Halfling Caravan Games

So I have a concept that is simple enough to express but getting it to work in practice seems like it could have a wild amount of 'follow up fiddling' I am hoping to avoid. The Plan: Take a graphic item that I plan to use as a background to some text (as shown in Picture 1) Input *data merge sourced text* into the text box which has a layer style with a background colour decoration (as shown in Picture 1) Then have that text box act as a mask for the background graphic with a duplicate of the data merge source text overlaid (thus ensuring that the background is only as long as the text needs) (Picture 2) Picture 1: Picture 2:

Yeah, I had the feeling that I would need to do that through some kind of 'manual' process. Would the internal scripting of AffPub be able to search through and do that or is that just asking for a world of headaches and manually cleaning up later?

I've sent you a version that I have partly populated from the Data Merge. Don't worry if you get broken font things, they will be game relevant icons.

I've got a little bit of a tricky problem to sort out. Mostly as a game design and card game layout exercise I'm bashing away with a game with a long history which has a TON of information to pack into a US-Poker sized card (2.5" by 3.5" dimensions with a roughly 1/8" margin on each side). The problem I have is this: Below on the cards below you see "Prince (2) Nairobi" (on Alice Chen) and "Bishop (1)" on Alfred Benezri inside a sort of cartouche. I want that Cartouche to float up and down depending on game text (as you can see with Alfred). To make this happen that cartouche is a floating element of the text box which creates brings in the text you see on Alfred. Technically the text box fills from the bottom, and this element is pinned to a spot before the very top-left-most character. When a card would not have text (like Alice) but also need the Cartouche (like Alice), I would like to be able to hide that white background which is needed for Alfred. That background is a combination of a) a text decoration so that it automatically expands upwards with the text length, b) a pinned top edge effect (a cropped paint-smear image). Problem: I can't hide the text box without hiding the Cartouche. Since this could be a project with a LOT of situations like this appearing, I want to have a way to make the Cartouche automatically rise up the card with text length in that white text area... AND... if I hide that white text area, the cartouche remains visible while the background vanishes.

Adjusting the height of that box (as you can see has been manually done in the second example) is the big headache I can't bypass with something like Copy-Paste and Find w/ REGEX.

I'm looking at a data merge from a CSV where one of the elements will be a Inner Bevel Rectangle with text populated from the CSV in front. I've been looking at ways to implement that but can't seem to find something which will work. Its for a number of cards so I would like to be able to automate this as much as possible. The less "going through card by card to adjust" the better. Consider the file attached as an example output I would like to get procedurally (the symbols across this card are already mostly done by font) Edit: The two images below should help highlight what I'm trying to change automatically about the area where text appears. I can REGEX/GREP in the icons, and the bold text comparatively easily because it would remain the same across many cards. The only way to make much of that faster is if Affinity Publisher allowed for Find-Replace to be able to paste from clipboard as an option. The things I am looking to be able to do are (any one): Create a Text Frame inside a rectangle shape, apply the bevel to the shape, have the new Text Shape adjust its height so that it doesn't overflow without manually adjusting the 'Text Shape' Create a Text Frame and as an Inline Graphic insert the bevel rectangle and define its height relative to the text frame

Yeah, I hadn't seen the nuts and bolts to make that one happen. My Regex-Fu wasn't very good at the time. I would still love to be able to do Request 1, even if it was just to "Paste from Clipboard" (which would also sort out other similar things because you could change it once manually, copy and then paste from clipboard)

One of the things I am using Publisher for is card and board game layout and card designs. This presents some bits and pieces I suspect that Affinity Publisher wasn't quite expecting to have to deal with... What I want to do, since I don't think Affinity can even come close to reading inbound data from a data merge and do this automatically within the Data Merge process (oh that would be gorgeous!) is... 1) Find some kind of standard phrase used to denote where an icon or graph would go in a block of text. As an example "Choose any home region and reinforce it with 2 [infantry]." In this example [infantry] would be my standard phrase which I can find using the REGEX options in the Find function. 2) In the Replace command, I want to be able to: "Replace with Graphic > infantry.gif > Inline > (set some parameters such as height)". This would search through the various cards, find [infantry] and then replace it with the infantry.gif inline and with any other parameters I put on infantry.gif. I realise this might be a manual process for now, but I would really love if it could be automated with a Find-Replace. Edited: Request two... Since another method I am sure to be using will be REGEX to automate things like finding text which will have its Character Style changed, it would be FANTASTIC if I could use the same REGEX to modify the underlying text as well. Example: Find: (REGEX Expression to find all text between two front slashes) Replace: Make Character Style Strong and Delete first+last front slash in string. Convert /Attack/ to Attack through the Find-Replace interface.

I replicated it in another one. The process is kind of simple to recreate the bug. 1) Set up two text boxes with Heading 1 and have the text flow between them on the same page. 2) Set earlier than them in the document a ToC. Breaking Units and Taking Turns are on splash pages with the above method. Fields_of_Blood_Shortbow_Edition.afpub

I've been using Publisher for a while, loved it, but I've hit a bit of a bug as I am trying to be a bit more ambitious with some of my layout design... I have multiple text boxes for a Chapter Heading so that I can arrange parts of it on the page how I want. The Automated TOC then does the following with the Heading 1 so it creates two entries, and duplicates part of the Heading 1:

I know those sorts of things exist, I hand around enough artists who for search engine purposes load repetitive tags to the end of their image names. I was looking specifically for a work around in Affinity Publisher.

Because it could be 90+ files and I'm not up for manually renaming those? It would be great to just be able to know if Affinity can do it for me. That's all. Count the pages being exported, then pad zeroes as needed. I'm using Windows.

I am using Affinity to create card games or other cards, and with the way a number of programs and game websites handle file names I was wanting to find a way to force Publisher to add leading zeros so that the files would be listed in the same order regardless of which site or program is looking at them. I couldn't see any settings to let me do that. Current Setup: FileName_1.png, FileName_2.png, FileName_20.png, FileName_21.png, etc What I'd like: FileName_001.png, FileName_002.png,..., FileName_197.png, etc

I've got a ToC, that's fine. I have also put some formatting into the ToC like a column break to keep a few items together rather than split over the center of a spread, and to compress an item so there is a nice break between the name and the page number. All seems good. Then I got to Export. It tells me that a ToC isn't 'updated fully'. I choose Ignore & Continue. Publisher then updates the ToC to remove the edits I made. I repeat adding the edits in. Repeat the Export. Tell it to Ignore & Continue. It removes the edits again. I DO NOT want to be putting in a ToC by hand. Affinity Publisher Build 1.7.0.337 Update: It also happens in 1.7.0.371 Update 2: It DOESN'T change the ToC if you instead choose "Fix & Continue". Hypothesis: Ignore & Continue, and Fix & Continue buttons are hooked up 'backwards'