I'm so much frustrated, i decided to register on this forum.
Not many products made me feel despair and so frustrated about the work process.
I guess, i'm lucky, but i've faced multiple problems mentioned in this forum.
But i didn't find any solution. Too late i found mentions with large documents. Still, my probem is not quite the same as others. My afpub file is small, it's swap file that is enormous and unmanageable. With all respect, advice to get extra free space on disk to complete is obsolete. How much more than 100Gb could it need? 1 Tb? I would give that space if it allowed to change place for swap file if it guaranteed to recover my file. But still, read further...
While working with Publisher:
- my Macbook pro 2016 (when it) works is loaded up to 400% CPU and fans spin at high RPMs
- it take ages to save project
- i had Publisher unexpected quit. After that, when i had opportunity to open the recovery file it suggested - my disk space was taken completely to the last byte. I guess, it was taken by some kind of swap. Whole Mac stuck, i had to force quit Publisher. After restart of the app after some time and multiple opening and closing of the document swap file cleaned up.
- whole mac slows down so it's impossible to work with any app. After some time (more than couple minutes) it continues to show signs of life. But it's never predictable if my document is saved already, if anything is happening at all, or it will quit with or without error.
- after unexpected quit i overcame the thought, i had to redo changes to document i made for the last 25 minutes. I just didn't want to spend more than 1,5 hour i already spend on unsuccessful tries to recover the document that even didn't want to save. It simply was doing something, hanging my macbook, spinning fans, than not spinning, than spinning again. The state of app changed from "not responding" to normal and back multiple times. As i said, after 1,5 hours of waiting i forced quit it and opened my previous version of project. But there were another surprise - it quit multiple times. With and without errors (silently).
- it's "nice" to know i can continue edit my document, but it quit every time while i tried to save it.:(
- i do get occasional errors from Published - "Persona took too much space, consider closing some documents" or something like that. But, i'm working with SINGLE document.
- the only thing succeeded - export to jpeg.
- trying to export to PDF, maybe to import it after to Indesign didn't succeed. It took more than 3 hours, while i was working on other tasks. Left it for night, in the morning found error message "Publisher quit unexpectedly". great to hear that!
So, now to work this out i made multiple copies of the document and split it to 100 pages in each. I hope, this way i could export it to PDF, not get any errors and save every part of the document in manageable time, not hours. I just want to save my work in any possible way.
My main concern, that it worked well up to 500 pages designed. Not like it failed every now and than. It worked, so i was positive about workflow. No problems with cache or perforance. Yes, save took time, but normal for such document with many linked images. But after the unexpected quit it started to behave that weird and unpredictable. THAT is very frustrating.
But, however, now i don't know working solution how to recover disk space taken by Publisher. 50Gb of ssd is taken to its swap and doesn't clean up after app restart.
Some detailes about my setup:
MacOs Catalina, latest Trial version of Publisher. Internal SSD 250Gb. The project was about 500 pages, with approximately 700 photos linked, no text, very simple designed photobook. Afpub file waited app. 150mb. Linked files took no more than 15Gb
I really wanted to love this product. It went so well and was easy to work with from the beginning. I had my reasons to try it, as i'm doing photobooks from time to time. I'm not a big production unit. But, two days of quiet nightmare not knowing is not worth it.
