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natecombsmedia

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Everything posted by natecombsmedia

  1. I meant I want to do exactly what the add geometry command does, but your example added the geometry of two separate shapes. My image above is a single shape joined on the left stem, with freely movable nodes. I wanted to be able to move nodes from the end of the leaf to the line of the right stem and have those two lines join. But, as you can see from the part I circled red, they don't join with any of the available commands and will cancel out, creating negative space if I go past the line I'd like to merge onto. The hole would come from the triangular space between the left stem, leaf in question, and right stem (which joins with the left stem lower down). When I use fill methods, it fills that whole area in addition to the leaf gap. However, creating a rectangle and adding it to the dead space fixed my problem pretty easily, so I guess I will do that from now on.
  2. This is exactly what I want to do, but on a single shape instead of two, as if you added more points to one end of the oval and made a big circle until you hit the other side of the same oval. I want to connect the ends where the overlap is, but not fill in the middle.
  3. Yeah, so perhaps the better question is how do you join lines without altering the shape? My workaround I came up with while typing works, but a button/function would be great too!
  4. Hey everyone, I have searched forums and videos to try to be able to undo overlap cancellation on a shape in a simple way. How do you add the nodes/lines of an object to another line somewhere else on the same object? Essentially, I want to achieve what join and add do for two separate objects, but within a single object since the path erases if there is overlap. The Geometry > Fill Holes method does not fill the right place. I suppose I could just draw a new shape over the gap and use the Add boolean to solve this... I'd still love to know if there is a proper way I am missing somewhere. Thanks! Here is a picture of the gap in the overlap of a leaf to a second stem I would love to fix.
  5. Hey friends! I noticed in some projects, especially where duplicate objects of different colors are required, I find myself wanting to select all of the objects elements and change colors all at once. However, in traditional Affinity (Designer is probably most relevant), if I change the fill, it changes all the fills AND adds a fill to anything that had no fill. If I change an outline, same thing. All shapes now get an outline regardless of whether they had an outline or not. It would be really future-foward, with AI power and whatnot, to be able to select a group of objects that have a mixture of outlines and fills and hit a button that changes color only on actively engaged fills and outlines, leaving everything else unengaged. Would save loads of time. I don't think anything like this exists anywhere, and yes, I sometimes use grouping and color overlays to achieve this, but you lose some capabilities that way. Cheers!
  6. Ah, I see. Making books all one document does speed up things for a while I suppose, but I would not recommend it unless they made updates. Editing software used to stop scrolling after about 350 pages, which was an absolute pain in Publisher. When I switched from the competition and there was no books feature, I'd have to use the mouse scroll wheel or search for pages in the Pages tab to make any edits in the 400s and beyond. So if that has never been fixed, that's one advantage to using Books. Anyway, I guess you could say I "smart merge." Here is my process, since most authors want no blank pages between chapters and most send me Google Docs (or Word if they never made the jump) files. I set up a Master spread for chapter first pages, both left and right sides so I have it no matter which side the chapter starts on. That contains a page number and a guide line for the text box since I start those pages lower. I also set up a Master for body pages, again both left and right, with guide lines slightly lower and higher than my margins so I can fit headers and page numbers, which are the other two things I fit right outside the margin box. My margins for fantasy, romance, and dystopian have been 0.19mm / 0.75in all the way around except the gutter, which I increase to 25mm / 1in. That is set up when creating the document, so it applies to all Masters as well. This part is important: I save that as my first regular chapter (prepages, toc, post pages, etc. I do later on). It always starts on the right, so the only blank page in the book is the one before this unless the author requests more info on the other side, which I would include in the prepages (title pages) doc. Then, I lay it out and save it as the book title plus Ch 1 (or Ep 1 if they ultra modern). I save it again, changing Ch 1 to Ch 2. Now, my second chapter document has all the Master formatting done. If Ch 2 starts on the right, easy. Copy and flow my Google Doc text in over the Ch 1 text, switch out my title/chapter/subtitle boxes, and begin formatting! When I do finally come across a chapter that starts on the left, Ch 2 or otherwise, I go to document settings and switch it to starting on left. That makes all my text boxes off a bit from the margin box, so I shift the first three pages and delete the rest. Of course, that document is saved over the last one as a new one. Then I smart flow Google Docs text from that chapter, and it adds as many pages as needed in the correct formatting. Finally, for all future chapters, I keep the latest left-starting and latest right-starting documents open and save them as the newest chapter each time so I can replace the information as a template. It's very fast for me, and no issues ever arise, so I like using that method, having a minimum of 33 chapters to do a every month. The other nice thing is I don't ever have to click "Apply Master" to any of the pages because it is already applied from the previous chapter. But if I needed to change something or have a special book with a third type of master, the spread is only a click away and recognizes whether it should apply the left or right version automatically. And, of course, the body text retains all of my text formatting as well based on the first line of the document (so if it starts with my italics preset or wider tracking, I may have to change those). So I don't have to worry about line spacing and font size or anything else. If it weren't for the smallest details of formatting (tracking, kerning titles, orphans/widows, rivers, rag, stacking, etc.) and italics not carrying over from Google, laying out a chapter would take maybe 2 minutes. With having to go through and make sure each paragraph is pretty and has the right italics, each spread takes about a minute on pages there are no typos or other mistakes that need to be edited. I hope that helps. Affinity certainly is up to the task. I have even taught a course for authors learning to lay out their own work for print using Publisher and I have also been able to lay out unique and edgy formats that go beyond the basics and get people talking using any version, no matter what bugs arise. Once you get to know its personality, you may love it too.
  7. I mean, you could just do 10 chapters to test, save, reload, and see how it want. No promises needed then. You're not alone though! I have massive projects for authors to be released every month. 300-500 pages on almost every book, 30 to 100 chapters. I thought I was gonna have to go back to the old way of every chapter in single doc and redo an entire project the first time it broke, but I worked with the publisher team and tried things until I found this solution and they eliminated the other bugs. I still to this day set every chapter of every book manually since there is no single-click override. Oh, it was at one point semi-important to just wait and do them all at the end so that things like @Hangman described don't happen. Compile every chapter into the book first, adjust, save. Then, it's fine to go back and add or move one or two things. I do that in every book. It really doesn't take that long (on this part). Can't speak for the ToC stuff. Fantasy authors don't use them much. I am a bit curious about the chapter merging though but don't really have time to ask 😅. I don't necessarily use a program feature if there is one, but I do easily and quickly merge data on my own via the smart reflow abilities, and my Master works beautifully (assuming you want an identical master applied to both). If you want to merge chapters with different master data, that's where copying, pasting, and even section managers could come in handy.
  8. Yeah, it seems like you are having a different issue, which is what I was asking to see earlier. If doing anything makes your book freeze and reload and do extra strange things, you may need to reinstall, talk to the admins, or save as a new book (which doesn't affect chapter documents). There were some older versions of Publisher where doing anything in the Books tab would crash the program after about 2 minutes. All the chapters default to being set to specific page number right now. That's the main issue for now. And I figured out the solution in the videos because I too had to go in to every chapter and update the number any time something changed until I realized how to get "continue from previous" working again.
  9. Ah yeah, there is your issue. Don't use the start at option...you'd have to change that every time you want to rearrange. Change every chapter but the first to continue from previous. That way it knows to update based on location. If it doesn't autoupdate like in @Hangman's video, then hit the update numbers button at the bottom like in mine. Should immediately fix your issue!
  10. I am also using that version. Did you follow my video? There is only one place you can change the "start at page #" setting and get it to stay. You can't do it from the regular file options like the section manager. It will just revert over and over. Not sure about the odd PDF glitches. I create all of my chapters within Publisher as Publisher files. I suppose you could take a video and show us your process. I've helped people outside this forum get it working right with no issues, but if you have other things happening, it would be hard to tell what is going wrong without video.
  11. I just watched your video. I don't think that part works in older versions, but the written steps do, and all you have to do is hit the little update numbers option at the bottom after the "start at page number" is changed.
  12. Yes, that should work for any version of publisher, and, while annoying you have to do for each chapter individually, you should only have to do it once.
  13. Did you watch my video? I really thought they fixed this, but I haven't tried a new document in case they haven't. I ALWAYS start new books from old ones to save layout time, which eventually causes issues. I actually have some where the numbering options still work properly because they are so old lol. However, your issue seems to be exactly describing what I solved in my video way above. And when set like that, you can freely move chapters around or add new ones, and the autoupdate will function again. Let me know if you try/tried it.
  14. Brilliant! Best fix ever. I bet that works in any program out there too. Thanks a ton. I had even tried ghost grabbing at random corners to find it. Was too far gone. This fixed everything. Just for clarification, I don't think I'd be able to reproduce it in 2005 either. I originally went to Beta because of it. In the new Public release, which seems to be 2.2.0, the issue was still there. I now have the Section Manager window in either version. Thanks again!
  15. Ok, maybe I will try resetting studio first and hope I get lucky. Forgot the picture earlier. Here's that:
  16. Thanks @MikeTO, the windows randomly decide they will open on different screens each time I open the program...super weird. But this one is completely gone, not even a small corner for grabbing, which I thought was a requirement for Windows computers. Anyway, I don't have the one option you left selected. It says the opposite. Leaving it checked or unchecked didn't work. I'll post a picture for reference, but before I delete all my user defaults, what will go away in that option? I have some text styles created as well as shortcut key commands that I use a ton. No issues in Beta still.
  17. @Serif Info Bot, Hey I saw the update for the Public versions was released this week...however, my original issue that sent me into the Beta version is still there. I'll upload this file too, from a completely different project btw, showing that the "Section Manager" just doesn't open in the public version of Publisher 2.2. @Chris B, I'm sorry, I guess I should have included for this file originally as well. Slit Throat Saga 2 Ep 1.afpub
  18. I'm actually VERY confused about this 😅. I have the crop object/selection option like 80% of the time I click Crop in Photo, which is great. I can use the resize canvas/document features to change the canvas more precisely...but then, another 20% of the time, it randomly switches its function to cropping the whole canvas, which I never need. Why is mine how everyone wants it most of the time, and how could we get it to stay that way or toggle between the two? Right now, it is stuck in canvas mode, so I will have to send to a different Affinity program to crop. Perhaps personas could be added to all programs for those handy features we need between the three. I much prefer Designer and Publisher for book covers, but I find the color comes out gross and washed out in Publisher, while Photo handles the colors like a champ and has blending tools that are better for, haha, any photo elements than Designer and can still hold my vectors fine. Strange indeed!
  19. Thank you for this! I had the same thing happen suddenly and went into the brush settings. Wet edges was off, but when I looked on the toolbar above, it was on. Strange! With it off, everything is back to normal.
  20. Thanks! For anyone else this happens to, I am able to completely avoid it by limiting myself to the initial save as from a previous chapter to the current document name, one more save after changing the document material (section, chapter title, and body text), and once at the end before a new save as. Maybe one in the middle if it is longer.
  21. Hey team, I am using Publisher Beta and updating to the latest little patches every couple days when they come out. The issue reproduces every time, and I don't have time to mess around with a new document quite yet (long-running book series with a fixed template of info to stay consistent across all books), but usually the issues I come across remain on new or different documents. I can upload a document with the issue though. Windows 11, HA on RTX 3080 (haven't tried the other setting), Here's what's going on: I opened the latest version of public Publisher last week to find the "section manager" window completely gone. I do have 3 monitors, and it sometimes loads on another one randomly because of the difference in their ages and resolution, but this time it was just completely gone (has happened on an older version as well). Because sections became an integral part of this series, I had to move the current book to Publisher Beta to get it back. Yay! Except, about every 3-4 times I try to save with Ctrl+S, the program freezes and takes around 10 minutes to unfreeze…or I can force quit and keep going since it does record the save. Just a big interruption since I save about once a page. I have one workaround which is to remember to go to the "Save as" menu, which seems to reset how many saves I get before a crash. I can also tell when it is going to happen if I look. The document heading will no longer say [Modified] when an edit is made, and the regular save button in the File menu will be gray. I do also often have DaVinci Resolve running in the background, but the results are the same with it closed too. I don't necessarily need it fixed to keep working, but I thought it might be good to know in case it needs to be addressed before the Public release. The document that just crashed on me is attached. Thanks! The First Dragon Ep 16.afpub
  22. Curious if there are new issues/solutions or a best answer right now. Today, my edit section window vanished completely and will not open when I try to right click a page and select "Edit Section." That means I am permanently stuck with all info applied using that window, and nothing seems to fix it in public Publisher. So, I moved this project over to the 2.2 Beta and installed the latest update. Publisher Beta now crashes every 2-4 saves or so while saving. Pretty silly interruption to workflow. I have a beast computer (Intel i9 12th gen, 3080 on the latest studio driver, 64 gigs of ram, 7 TB of storage, etc.), and I've already solved one major issue with the Books panel for myself and others this year...and I'm a bit tired this week. Would love some help before diverting a large amount of time into a smoother run. Thanks! EDIT: Turns out if I let it sit a good 10 or so minutes, it will eventually process and continue on, and though I have only tried a couple times, saving on the "save as" menu and/or changing back and forth between documents seemed to get me a few extra saves.
  23. That's super interesting. The other day, I had to update some older books to match newer books in the series. I found that books made in the first iterations of AP2 had no issues as their original documents could retain the proper number updating code, but the newer ones from the last few updates had all the issues we have been seeing. Anyway, I have responded to a few of these posts with abstract instructions since I was always away from my studio, but I am here now and will throw together a simple video of how to solve *theoretically* in any version, beta or not. Affinity Team, @Lee D, feel free to use this video to show people the workaround until the new version is released/for people with older documents. How to Fix Chapter Numbers Not Updating Affinity Publisher 2.mp4
  24. Update numbers has been broken unless you "route" it a certain way in the latest versions; however, you should be able to fix the moving of the order of chapters manually. Highlight a single chapter after moving it. Go into the = menu on the book panel for more options. Select page numbering options. Change it to the option that continues from previous chapter. Every document after that will be broken. Do that to each document individually. Once they are all set to this, the update page numbers button will magically work. Let me know if you get it!
  25. No worries 😆 the new stuff is still confusing. It took me forever to find this workaround. I tried with sections literally like 10 times. PLUS, the page numbering options I did find was greyed out every time I tried until I had only one document selected. That was the key ingredient for me.
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