Serif was disappointing but, before the Canva purchase, there was cause for some optimism.

And now, with Canva, there are a lot of unknowns.

To be fair, Serif were going in the right direction and doing a lot of good things until Canva.

With Canva, unfortunately, it is not a "lot of unknowns"   Their business model, way of working and plans are fairly well known and understood.  Just not known to many Affinity users. Having had a look around recently, there were warning signs, including from Serif themselves.

dcr wrote:

Anyway, I am kind of waiting on Scribus 1.8 which sounds like it will maybe finally possibly catch-up with other page layout software offerings in terms of UI and usability.

I have heard good things about Scribus. But then I heard good things about Affinity.....   
Sadly the only thing still standing as it was is Adobe Indesign.... I can see my self going back to my perpetual CS6 except it runs on an Intel MAc... If I can get Adobe to let me move the licence to my Win 11 PC then it might be back to inDesign.

I have InDesign CS6 which I still use.

But, I can't activate it on a similar machine if I need to.  That is, I run InDesign CS6 under Snow Leopard.  Snow Leopard doesn't support the communication protocols Adobe's activation servers now use.  That means I would need to switch to a newer OS version.  But that also means the software I run alongside CS6, namely my font management software, would not run.  And I don't know of any font management software available with a perpetual license that will run on older OS versions that CS6 would run best on.

I keep my fingers crossed that maybe Adobe will one day release non-activation versions for CS6 that would let me activate InDesign on a new Snow Leopard install, but the odds of that happening are slim to none.

dcr wrote:

So, yeah, no.  Quark had a chance when Adobe went to subscriptions, but they continually shoot themselves in the foot.  Again and again and again..

Oh I know, but against a Canva who'll give us exactly the quality we paid for, and a Serif who've F^%#ed us with broken software before taking their golden parachutes, ARE they much worse?

I'm going to say yes.

Serif was disappointing but, before the Canva purchase, there was cause for some optimism.

And now, with Canva, there are a lot of unknowns.

With Quark though, I think they've proven themselves to be unreliable.  I don't mean necessarily that the software is unreliable, but that the company and its direction(s) aren't something you can depend on.

Anyway, I am kind of waiting on Scribus 1.8 which sounds like it will maybe finally possibly catch-up with other page layout software offerings in terms of UI and usability.

I have heard good things about Scribus. But then I heard good things about Affinity.....   
Sadly the only thing still standing as it was is Adobe Indesign.... I can see my self going back to my perpetual CS6 except it runs on an Intel MAc... If I can get Adobe to let me move the licence to my Win 11 PC then it might be back to inDesign.

Do you use Quark?

Used to use it back in the 3.32 era (still have it in its box), when it cost the equivalent of US$2700 today.

Yeah, that's always a problem with companies that do online activation. I just noped out of a trial of a new version of one of my coding apps, and it broke the licence of my existing install, and the licencing servers for that version aren't running any more.

i had to recover the preferences file from a backup to get my licence working again.

Oh I know, but against a Canva who'll give us exactly the quality we paid for, and a Serif who've F^%#ed us with broken software before taking their golden parachutes, ARE they much worse?

I'm hoping (having never really seen it) they'll have tear-off palettes etc... If Krita can do it, I can't see why other Opensource content apps don't.

dcr wrote:

mattspace wrote:

You know, Quark are still around, and still do perpetual licences.

Quark seems to be run by scatter-brained half-wits that insist on shooting themselves in the feet.

And this is different from Serif, how?

I find it had to imagine the software is going to be any more janky than Affinity v2 was. I'm going to look at Scribus over the next week or two. I'm sick of documents in orphan formats because of corporate shenanigans.

I agree. The problem, I think, is the corporate shenanigans came (and stayed) from Canva.   My reading (literally) is Serif got an offer they could not refuse, and Canva came in with a complete Canva plan and ignored anything serif wanted to do. Like more V2 updates. So what Serif was for the last 45 years in products, plans and dreams has gone.

As for orphan formats. Make no mistake.  affinity.studio is not Affinity V3 any more than Affinity V2 was Page Plus V22.

dcr wrote:

Quark seems to be run by scatter-brained half-wits that insist on shooting themselves in the feet.

And this is different from Serif, how?

I find it had to imagine the software is going to be any more janky than Affinity v2 was. I'm going to look at Scribus over the next week or two. I'm sick of documents in orphan formats because of corporate shenanigans.

Do you use Quark?

I have, I think, three versions.  Perpetual licenses, supposedly.  When I bought the second version, I had to setup a new account because they changed their system and didn't migrate accounts or something.  Now, they've done it again and, from what I've read, there's no access to prior versions in the new accounts, so you have to contact support for anything related to older accounts/versions.

The versions I have did not have features like Mail Merge.  InDesign has mail merge built-in.  Affinity finally added it as well after a lot of demand.  But, with Quark, mail merge was provided through a third party plugin that cost about as much as Quark itself.  Maybe they changed that now; I don't know.  I got off the Quark merry-go-round.

There were also reports of people having issues activating older versions.

With the last version I bought, you had a perpetual license, but you had to verify the license every 7 days or something.  Imagine needing to get work done for a client, and your seven days are up and you are somewhere without Internet or there is an Internet outage or whatever.  Tough luck for you, even though you paid for a perpetual license.

So, yeah, no.  Quark had a chance when Adobe went to subscriptions, but they continually shoot themselves in the foot.  Again and again and again.

Anyway, I am kind of waiting on Scribus 1.8 which sounds like it will maybe finally possibly catch-up with other page layout software offerings in terms of UI and usability.

mattspace wrote:

You know, Quark are still around, and still do perpetual licences.

Quark seems to be run by scatter-brained half-wits that insist on shooting themselves in the feet.

And this is different from Serif, how?

I find it had to imagine the software is going to be any more janky than Affinity v2 was. I'm going to look at Scribus over the next week or two. I'm sick of documents in orphan formats because of corporate shenanigans.

You know, Quark are still around, and still do perpetual licences.

Quark seems to be run by scatter-brained half-wits that insist on shooting themselves in the feet.

- Open Recent: File menu, Open Recent... only working for documents initially created with the current version. Older documents which have been manually opened / edited just fail silently when attempting to use Open Recent to open them.

Nope, Serif was not only able to break "File -> Open Recent...", they left it broken.

Yes, this appears to work.

Nope, this is something they broke, in the 2.6 era (as far as I can tell) and never bothered fixing.

You know, Quark are still around, and still do perpetual licences.

Just wondering if anyone has noticed if these three issues have been fixed (manifesting on 2.6.3 Mac) as of 2.6.5:

- Open Recent: File menu, Open Recent... only working for documents initially created with the current version. Older documents which have been manually opened / edited just fail silently when attempting to use Open Recent to open them.

- Left Page Export: has the bug which prevented the left page of a spread from exporting (unless you first selected something on the page) been fixed?

- Navigator Palette: Linked Resources produce low quality previews (documented here and confirmed by Serif support).

Thanks.