Import or open Pages files in Aff Publisher

[Seadog]

Any plans for an import facility for Apple Pages files to Aff Publisher? Or ability to safely open Pages documents in Publisher?

This would be a great transition tool, making Publisher even more attractive among those with standingPages documents.

[Castle Al]

Hello,
I'm also a Pages user. Yet, some jobs won't be done with Pages because it lacks few tiny details to use it professionally. Publisher - it's my guess - needs preciser indications to "translate" the documents in a proper way.

[Seadog]

11 hours ago, Castle Al said:

Hello,
I'm also a Pages user. 

Yes, I agree completely with Castle Al.

Pages is lacking a number of controls. For the other controls which ARE present in Pages and available in AffPub, the precision levels in Pages are nowhere as high as AffPub's.

[JohnoFon]

On 5/23/2019 at 6:57 PM, Seadog said:

Pages is lacking a number of controls. For the other controls which ARE present in Pages and available in AffPub, the precision levels in Pages are nowhere as high as AffPub's.

I'm not sure that I understand why missing or low precision controls in Pages files prevent their import; I can see why it can't be a two-way process, but part of the reason for importing is to get access to better facilities.

I have a number of Pages documents that I would like to combine into one AffPub publication. The only option seems to be to to cut and paste the text, redefine the paragraph- and character- styles used (a one-off operation for the document) and then manually select the text and assign it to the styles - a major task in this case. (There is another option, of course; export the Pages files to PDFs and place the images. This is ugly, and involves keeping both the editable Pages documents and the linked PDFs.)

I'm guessing that the demand for such a facility would be too low for it to be worth implementing, so I'm adding this comment in the hope that some wise person will say 'You can get the effect you need by...'

[Fixx]

5 hours ago, JohnoFon said:

only option seems to be to to cut and paste the text, redefine the paragraph- and character- styles used (a one-off operation for the document) and then manually select the text and assign it to the styles

My opinion is that professional way would be to save .pages as .docx and import that. Jettison all styles information and use you own styles. Using Pages for layout design, all the way or as starting point is not professional. Too many things can go wrong or demand endless adjustment.

[shoofly]

It's simple. Just export your pages file to pdf and open the pdf.

[Castle Al]

1 hour ago, shoofly said:

It's simple. Just export your pages file to pdf and open the pdf.

 Yes, this is also possible. It's a good tip. Yet, it's also possible to copy-paste, of course. My idea was to find a direct load of content, shape and typo.

As for PDF imports, it's the technic I use to get the books done with the original text bilt in Scrivener.

@Fixx: By default, I try to us .doc or .docx as less as possible (old habits, I guess).
Thanks for your attention all together. 🙏

[garrettm30]

58 minutes ago, Castle Al said:

@Fixx: By default, I try to us .doc or .docx as less as possible (old habits, I guess).

I can understand. Nevertheless, as an interchange format for getting text from Pages into Publisher, it is likely to be the best solution for the near future at least. And usually I find its results to be as effective (besides the extra step) as any direct import of .pages files could be.

[Castle Al]

Let's now see what happens with the 1.8 upgrades... 🎶

[Michael Collie]

On 10/3/2019 at 6:34 PM, Fixx said:

My opinion is that professional way would be to save .pages as .docx and import that. Jettison all styles information and use you own styles. Using Pages for layout design, all the way or as starting point is not professional. Too many things can go wrong or demand endless adjustment.

This side of having a pages import option, this is absolutely the professional way to go. And it's so simple.

[debweb]

I'd like to join in on this idea. I have also recently worked a lot with pages and created a magazine with a focus on design. I'm also using Toolbox for pages as it offers many graphics and layouts that can be adjusted or simply used as an inspiration. As this is such a great quarry for ideas and elements, I would like to continue using it. I also like the way Pages snaps objects and it the results look really great (in contrast to Word) - BUT if you work on longer projects it gets a little bit tricky and it lacks certain features. That's where an import with full access to all objects and text frames would come in handy.

So - well, soon it's Christmas ;-) I'll write it on my wishlist for Santa :-) 

PS: I've been using Affinity Designer for 2 years now and I love it. I've only now switched to Photo (from Photoshop CS6) and I'm currently reading the workbook. Also, I've bought Publisher and the newly released workbook for that , but haven't had a chance to work with it so far. Just wanted to let the Affinity Team know that the more I learn about (and with) your products the more flashed I am. It really has a great workflow and it just feels "right" or rather natural to use it as a Mac User. 

[fde101]

Pages has a proprietary file format that may change from one release to the next.  It is unlikely that Serif will implement an import feature for Pages documents for the same reasons that they are not providing one for INDD files.