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AnnexPublish – User Manual

1. Overview

AnnexPublish is the desktop publishing and layout app of the AnnexCREATE suite. It is aimed at freelancers, the self-employed, and small agencies who produce print- and web-ready layouts — from flyers and brochures to digital publications — in one continuous workflow.

Core benefits:

Page layout with master pages, guides, margins (type area), and snapping
Professional body text: linked text frames across pages, paragraph and character styles, OpenType typography
Suite brand-kit integration: brand colors, styles, and assets directly in the document
PDF and HTML export from one and the same document — including SEO/social meta and a GDPR toolkit for web export
Offline-first: the document lives locally on your Mac as an .axpublish file

AnnexPublish is part of the AnnexCREATE suite (a "Creative OS"): a shared design system, common modules (asset library, brand kits, clipboard), and MCP automation — modular next to the other apps.

2. Installation & Activation

AnnexPublish is installed, licensed, and updated via AnnexHub — the suite's central hub for apps, licenses, updates, and assets. After downloading from AnnexHub, launch the app like any other Mac app.

The app is offline-first: documents, asset references, and settings live locally on the Mac. The optional version sync with a team workspace server is an addition, not a requirement — purely local versioning (checkpoints, restore) works without a server.

3. Basic Workflow

Open a document: Without an open file, the app starts with a new document. Open an existing .axpublish file via File ▸ Open… (⌘O).
Set up pages: add pages with the header button "Add page"; assign master pages to pages. The pages & layers sidebar shows rasterized thumbnails.
Guides & margins: toggle visibility via the header buttons and define guides in the editor dialog.
Place elements: insert text frames and rectangles via header buttons, drag images from the asset library onto the canvas, create QR codes via the QR button.
Set text: double-click a text frame to open the editor right inside the frame; apply styles from the styles panel; link frames into a body-text chain if needed.
Fine-tune: align and distribute elements in a multi-selection (inspector); while dragging, elements snap to page edges, margins, guides, and other elements.
Save: File ▸ Save (⌘S) writes the .axpublish file; create manual checkpoints in the versions panel.
Output: File ▸ Export… produces a multi-page PDF; File ▸ Export as HTML… produces a website with an SEO/social meta and privacy panel; File ▸ Print… (⌘P) uses the same render path.

4. Core Features

4.1 Layout & Pages

Document model: any number of pages plus master pages (assigned via masterID).
Pages & layers sidebar: rasterized page thumbnails for orientation.
Guides & margins: add/remove, show/hide (header buttons), "Guides & Margins…" editor dialog.
Snapping: while dragging, elements snap to page edges/center, margins, guides, and other elements; threshold and activation come from Settings.
Multi-selection: Cmd/Shift-click and marquee selection; group drag snaps the union frame; align (6 targets) and distribute (horizontally/vertically) in the inspector; "click through" overlapping elements with Cmd+Alt+Shift.
Element types: text, text frame, image (asset reference), rectangle, path, placeholder, QR code.

4.2 Text & Typography

Text frames: inset, multi-column layout (1–12 columns, column gutter), vertical alignment (top/center/bottom/justified), and drop caps (1–4 lines).
Body-text linking: link and unlink frames across pages (inspector), distributed rendering per frame, overflow hint when the text doesn't fit the chain.
Click-to-edit: double-click opens the formatted text editor right inside the frame; for linked chains, the editor edits the entire body text at the chain head.
Character formats in edit mode: underline/strikethrough, super-/subscript, letter spacing, text color.
Typography: font family/size/weight (100–900), italic, variable font axes, OpenType features (ligatures, small caps, old-style figures, tabular figures, fractions), text on path with offset/alignment.
Styles: paragraph and character styles per document plus an application-wide style library with two-way sync (styles panel).

4.3 Assets, Brand & QR

Asset library: the suite's central asset library in the sidebar; drag images onto the canvas (rendered aspect-fit).
Brand kits: link them with documents — brand-kit colors appear as dedicated palette sections, brand-kit assets as quick access, and brand-kit text styles can be imported into the document.
Color palette: document colors in a unified palette (document + brand kits).
QR code generator: with error-correction level and freely selectable foreground/background colors (header button "Insert QR code").

4.4 Document Work

Undo/Redo: configurable step count; history panel with labeled states and direct jumps. Undo ⌘Z, Redo ⌘⇧Z (header buttons).
Delete: remove selected elements with Delete (header button).
Autosave: at the known file location; interval and activation from Settings.
Versioning: manual checkpoints, restoring earlier versions, approval/review rounds with reviewer and status (versions panel in the inspector).
Settings: themes (light/dark/system) and 5 languages (de/en/es/fr/it) via the shared modules; Settings… (⌘,).

4.5 SEO & Privacy (Web Export)

Open the panel via File ▸ Export as HTML… (no shortcut). It applies document-wide, because the export produces a single index.html for all pages.

SEO & social meta: title, meta description, canonical/base URL, Open Graph (title/description/image/type), Twitter card, robots index/noindex. Character counters with recommendations (60/160 characters) as guidance; empty fields are omitted from the export.
sitemap.xml & robots.txt: written from the base URL (the robots setting controls Allow/Disallow); without a base URL the panel shows a notice instead of broken files.
GDPR/consent toolkit: locally generated consent banner (annex-consent.js, no CDN/external service; banner text and buttons configurable; the decision lives only in the visitor's localStorage) and two-click embeds: text elements containing a standalone YouTube/Vimeo URL are exported as placeholders; the iframe loads only after consent and click (nocookie/dnt embed URLs).
Fonts: the export references local system font stacks from the outset — no Google Fonts links. The panel documents this as information, and the export self-checks its output for external font/tracking references.

4.6 Linked Objects

Use File ▸ Place… to insert images and assets into an image frame. In the dialog choose Linked or Embedded. Linked objects reference the original file and remain outside the .axpublish container.

A status badge in the pages & layers sidebar shows the link state:

Status	Meaning
`ok`	Source available and unchanged.
`modified`	External change detected; offer update or ignore.
`missing`	Source cannot be found; falls back to an embedded copy.
`embedded`	Object is permanently embedded in the document.

Before PDF export, Preflight checks for missing links and aborts the export with a warning until the links are repaired or embedded.

Limits: Linked objects are not supported inside text frames; they must live in their own image frames.

4.7 Design Grid and Baseline Grid

Set up the Design Grid via View ▸ Design Grid (or the header button). The dialog defines column count, column gutter, grid unit, and page margins. Objects and text frames snap to the grid when snapping is enabled.

Enable the Baseline Grid via View ▸ Baseline Grid. It shows a horizontal line grid across the page that text can align to. Link paragraph styles to the baseline grid so body text automatically aligns to the lines.

Setting	Effect
Columns	Number of vertical layout columns per page.
Column gutter	Gap between columns.
Grid unit	Fine grid subdivision inside a column.
Baseline spacing	Line spacing of the baseline grid.
Link paragraph style	Text snaps to the next baseline.

Limits: The baseline grid applies to body text in linked frames; frames linked across pages use the grid of the target page.

5. Formats & Interoperability

Native format: .axpublish — an AnnexDocument container (AnnexCoreKit) with a JSON snapshot (publish.json), version manifest, and version snapshot assets. Save via File ▸ Save (⌘S).
Export: PDF (multi-page, page size per page, layout-faithful CoreGraphics render path including text on path and QR codes) via File ▸ Export…; HTML/CSS via File ▸ Export as HTML… (index.html in a target folder, images as embedded PNG data URIs, SVG textPath for text on path, <head> with SEO/social meta tags, optional sitemap.xml/robots.txt and a local consent script — no external service).
Print: system-wide printing via File ▸ Print… (⌘P); print, preview, and PDF export share the same render path.
Import: data sources from CSV (semicolon), JSON, XML (<record> structure), and TXT via "Import data source"; SVG and PDF files as layout elements via AnnexImportKit ("Import vector/SVG").
Suite interop: copy/paste of elements via the Annex clipboard (LayerPayload, AnnexInteropKit); element↔asset and placeholder↔data-source link registry; shared brand-kit and asset library (AnnexAssetKit). Per docs/konzepte/SHARED_MODULES.md, vector illustrations from AnnexDesign can be placed in AnnexPublish, and exported HTML/CSS/JSON projects can be further edited in AnnexCode.
Sync: version/detail sync with a team workspace server (offline-first, configurable in the versions panel); on save, the central version/draft index is updated so AnnexHub searches can see the document. No iCloud wiring.

6. MCP Operation

The MCP host runs in AnnexHub (JSON-RPC 2.0 via STDIO) and is started there; AnnexHub hosts the suite's tools but provides none of its own. Available to agents:

Suite tools (all apps):

Tool	Effect
`list_apps`	Lists all Annex apps with installation status and version.
`open_app`	Opens an Annex app by its ID.
`open_document`	Opens a file in the given Annex app.
`get_active_document`	Returns information about an app's active document.
`get_license_status`	Returns the license status of a product.
`search_assets`	Searches the central asset library by name or tags.

App-specific tool:

Tool	Effect
`publish.open_document`	Opens an AnnexPublish project (`.axpublish`) in AnnexPublish (parameter `path`).

Skills (suite-wide): suite.discover (explore apps and tools — the entry point for any agent), brandkit.apply (apply a brand kit's roles to a document — supports AnnexPublish).

With these, the documented actions — opening documents, controlling apps, searching assets, querying license status — are fully automatable.

7. Diagnostics & Privacy

AnnexPublish logs errors and actions locally via AnnexDiagnosticsKit into rotating JSON log files under ~/Library/Logs/AnnexCREATE/AnnexPublish/, mirrored to os_log (subsystem com.annexcreative.annexpublish), with a PII filter. During the development phase logging is on by default and can be disabled in Settings (Privacy); nothing is transmitted.

Telemetry (anonymous usage events and crash reports) runs strictly on an opt-in basis — off by default — and can be toggled at runtime in Settings.

Your documents stay on the Mac: .axpublish files, asset references, and settings are local; team version sync is optional and requires a workspace connection you configure.

8. FAQ

Which file format does AnnexPublish use? The native container format .axpublish (an AnnexDocument container with JSON snapshot, version manifest, and snapshot assets). Save via File ▸ Save (⌘S).

Can I export PDF and HTML from the same document? Yes. File ▸ Export… produces a multi-page print PDF; File ▸ Export as HTML… produces a website (index.html plus optional sitemap.xml/robots.txt and a local consent script). Both paths use the same layout-faithful render path as printing.

Why doesn't my YouTube video load immediately in the HTML export? Because two-click embeds are active: text elements containing only a YouTube/Vimeo URL are exported as placeholders with a notice; the iframe loads only after consent in the consent banner and a click. You configure this behavior in the privacy section of the HTML export panel.

Does the HTML export embed Google Fonts? No. The export references only local system font stacks and self-checks its output for external font/tracking references.

Can I import data for mail-merge-style layouts? Yes: data sources from CSV (semicolon), JSON, XML (<record> structure), and TXT can be imported, and you can create placeholder elements. Automatically filling the placeholders from records (mail merge) is not yet wired into the UI path (status: see the feature list).

How do I restore an earlier version? In the versions panel (inspector) you create manual checkpoints and restore earlier versions via "Restore". Approval/review rounds with reviewer and status run through the same panel.

What happens if saving or export fails? You get an error alert in the UI; the changes remain in memory and are not lost.

Do I need a server for team sync? Version/detail sync with a team requires a configured workspace connection (server). Purely local versioning — checkpoints and restore — works without a server.