Bring Publisher's Frame Text Controls to Designer

[Mark Oehlschlager]

Not all text gets set in multi-page publications (books). Sometimes text gets set on single panel items (e.g., postcards, posters, labels, packaging), and it's not unusual nor unreasonable for one to use Designer to set up these one- or two panel items. But Designer fails to offer the user the same frame text linking and overflow controls found in Publisher.

Please bring the frame text linking and overflow controls found in Publisher over to Designer and Photo.

[walt.farrell]

It's also not unreasonable to use Publisher to set up a one- or two-panel item. It's not just for books, in my opinion, but for any project with more complex text requirements.

It will be interesting to see if Serif brings the additional items to Designer or or whether they decide to emphasize use of Publisher for projects that include text that needs these features.

[Tourmaline]

2 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

It's also not unreasonable to use Publisher to set up a one- or two-panel item. It's not just for books, in my opinion, but for any project with more complex text requirements.

It will be interesting to see if Serif brings the additional items to Designer or or whether they decide to emphasize use of Publisher for projects that include text that needs these features.

The strength of the Affinity trinity is that you can switch from and to all the components with ease. If you need something in Publisher, you can go to publisher and visa versa.

 

I know that a lot of people for instance use Coreldraw for flyers and such(small amount of pages) as it supports multipage...

[Mark Oehlschlager]

@walt.farrell

As cool as the studio linking relationship is between the three Affinity apps, it's an unnecessary annoyance for a user to have to switch over to Publisher to configure hyphenation and justification settings, or to link three text frames to have text flow. 

If the argument is that there should be a hard bright line dividing the purpose of each of the apps, then we wouldn't see "pixel persona" in Designer, and we probably wouldn't even see the basic type tools. The hardline approach would have Designer devoted exclusively to drawing vector shapes, Photo devoted exclusively to manipulating raster images, and Publisher devoted exclusively to page layout and setting type.

But clearly there are sensible overlaps in functionality between the apps, and its not a hard lift for Serif to include the complete type-setting features of Publisher in Designer.

What would the compelling argument be to current and prospective users that Designer should not allow the linking of text frames, or should not allow the setting of hyphenation and justification rules?

[walt.farrell]

3 minutes ago, Mark Oehlschlager said:

What would be the compelling argument be to current and prospective users that Designer should not allow the linking of text frames, or should not allow the setting of hyphenation and justification rules?

What's the compelling argument that Designer should allow that? There was no choice but to use Designer before, but now there is, and to me there is no strong argument to continue using Designer for those cases where Publisher provides a more complete set of functions.

I would say that if you have enough text that you need the more complete typesetting features, then you should be using Publisher. Note, too, that using Publisher does not mean that you have to give up Artboards. Publisher can work with either Pages or Artboards. So when you need those functions just start in Publisher rather than Designer, and use the Designer Persona for the functions that Publisher doesn't provide.

You're right that it would probably be relatively simple for Serif to include the UI portion of those features from Publisher. But there's a fine line (or a slippery slope) that would lead to having one monolithic application with everything in it, which would become unwieldy for the user. And everything that Serif adds into Designer from Publisher will need additional testing, and will have the possibility of introducing more bugs.

Of course, you're free to ask for the functions you want to see

And, in the end, Serif will decide what they want to include.

My point in posting was that from what I see, many users have decided "Publisher is for books" and "Designer is for smaller projects". And that's not right, in my opinion.

[MikeW]

My feeling is that if AD offers hyphenation, the controls should be in it to handle text as per APub.

But that, for myself, doesn't equate the need for linked text frames. Though I also believe AD should have them. There are other features that can remain the domain of APub.

[Mark Oehlschlager]

@MikeW

I simply don't understand the virtue of arguing against linked text frames, or full typographic controls in Designer. Presently it feels like the absence of these features in Designer is either because a) Serif just hasn't gotten around to incorporating these features into Designer since the release of Publisher, or worse b) that Serif has made an arbitrary decision to hobble Designer's typographic control to force a workflow that requires Publisher.

The primary purpose of each of the apps seems clear to me, raster image manipulation (Photo), vector drawing (Designer), and page layout & typesetting (Publisher), but there are clear overlaps, and handling typesetting for cards, posters, labels, etc. should be part of Designer's feature set.

EDIT: I suppose if the design intent is for Designer's purpose is to be strictly for producing vector illustrations, and Publisher's purpose to handle all paragraph length and longer typesetting tasks, one could make the argument for stripping the "Text Frame" tool from Designer leaving only the "Artistic Text" tool for setting decorative type in labels, for example. That would make the dividing line between the apps even starker in terms of purpose.

[MikeW]

I did agree with you re linked text frames...and the hyphenation controls.

However, I can see the point of a dividing line concerning linked frames should Serif not roll them into AD. I *think* Patrick once liked a post I made concerning linked text frames in AD. But even if he did, I don't think that is within his purview to make it happen.

Basically, I think there should be parity in so far is possible between AD and its competitors, and linked text frames are available in inexpensive vector applications (such as Xara Photo & Graphic Designer) to more expensive vector applications (AI, CD, etc.). Without as close to parity as Serif can make AD, it simply loses any competitive advantage it may have.

[Catshill]

I need a diagram in order to understand the functionality of each of the three apps and also to explain when I need to use “persona” (what ever they are) or  break out into the individual app.

I find it all rather confusing.

[Mark Oehlschlager]

@Catshill

You'd probably see a Venn diagram of three overlapping circles, like the one below. Inevitably there are overlapping features for any integrated suite of apps, even though each app has a primary purpose: raster image manipulation (Photo), vector illustration (Designer), and page layout (Publisher).

As for the whole Persona concept, I understand them to be a way to logically present sets of tools for particular tasks as if they were for distinct phases of a workflow, imagining yourself wearing different hats. For example, now I'm focused on manipulating RAW camera files; now I'm doing photo compositing for a photo illustration; now I'm doing vector illustration; now I'm augmenting my vector drawing with a bit of raster art textures; now I'm exporting slices of my artwork for the website team.