switch between .afpub & .afdesign

[thomaso]

I had started a document in AfPublisher and would now rather continue with AfDesigner.
I noticed that I can simply open the .afpub file in AfDesigner (see only 1 spread) and even can save it as .afpub.

But is it healthy to simply open the document file in the other app - or can AfDesigner sooner or later get problems with an earlier .afpub file?
Should I copy / paste my objects from the .afpub into a new .afdesign?

[markw]

As I understand it, internally all three Affinity file types are no different to each other and each app reads/writes them in the same way.
It really is just the extension names that are different. And this is only so that your OS can know which app it should default to to launch any given Affinity file when double clicking it.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

I noticed that I can simply open the .afpub file in AfDesigner (see only 1 spread)

If you're on 1.7.1 that should be "see only 1 spread at a time". You can navigate between the spreads using the page navigation tool in the lower left corner of the window, on the left side of the status bar.

[thomaso]

Thank you mark and Walt.

I now noticed that the two different ways to handle pages versus artboards can make it difficult once an .afdesign file got opened & saved in AfPublisher with artboards converted to pages. In that case, back to AfDesigner, it gets much more complicated to restore all pages as artboards.

[markw]

Ah, yes, artboards…
So far I’m finding it better not to accept the kind offer made by Publisher to convert them into Spreads! (Until I’m sure I don’t have to have them remain artboards).
But even then I think I would duplicate the file, so I always had an artboard backup version to fall back to if need be.
It’s early days still for this 3 Apps, 1 File Type and there are many wrinkles still to iron out before we get totally fluid round tripping of any given document.
In this case it would perhaps be good if Designer could offer to turn Spreads into artboards maybe?

[R C-R]

On 6/20/2019 at 7:56 PM, walt.farrell said:

If you're on 1.7.1 that should be "see only 1 spread at a time". You can navigate between the spreads using the page navigation tool in the lower left corner of the window, on the left side of the status bar.

Thanks greatly for mentioning that!!! It is small enough that I never would have noticed it otherwise.

Now, if we can get keyboard shortcut support for that in AD, AP, & the corresponding APub personas, it would be awesome. I use an Apple Extended keyboard with Home, End, Page Up, & Page Down keys, so in APub's Publisher Persona, I have assigned them to the 4 navigator buttons, which makes it quick & easy to go to the first, last, next or previous spread. The buttons work in all the APub personas, so it should be possible for the shortcuts to work in them too.