[Story editor - mandatory]

6 hours ago, PaulEC said:

I must agree that a story editor would be very handy. Apart from anything else, there are times when it is just so much easier and quicker to look at and edit a single block of text, rather than jumping from text box to text box or page to page!

My methodology is to use linked frames to group stories. The text and initial proofing is done in Word or Google Docs. 

[Beer Bottle Label]

Great idea

[Hardware for Affinity]

I am planning a new computer and monitor system for my office. I have three questions in terms of the 1) CPU, 3) the GPU and 3) my choice of monitor.  I would welcome opinions and thoughts.

1) After considering an Intel i5 I've now decided on a Ryzen 5 7600C combined with 32Gb of 4800MHz memory. Are there any issues with running the Affinity suite with AMD Ryzen processors?

2) Advice on these forums and elsewhere appears contradictory. A couple of posters have suggested that it makes sense to get a £400 graphics card (such as the RTX 3070). However, I have read that graphic design only needs a modest GPU as 90% of the workload is done by the CPU/RAM. Given that I won't be gaming or doing much video editing work does a £100ish card make more sense. My PC manufacturer has said for the work I am doing the onboard graphics of my MBD (Asus TUF GAMING A620M-PLUS) is perfectly adequate. Who is right?

3) I currently run a pair of old 22" DVI panels. i. I started looking at a 32" ultra-wide monitor but I've been reading that ii. two separate 24" monitors would be better. If I went down that option would sub-professional (< £300) monitors be ok. Professional graphic monitors are out of my league.  iii. so now I am looking at using a 42" 4K OLED TV as a monitor. The LG C2 is a popular choice. Does anyone else run a similar set up.

 

Thanks for reading.

[Do I need to keep Affinity Photo V1 for any reason?]

I removed V1 because I have no issues with V2 over an above what I had with its predecessor and more importantly because I needed the space 😀

[Recommended PC Hardware for affinity photo and affinity designer!]

I've finally decided that it is time to replace my 10-year-old PC and would appreciate thoughts on the following specification for running Affinity applications...

[Strange object on a page]

Hi Callum - Its not a text frame as it doesn't appear in the Layers panel.

Please send me an upload link and I'll send you a copy.

[Strange object on a page]

Any ideas what this artefact is and how I can get rid of it? 

It is not showing in the layers tab, it cannot be selected and clearing masters on the page has no effect.

 

 

If I zoom in it disappears

 

[Organise Text Styles]

On 6/30/2023 at 5:51 PM, PeeGeeBee said:

Can I organise (re-order) text styles so that the ones I actually use in a document are grouped together?

Also, and this may be a different question altogether, the shortcuts for applying text styles are very handy, but is there a way (an additional key command, perhaps?) that applies the text style but DOES NOT change the local formatting?

Many thanks. Very new to Publisher and, despite the learning curve, very impressed so far!

I create a group style when I want to keep styles together.

[Text wrap question]

8 hours ago, Leigh Ann said:

The node tool was there because I clicked on that messing around with it trying to figure out what was wrong then couldn't get completely rid of it.

The final product looks very nice.

I wonder why you didn’t rotate and crop out the table and shadows of the right hand photo?

[Crash after Mail Merge (APu)]

6 hours ago, Lee D said:

Is it just that particular merged file that once opened, edited and save that seem to cause the app to not respond/crash when closing? Is the file stored locally, the desktop for example?

Have you tried with a new doc instead, inserting data fields, merging to another new file. Then opening, making some edits, saving and seeing if the app also crashes when you close it.

Before merging there doesn’t appear to be a problem. Both the Apu and excel file are stored on a local drive.

This is a large project so I am not sure why creating a new document would show or help in any way. It’s probably more sensible for you to look at it if you want to send me a link.

[Crash after Mail Merge (APu)]

54 minutes ago, Lee D said:

@CatshillIs this happening for you, regardless of what you merge? For example if you start a new document, insert a few fields to merge, after merging can you edit the newly created file or does that also cause a crash?

I've just installed 2.1.1 and noticed the same behaviour. Loaded the document that has been merged, Made a change and saved it. Closed that instance. When I then attempt to shut down the application it hangs - Not Responding. I get the same hang if I close the application rather than the instance of the document.

I can load the file, edit it and 9/10 save it. It is closing the application afterwards where the hang occurs.

[Crash after Mail Merge (APu)]

It is the merged APu file that is causing the crashes. I opened it, made an edit and saved it. This took a longer time than closing the unmerged version. If I then try to close either the document window OR APub itself it hangs.

[Crash after Mail Merge (APu)]

13 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Are you saying that if you Save the output file first, it Exports more reliably?

Are you exporting to PDF (and what options), or some other format? How many pages is the output file, and what kind of data does it contain?

Yes - generally that is the case, however...

What I have found is that attempting to run a data merge on a APu file that has already been the output of a data merge, will cause a crash if a second data merge is attempted.

To reduce the likelihood of crashing I recommend never performing a data merge on the APu document that is itself the result of a data merge. Therefore, when you have the output file (APu format), do not be tempted to alter it, only work on the master (unmerged file) and then perform the merge again. When doing further edits always work on the Unmerged APu file and never the Merged APu file.

Data is being imported from an xslx sheet and the publisher document is 48pp (185Mb before merge /  159Mb after merge !)

 

 

[Crash after Mail Merge (APu)]

I am particularly getting hangs when saving exports from data merges which is particularly frustrating.

[Crash after Mail Merge (APu)]

I am getting lots of APu hangs following a data merge particularly if the output file is not saved - (Not Responding)

I didn't notice this in version 2.1

[Split-flow in Publisher]

What you are asking for is the ability to split the contents of the frame (ie the text) rather than the frame itself.

[multiple photo frames the same size]

You can also create an asset from the frame and duplicate it as required.

[New master picks up column guides from a previous master.]

14 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

Odds are that your printshop wants a PDF with single pages, not the 2 page spreads. This is easily done at the export stage, no need to change from a Facing Pages spread to Single page Spreads. 

But unfortunately you will have to remember to do this each time as 1. It’s not saved as part of a preset and 2. It fails to remember the last setting. This is a very annoying bug.

[Linking and embedding text]

14 hours ago, Michael Lloyd said:

I am not seeking assistance in working around an issue, I'm offering a suggestion that I believe will increase the application acceptance, and help in my work environment.

That’s fine. And as someone who also needs to work collaboratively I am sharing how I do things. 

[Linking and embedding text]

If I am live collaborating predominantly text documents, I’ll use Google Docs. I then use the content from these in APu. This is saved as pdf on Google Drive for the authors to comment. I then update the APu file and save it as version 2, again as pdf for others to comment. 

[Different assets for different documents]

On 6/3/2023 at 5:44 PM, thomaso said:

consider whether there is a real advantage at all when using the Affinity Assets in your layouts.

I use assets to store frequently used images, configured picture frames and text frames. The advantage is that they are then quickly available.

As far as I can see, the disadvantage of using assets is that like eggs in one basket, they are susceptible to loss due to being stored in a single file - assets.propcol. This could be mitigated by backing this file up every once in a while.  In addition, that file is going to increase in size. However, it seems unclear whether there will actually affect the speed (I'm assuming it doesn't affect the size (other than the assets.propcol)) of the application itself.

[I cannot put text on the front of the image.]

Check that the outline colour of the text is not transparent or non contrasting.

Temporarily hide the image layer to ensure the text is visible and doesn’t have an attribute set, like leading, that means the text isn’t visible.

[Different assets for different documents]

19 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

They all end up in one file on disk, which can become very large (multiple GB) which certainly can impact startup, and updating of the Assets, and switching between categories. And when it gets big I think this monolithic file structure tends to make it more fragile, and subject to breaking during updates and loss of all the Assets.

 

I’d welcome confirmation from Serif developers that this is the case and also recommended best practices. Implementing a feature that is so fragile doesn’t appear logical. Based on comments here, I may be offloading my assets from the application to regular folders.

[Different assets for different documents]

14 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

I don't bloat the Application with tens or hundreds of megabytes of files.

Is this what actually happens? When assets are added are they increasing the size of the application and slowing it down?

[On Affinity Designer on desktop: how do I duplicate a layer]

48 minutes ago, Sunil Wu said:

Apologies if this seems like a basic and silly question.

I have a layer in Affinity Designer that I want to duplicate.
But I can't see how to do this.

 

From the layers panel, right click to get a menu and select duplicate.