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Desktop Publisher for Android?

S

senyacms

Newbie
Hi all

I've been searching on and off for days now to see if there's a good desktop publishing app for android.

with my work I sell a lot of advertising slots in various kinds of print publications, usually about business card size with text and images as the client requires. I have a flytouch 3 10" tablet running android 2.2 and have found it to be invaluable during my everyday working life! it's great for managing all of my clients and accessing the internet over an external wireless broadband dongle.

at the moment, i have to see the client, take photos, jot down text, etc, and then retreat to the office to do advert artwork then return to the client for artwork approval. i want to be able to do basic artwork while at the client's place of business, so the going away and coming back part can be removed. I really don't want to buy a laptop, nor would I want to use one while out and about as I still find them too clumsy and cumbersome to use while out in the field.

I'm looking for a desktop publishing app for android that can handle basic artwork layout of text and images, kind of like what you'd expect for a business card or yellow pages advert. IMPORTANT: i have to be able to set the artwork dimensions in either cm/inches or pixels. this is paramount.

Google docs fails me because 1. you can't change the dimensions of a drawing document, 2. the page sizes available for text documents don't match my requirments, 3. the text document editor sucks for desktop publishing.

any ideas or suggestions?

many thanks!
 
BTW, I don't mind paying for an app if i have to. whatever the price of the app, it's bound to be less than even te price of a little netbook. thanks!
 
If you have a full featured desktop machine with internet connection at home you can use remote desktop operation software like Teamviewer on your tablet to run that desktop machine as if you were sitting in front it. All the power and the storage, and the connections, of your desktop machine at your fingertips on the road...

Before you leave home you fire up Teamviewer on your desktop machine and make a note (screenshot?) on your tablet of its ID and password. You then engage a password protected screensaver on your desktop machine and go on your trip.

Every time you need your desktop machine you fire up Teamviewer on your tablet, enter ID and password of your desktop machine, and BINGO there's your desktop machine's screensaver. Enter its password and you're in business.

Works from Android phones and iPhones too, if you're in an emergency, because that tiny screen is really sh*t to work on, obviously. But if you don't have a 10" tablet or a laptop available it can make the difference.
 
Rovers said:
If you have a full featured desktop machine with internet connection at home you can use remote desktop operation software like Teamviewer on your tablet to run that desktop machine as if you were sitting in front it. All the power and the storage, and the connections, of your desktop machine at your fingertips on the road...

Before you leave home you fire up Teamviewer on your desktop machine and make a note (screenshot?) on your tablet of its ID and password. You then engage a password protected screensaver on your desktop machine and go on your trip.

Every time you need your desktop machine you fire up Teamviewer on your tablet, enter ID and password of your desktop machine, and BINGO there's your desktop machine's screensaver. Enter its password and you're in business.

Works from Android phones and iPhones too, if you're in an emergency, because that tiny screen is really sh*t to work on, obviously. But if you don't have a 10" tablet or a laptop available it can make the difference.
Click to expand...

That's a tantalizing idea, thanks!
But i'm not sure i could do it

I've personally found the speed and performance of RDP / VNC frustratingly slow and glitchy, especially if you don't have a super fast connection. i've only got about 3Mb/s connection while on the run. for RDP / VNC i've found you really need something faster, like landline ADSL.

Also, my desktop computer is connected to network setup that makes it problematic to port forward the ports needed for remote desktop servers. i really need an app that runs locally on the tablet, but many thanks for the suggestion :)
 
I'm starting to think I should've bought an ipad. ipad has pages. i can't find any pages alternative for android. sighs.
 
Pages isn't a desktop publishing application. It can't export to or save as a graphics format other than PDF. It's really a graphics oriented word processor. Question is if the people at the print shop will be happy with that.
 
pdf is fine for pretty much most print shops.

i'm now trying to think outside the box.

it seems there just isn't a program i'm looking for that runs on android

so what about using a different program to essentially do the same thing?

are there any good image editing apps out there that can overlay text and images as well as set the image dimensions then export as an image file or pdf?
 
senyacms said:
forgive me, i'm a bit of noob, but what's an ICS update? and will there be one for a flytouch 3?
Click to expand...

ICS is Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Its basically the unification of the tablet and phone interface (tablets being the Android 3.0 series and the Android for phones being Android 2.0 series). This will allow cross use of apps as long as the hardware supports, as far as I know.
 
chanchan05 said:
... tablets being the Android 3.0 series and the Android for phones being Android 2.0 series ...
Click to expand...

well that would explain why the adobe touch programs require 3.x or higher i guess. they're only made for tablets, so it makes sense that they'd use the "tablet version" of the os. apparently there's no minimum cpu requirements for android 3.x - all of the rumours that it needs a dual core processor are apparently false, so maybe they'll bring our 3.x or higher for the flytouch 3, who knows.

all of this tablet os talk is so much more confusing than "can my pc run windows 7". lol.
 
If its a powerpoint slide, I couldnt care less about the dimensions in pixels. Its not gonna be printed anyway. I'd care about pixel dimensions if I was working on Corel or Photshop though, which is a whole different story.
 
senyacms said:
this looks very interesting...

https://market.android.com/details?...3lzdGVtcy5lZGl0b3Iub2ZmaWNlX3JlZ2lzdGVyZWQiXQ..

but gee i really wish developers would specify more information about
they're products. i can't find anywhere in the online docs whether the
app lets you define powerpoint presentation slide dimensions in pixels.
if it let you do this, the app might do what i want. it seems no one
really cares about the dimenions of their documents (??)
Click to expand...

If you install Teamviewer on your PC and your Android device you can create your PowerPoint slides remotely on your PC (in M$ Office; the real thing) from your Android device.

TeamViewer - Free Remote Access and Remote Desktop Sharing over the Internet
 
screw it. i;m saving up and buying an ipad. the application range for android sucks campared to ios, the quality of applications is terrible compared to what's available for ipad. now i understand why apple make it so they have to approve every single app that can run on their products - they have a repuatation of quality to uphold. android is starting to feel so dodgy to me.
 
senyacms said:
screw it. i;m saving up and buying an ipad. the application range for android sucks campared to ios, the quality of applications is terrible compared to what's available for ipad. now i understand why apple make it so they have to approve every single app that can run on their products - they have a repuatation of quality to uphold. android is starting to feel so dodgy to me.
Click to expand...

In that case go the whole nine yards and make sure you replace your PC with a Mac too then. :)
You'll wish you had done that years ago.

And welcome to the walled garden.
 
Rovers said:
In that case go the whole nine yards and make sure you replace your PC with a Mac too then. :)
You'll wish you had done that years ago.

And welcome to the walled garden.
Click to expand...


Walled garden. lol i've never heard it called that. i had to look it up. and yes i know exactly what you mean. i owned an iphone for about three months and eventually sold it on ebay and bought an htc wildfire android 2.2 because iOS offends my intelligence and pisses all over my intellectual property rights, i couldn't handle its blatent control over MY property and MY information.

It's a strange situation isn't it when you have to choose between, 1. a consistent quality of fruit inside a walled garden, or 2. every man and his shaggy dog's fruit on an open and righteous organic farm. Does that mean android users are hippies? I want to be a hippy ...
 
Rovers said:
I doubt a tablet has the (graphic) horsepower for desktop publishing, TBH.
Click to expand...

Err sorry guys but have you seen the specs needed to run MS Publisher 97 (which is a decent DTP buy the way)

CPU 386 @ 66MHz, Win95/98, 12MB ram, and a S/VGA graphics card

Low spec or what so now try and tell us all that a tablet with 512MB-1GB ram and a minimum of a 1GB single core CPU and Mali GPU has not got the horsepower :p
 
This suggestion might not be worth much, but I use Google Slides for very basic desktop publishing types of tasks. There is a Custom option for slide size, and I use 8.5x11. Features are very limited compared to real DTP applications, but it runs fine on a tablet.
 
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