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Affinity Publisher 1.7.0.305 ready for release? (split)


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On 4/29/2019 at 6:15 AM, gkluther said:

I am still looking for templates in Affinity Publisher similar to the ones that are in PagePlus X9.

I wouldn't expect (or want) any templates in a pro level software ... if I need or want templates I'm going to create them myself or buy them somewhere. I fear that a set of flashy, colourful templates will keep the professional users away. Neither InDesign nor Quark come with any templates and that's the league Serif is playing in.

If someone needs templates, they can just buy them online (there's plenty available).

IF templates were supplied to any extent, I would expect them for separate download on the Serif website - either free paid - but not included in the app.

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3 hours ago, Jens Krebs said:

I wouldn't expect (or want) any templates in a pro level software ... if I need or want templates I'm going to create them myself or buy them somewhere.

It may not be common in professional layout applications, but that doesn't mean it is useless.  If you don't want them, just don't use them.

I agree that including a bunch of standard ones is much less necessary than in consumer-level products, but having the infrastructure in place to support creating our own as "starter documents" we can pick from a list would make things a bit easier, and offering a reasonable number of starter templates as examples to help less experienced users wouldn't hurt too much of anything.

I don't see this feature as necessary and there are other things I would hope would get a much higher priority, but at the same time I don't object to it and I can see it as having at least some value, as long as using them is optional.

 

3 hours ago, Jens Krebs said:

Take a look at the "constraints" panel, that's probably exactly what you're looking for:

Yes, that could easily be a strong starting point for providing for templates with content that adapts to the page size, though it would be even more useful if constraints could be created between sibling layers and not just between a layer and its parent.  The new pinning behavior in Publisher should actually give us parts of that if configured correctly (at least some of the parts that are missing from the constraints solution), assuming the effects of Designer's constraints and Publisher's pinning interact usefully...  haven't really looked into that yet.  The current constraints solution in Designer is very similar to the "old" way of setting up constraints in Xcode (and earlier than that in Interface Builder) when developing application user interfaces on the Mac.

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7 hours ago, ErrkaPetti said:

the feeling is that it is stable enough for release...

I need to disagree with this one.  Global and spot colors in particular have some issues with the way that they are currently handled which are borderline on showstoppers for some users and which are kind of silly in their current state (in some cases the wrong swatch gets highlighted in the swatches panel when selecting an object even though the object itself has the correct one applied to it, for example) - these kinds of problems were already bad for Designer but are much more of an issue for Publisher.  There are also the various UI glitches that have been reported that need to be addressed, cases where opening documents from earlier versions produces different results in the newer version, etc.  Documentation is not complete yet.

In terms of the feature set, I do think they have a good enough working set for a first release... but I wouldn't want to see a production release until some of those more fundamental problems are fixed.  Lots of loose ends to tie off.

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10 hours ago, fde101 said:

I need to disagree with this one.  Global and spot colors in particular have some issues with the way that they are currently handled which are borderline on showstoppers for some users and which are kind of silly in their current state (in some cases the wrong swatch gets highlighted in the swatches panel when selecting an object even though the object itself has the correct one applied to it, for example) - these kinds of problems were already bad for Designer but are much more of an issue for Publisher.

Agreed. Some of the big problem areas for me are swatches, layers, and printing options. I can use the app for little stuff but for more serious work like at my day job, they are show stoppers for sure. I was actually shocked that someone would even contemplate the app being ready for release this early.

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9 hours ago, ErrkaPetti said:

Exactly, what’s wrong with present version of Affinity Publisher?

Please keep in mind that one of the major features is not even there, yet: the Designer and Photo personas. This is perhaps not wrong but certainly missing before an official release :)

d.

Affinity Designer 1 & 2   |   Affinity Photo 1 & 2   |   Affinity Publisher 1 & 2
Affinity Designer 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Photo 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad

Windows 11 64-bit - Core i7 - 16GB - Intel HD Graphics 4600 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
iPad pro 9.7" + Apple Pencil

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12 minutes ago, dominik said:

Please keep in mind that one of the major features is not even there, yet: the Designer and Photo personas. This is perhaps not wrong but certainly missing before an official release :)

d.

Personas will be available in the retail version.

All the latest releases of Designer, Photo and Publisher (retail and beta) on MacOS and Windows.
15” Dell Inspiron 7559 i7 Windows 10 x64 Pro Intel Core i7-6700HQ (3.50 GHz, 6M) 16 GB Dual Channel DDR3L 1600 MHz (8GBx2) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 4 GB GDDR5 500 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD UHD (3840 x 2160) Truelife LED - Backlit Touch Display
32” LG 32UN650-W display 3840 x 2160 UHD, IPS, HDR10 Color Gamut: DCI-P3 95%, Color Calibrated 2 x HDMI, 1 x DisplayPort
13.3” MacBook Pro (2017) Ventura 13.6 Intel Core i7 (3.50 GHz Dual Core) 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3 Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 1536 MB 500 GB SSD Retina Display (3360 x 2100)

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7 hours ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Personas will be available in the retail version.

Yes, but we can't help to test them unless they become available in the betas too.

Considering that this is seemingly a major feature of the program Serif will need to decide if it is worth having community help with that or they prefer the increased risk of a smaller group of testers.

 

17 hours ago, ErrkaPetti said:

Come’on,  don’t be that negative!

He is being realistic.

 

17 hours ago, ErrkaPetti said:

Exactly, what’s wrong with present version of Affinity Publisher?

You mean besides the various bugs and the mishandling of spot and global colors, an area which is critical to multiple forms of high-end printing, which seems to be a primary target of the initial release?

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I thought I read somewhere recently that personas would be activated in a later beta, but now I can't find such a quote. One thing I did find from early in the beta process:

But 1.7 customer betas for Designer and Photo have been available for some time now, so it seems some plans have changed.

 

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7 minutes ago, garrettm30 said:

I thought I read somewhere recently that personas would be activated in a later beta, but now I can't find such a quote. One thing I did find from early in the beta process:

But 1.7 customer betas for Designer and Photo have been available for some time now, so it seems some plans have changed.

 

The change of plan is mentioned here:

 

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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3 hours ago, ErrkaPetti said:

If you Pro Pub-guys out there wants all of the QE or Adobe Indesigns features into first version of Affinity Publisher, can you perhaps get along with that Serif will release two versions of Publisher, one Publisher Home (for average user with printing at home or small offices) and later an Pro version for large corporations and professional users?

In this tempo otherwise we don't see any release this year from Serif...

For me recent beta on both Win and Mac is enough for me concerning stability and features... And, treaten as Home version... 

Serif isn't going to split APub into two paths (Home/Pro). And it isn't needed as Serif has stated that when there are enough features to be useful--and assuming the majority of bugs and UI issues are resolved--they will release it.

This release version simply is not going to include all the "must haves" from anyone clamoring over so-called pro features (for proof, just look at the other applications in the Affinity line-up). While Serif may still add this or that, I suspect APub is rather feature complete (or nearly) and just needs wrinkles ironed out.

Mike

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On 5/10/2019 at 2:36 PM, fde101 said:

You mean besides the various bugs and the mishandling of spot and global colors, an area which is critical to multiple forms of high-end printing, which seems to be a primary target of the initial release?

Ha, that's cute. The other day, I had to do a book cover in spot colours, and just couldn't, for the life of me, get InDesign to respect the separations from a linked file generated in Illustrator. I tried everything: saving it in .Ai format, in .Ai format with a .PDF stream, in pure .PDF format, in .EPS format, nothing worked. I kept getting CMYK output no matter what I did, and yes, I knew I had the correct export settings in ID and the separations were indeed correct inside of Ai.

I ended up linking a new version of that file with only the black elements and the duotone .EPS pictures I had done in Photoshop, and pasting the spot colour vector elements atop it, directly from Illustrator into InDesign (which is hugely impractical, as vector editing in ID, if I ever need to do it, is a total disaster). A complete shambles, if you ask me. Why in the hell did ID get the separations right in the photos' channels and not in the objects' fills? Also, and maybe I'm just misremembering it or something, it seems I can no longer do proper separation previews in Acrobat Pro, either (just the ink coverage estimate), so if I want to do those I have to reimport my final .PDF exports made with ID back into Ai just to check them.

If APub can at least get all of this right, and I believe it will eventually do so, I'll be immediately sold. As for the entire transparency and gradient situation when it comes to spot colours, I will obviously check it again, as I always do periodically (I even have a test file ready, with all possible combinations, such as gradient from 100% to 0% opacity, from one spot colour to white, from one spot colour to another, and different blending modes of spot colours on top of others), but the last time I did it seemed to be coming along rather nicely. For comparison, back in the pre-v.1.6 days of AD they'd mostly get converted into CMYK at the slightest disturbance.

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