Export layout to Affinity Designer

[compass_cartographic]

Create a new export format for layouts for Affinity Designer.  This application is an alternative to Adobe Illustrator (for which there is the Export to .aix).  It allows for vector/raster based design work in layers, just like Adobe Illustrator, with blend modes, adjustments, and other ways that allow for unique customizations.  It would be great to have an “.adx” export format!

[JeremyWright]

Unfortunately it appears that the .AFDesign format (which is the extension used by Affinity Designer) is proprietry and closed.  As such we have no way of being able to support it in ArcGIS Pro output.  

This is incidentally the same reason that we no longer support .AI export to Adobe Illustrator - AI format is also closed and proprietary. 

The plug-in strategy (.AIX out of Pro, into Maps for Adobe plugin in Illustrator) is the one that Adobe recommends to third-party developers, to be able to import their content in Illustrator.

Does Affinity Designer offer any kind of plug-in strategy which could be leveraged to import content natively into an .AFDesign? 

It appears their development team does not want to publicly document the file format:  https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/31716-file-format-specification/

[JeremyWright]

moving to open to allow voting and commentary

however as stated before without a specification to write this file format and/or a plug-in API as exists for Adobe products, we cannot directly write to this format .

[compass_cartographic]

Just saw this post - thank you Jeremy - I will see if I can find out whether there is such a plug in, and if not, get their take on whether they could create one.  If I can find anything out, I will post back here!  Thanks again.