 illustrated chapters and will test it out. Many contributers on the old Serif forums used to say it did the job pretty well... Affinity has nothing like BookPlus that I can find, although it does have both TOC and Index creation ability.
  • So, I understand this is a brand new product and PagePlus was a multi-tool for publishing. I can still use PagePlus. It works just fine under Windows 10. But year by year it gets older and I want to upgrade to Affinity as soon as it has the tools I need. Does Affinity Publisher have plans to expand into book publication and mail merge?

As to functionality in Affinity Publisher, the basics all seem to be there and working. It imports, edits, and exports pdf files. It has the tremendous ability to work across platforms, such as Mac and Windows.

Best Regards,
Will Highfield, USA

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Note that one can install the 32-bit version of PagePlus X7 and up by re-running the installer. That will restore the file types one can use for merging. The issue was that the MS component used cannot readily be used on the 64-bit versions of PagePlus.

Merging will come to APub, but not at first release. Whether it comes during the 1.x release cycle may not be set in stone yet. We won't know unless Serif states it won't nor until the 1.x release roadmap is published. There certainly have been many people requesting it.

Personally, I avoid the Books product in just about every application if I can. There are a few types of publications I do use it for, but not typical books. This too is an oft requested function and, again, no one yet knows when it will be added.

Mike

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Thanks Mike,

That's what I'm thinking. The closest I can get to book assembling is with a word processor. But I'll tell you what, when I'm approaching 100 pages or more, the format starts shifting and becoming unreliable. If BookPlus works for me, and I should know by mid May, I'll write about it here. The older I get (I'm 70 now) the less I need mail merge, but I'm writing more for the classes I teach.

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43 minutes ago, woodworker will said:

Thanks Mike,

That's what I'm thinking. The closest I can get to book assembling is with a word processor. But I'll tell you what, when I'm approaching 100 pages or more, the format starts shifting and becoming unreliable. If BookPlus works for me, and I should know by mid May, I'll write about it here. The older I get (I'm 70 now) the less I need mail merge, but I'm writing more for the classes I teach.

You can post here but make sure to write in the context of why a BookPlus-type of module is needed. Else consider posting on the Serif Legacy Product forum (especially if you run into issues):

https://community.serif.com/forum?sort=DateOfLastPost&products=PagePlus&search=

One of the Serif staff, commenting upon a BookPlus-type of feature wrote something to the effect Serif hopes such a module/application isn't needed. I personally wouldn't use APub for a long novel, much less a longish book heavy with illustrations. And I likely wouldn't even with a Book module/application. Not until such time as there are substantial changes anyway.

Mike

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