[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Well, Hitch, your main business is formatting, so it makes sense. But unless your work is paying for Adobe products they don't make sense.


Ha! I stopped using Adobe products about 12 years go!
Also I switched from Paint Shop Pro7 to The GIMP about 6 years ago and it was a painful learning curve. Originally had been using an Aldus product (Adobe bought them and killed it, maybe Photostyler on Windows 3.1).

If Affinity would expand their HTML/ePUB capabilities, I would seriously consider migrating. Now, that being said, we do a TON of INDD->ePUB work, so I shouldn't be able to get rid of Adobe altogether, anwway.

There is a huge amount to be said for using the products you are familiar with.

Yes, that too.

Twenty years ago MS Word and an export Plug in for PDF was poor, a PDF virtual "Printer" to file worked better and let you combine pages from different programs. That's still an option if you can't put all your source in MS Word (told PDF is OK now, but not used it since Word 2002) or LO Writer.

It was, in a word, horrible.

If doing magazines or newpapers or complex text books I'd not go back to the DTP programs I last used over 15 years ago. I'd consider Indesign. LO Writer, though it has columns and perfect PDF export isn't quite there for that yet. It's close now.

I freely admit that LO Writer is very good, but there are some functions that INDD just does better. Look at something like Typefitter5. You can't get that for anything else, anywhere, any time.

Similarly some people use Excel and think Excel is the solution for everything (or Powerpoint), but often they need a programmer and database application.

Did you read about the book I received, to quote, typed 100% in excel? Saints preserve us...I'm still torn between crying or laughing about it.

You could make a website with Notepad, and long ago that was the only option. Now you'd be mad.

Or really, really, really bored. Or Tex! Calling Tex2002ans....

So Hitch is right, use the appropriate application(s) for your work flow and the kind of business it is. Not all writers can learn to do ebook or paper book production. Different skills and experience. Not many years ago no writer, even self publishing (rather than vanity publishing), would have considered creating ebooks or paperback books themselves and some still need to pay an expert (don't look at me, my son's MSS cured me of it for hire).

It ain't genius. I don't try to whisk cream/milk for yogurt with a spoon, either, rather than a whisk. Use the right tool, right job. Very simple stuff. Don't make it harder on yourself than needs be.

Hitch