comancheTodd

OK, here you go. The border was added when I copied the SUBTITLE ("Book One of the...") on the title page from another book, and adapted it and placed it here. I also copied and pasted the TITLE ("The Tale of Telsharu") on the title page from another place in the book. After pasting, both had a 0.3 pt border around the boxes, black or very dark gray. FYI, after I figured out how to remove the border and cleaned them both up, I also copied the main TITLE and resized it for the two half-title pages (i and xiii, both unnumbered) and had no problem. Todd SvnE3-1.afpub

Good advice. For example, clicking around in the two pages that needed that "tightening" treatment, I found that I sometimes "accidentally" clicked somewhere that took the focus off the table and had to do the "Tool Two-step" all over again. (Is it just me, or do tables in Affinity Publisher not seem quite ready for primetime... ;o) Thanks! Todd

I found it! I did not realize there is a "Text Frame" panel (weird IMHO, but OK...) It is curious that when cutting-and-pasting, when the original did not have a border that the program added a border around it. A bug?? Thanks! Todd (Sorry, I can't seem to delete the uploaded image I added before finding the solution)

I right-clicked in the toolbar to see if there were any that looked like what you circled, but haven't found it yet... Todd

OK, will do. Here it is as selected with the Move Tool. I don't see tool panel you've circled. What am I missing? Something I removed from my tools, perhaps, because I didn't think I'd need them? Todd

I liked Lagarto's suggestion to keep track using layers. That doesn't necessarily simplify the tool-trading issue, but it does make the process more explicit. I think part of my confusion is that the Table Tool is not, according to comments above, first and foremost a Table Editing Tool. According to Dan C's (I think), it is primarily a Table Creation Tool. Therefore, part of my confusion could be because the tool is mislabeled. If Dan C is correct, could Create Table be a better name, since that seems to be its main purpose (with editing, etc., only secondary)? Back to my frustration: I find it quite strange that if I have an active "Text" tool (which I've been using to edit nearby text), I can't just select the text in a table. Instead, I have to select the table first. It means— From the Text tool I'm using, choose the Move Tool* Use the Move Tool to select the table whose text I want to edit. Then, re-choose the text tool (Text, Art-Text, or Table) so I can edit the text. (*BTW, I don't want to "move" the table, I just want to select it. Why is this tool called "Move"? Just to be different from the competition? Should it be called the "Select Tool" or something like that instead? It would make more sense to me. But then. I'm a "Yank.") Why can't a Text tool detect that you've selected text that lies in a table (or that you're hovering over a table before you click), select the table for you, and then select the text in that table? I get that there are floating vs inline, and possibly other constraints, but still...! If there's a way to go from editing nearby text to editing the text in an un-selected table without changing tools twice, I haven't figured it out. Maybe Lagarto's Layers trick will help. I'll try it next time. In the course of working on a layout, if I needed to do this 2 or 3 times in total during the course of my work, I wouldn't complain. But regarding the tables in the appendix I was referring to (gratefully, I'm done!), I was trying to carefully reduce physical length while still keeping it as readable as possible. That necessitated going back and forth several times for each of 7 or 8 separate tables as I adjusted space between paragraphs, the size of table rows, the spacing around tables, and did minor editing, to try to get the right balance. So I did that little "Tool" dance dozens of times in the course of those two pages. There's a Japanese word that applies perfectly: めんどくさい (mendokusai) for which there is no good English translation, but roughly means "a pain; hardly worth the trouble." In fact, I ended up deleting two of the tables, resorting to tabbing and spacing instead, 'cause it was just too much trouble to try and get the tables to work. Todd

In the process of cutting and pasting some Art-text objects/layers, a border has been added to the container/box that I didn't put it there and don't want. Adjusting Stroke or Color changes the text INSIDE the box, but NOT the box around the object/layer. For example, reducing the "Stroke" from 0.2 pt to 0.0 pt takes off the edge of the letters in the text but doesn't affect the border around the box that is the object/layer. Changing the "Stroke"'s color or transparency/opacity changes the color of of the edge of the font, but the box's border. Help!!! (Can't send the file, but attached is a screen shot.) BONUS QUESTION: Sometimes when working with objects, the box has little 'x's instead of handles. What's going on???

I've used Word and Excel for years, so I thought I'd already been through "Table Hell." But, Publisher brings it to a new level for me. I'm sorry for dropping several issues here at once—if any of these are covered elsewhere, please point me in the right direction. I will not be offended if you can kindly explain to me what I'm misunderstanding. 1. You CANNOT select an Existing Table by way of the Text tool, or even with the Table tool—directly. Since I'm working on a laying out a novel, my default tool (for now) is the Text tool. One would think that the software would be aware enough to know that when I click or double-click over an existing table, the cursor should select my table and then shift to the Table tool (like the Move tool changes to the Text tool when double-clicked over text.) For example, if you click on a table with the Text tool, it just places the cursor before or after an it (as if it were a non-text object). If you double-click over the table, it highlights the box the table is in (again like a foreign object—pretty unhelpful). Let's try starting with the Table tool. When I first choose the Table tool, it shows the cross-hairs to create a New Table. But when I click over an existing table, it places the cursor before or after the table (just like the Text tool)! And when I double click over the table, it highlights the box it is in—exactly like the Text tool! Huh? That's odd. So, to get the Table tool to actually select and apply to the table I have to do these three steps, in order, every time: First, choose the Move tool (I haven't tried it with other tools except the Text tool.) Use the Move tool to select the existing table by clicking on it (This shows the table as blue lines with handles but without the shaded column and row guides; other than the sizing handles, this mode allows no interaction; e.g., no editing!). After the existing table has been select, THEN choose the Table tool to perform table changes and edits. Table formatting appears only if you first choose the Move tool (or if it was the last tool you were using; if the Text tool was the last tool you had chosen, you're out of luck) selecting the table with it, and then choosing the Table tool. You must use the Move tool to select the table, and then choose the Table tool to edit. If you leave out step 2, you have to start over at step 1. Huh? This is nuts and very, VERY, frustrating. 2. Selecting non-table text with the Table Tool is allowed! Once the Table tool is chosen, and a table has been selected, I can go from one table to another and it properly selects the next table. Yea! But, let's say I'm done with the table for now, and I want to work on text. Since I just finished fiddling with my table, I'm still in the Table tool (it is currently active). Instinctively, I just try clicking on text without changing tools. Curiously, it works—apparently I'm allowed to use the Table tool to select and edit text! The tool panel still shows that I'm using the Table tool. However, if I try to go from that text back to a table, I have to go back to step one above. So, which tool am I in? (In spite of the tool panel, I'm going to guess it is not the Table tool...) Another example: if while editing a table I accidentally click somewhere else (like on text), I'm forced to go through all three step to select the table again. Perhaps these are all mere UI problems, but they sure make using tables a huge pain. Going from text to tables requires that three-step selection process Every. Single. Time. 3. Are table elements Floating or Inline or ???? I have one table near the beginning of the book that is clearly floating above the text—I can add text to the underlying page, including hitting returns, and the table doesn't move, text appears to flow underneath it. I have several other tables in the appendix that are clearly inline, that is, they behave like they are part of the text stream. If I hit return in the text before them, they move down with the flow of the text. (They seem to act like they are in the style of the return character that immediately follows them—kinda like Word when inline text wrap is selected.) I can't figure out how or why they are different, or how to change one kind to the other kind, or if there are still other options. Since this is intended as a layout program, it would sure be nice to understand how to control them!! (At one point, I briefly experimented with the floating table by applying Text-Wrapping to it, but it didn't seem to do anything...) 4. Formatting Hell I have a page in the appendix that is pretty tight—I'm trying to squeeze just one more line of text into it so that the rest of the book flows correctly. The place on the page where I could conserve some space is around three tables that contain example text. But, no matter what I've tried so far, I can't seem to control the space around the table. I have tried adjusting the "Frame Insets" at the top of the Table panel, the "Cell insets" nearer the bottom of the panel, the "paragraph format" the table appears to be in, and several other things. What seems to work on one table, won't work on the next, etc. Very frustrating!! (Hint? The table itself—not necessarily the contents or the row or column sizes—seem to take on spacing characteristics of the paragraph it is "in." (Remember, these are apparently "inline" tables.) Also, if the table is narrower than the text frame, and it is not followed by a return character, some of the text that follows in the frame will appear to the right of the table. If the table is as wide as the text frame, no return character is needed, but then controlling spacing between it and the following text becomes an issue.) I would love to be told what I'm doing it wrong, and instructed on how to manipulate tables better. (BTW, for me, Affinity's "Help" is pretty much useless—it explains things that I can usually figure out on my own, and lacks some of the details (or "tricks" or expert knowledge) that would be helpful. That's why this post.) comancheTodd

I've used Word and Excel for years, so I thought I'd already been through "Table Hell." But, Publisher brings it to a new level. I'm sorry for dropping several issues here—if any of these are covered elsewhere, please point me in the right direction. I will not be offended if you kindly explain to me that I'm doing it wrong. 1. You CANNOT select an Existing Table thru the Text tool, or even with the Table tool—directly. Since I'm working on a laying out a novel, my default tool (for now) is the Text tool. One would think that the software would be aware enough to know that when I click or double-click over an existing table, the cursor should shift to the Table tool (like the Move tool changes to the Text tool when double-clicked over text.) For example, if you click on the Table with the Text tool, it just places the cursor before or after an existing table. If you double-click over the table, it highlights the box the table is in (I guess that's what it's doing—pretty useless/meaningless, IMO). Let's try something else. First, I'll choose select the Table tool. Initially it gives me the cross-hairs to create a New Table; but when I click on my existing table, it places the cursor before or after the table (just like the Text tool). Huh? And when I double click over the table, it highlights—exactly like the Text tool! So, to get the Table tool to actually select and apply to the table I have to Choose the Move tool first Use the Move tool to click on the table to select it (This shows the table as blue lines with handles; other than the handles, this mode does nothing else that I can tell). THEN choose the Table tool Table formatting appears only if you first choose the Move tool, use it to select the table, and then choosing the Table tool. If you leave out step 2, you're back to the beginning: start over at step 1. Huh? This is nuts and very, very, VERY, frustrating. 2. Selecting other text with the Table Tool Once in the Table tool, I can go from one table to another and it properly selects the next table. OK. Let's say I'm done with the table for now, and I want to work on text. Since I'm still in the Table tool (it is currently active), if I click on some text, I immediately get the vertical line in the text that shows I can edit, but the Table tool is still highlighted in the tool panel. Furthermore, if I'm trying to go from that text back to a table, I have to back to step one above. So, which tool am I in? I'm going to guess it is not the Table tool... Perhaps these are all UI problems, but they sure make using tables a huge pain. 3. Floating or Inline or ???? I have one table near the beginning of the book that is clearly floating above the text—I can hit returns in the text around it, and it doesn't move, but text appears to flow underneath it. I have several other tables in the appendix that are clearly inline, that is, they behave like they are part of the text stream. If I hit return before them, they move down with the flow of the text. (They seem to act like they are in the style of the return character that immediately follows them—kinda like Word.) I can't figure out how or why they are different, or how to change one kind to the other kind, or if there are still other options. Since this is intended as a layout program, it would sure be nice to understand how to control them!! At one point, I tried Text-Wrapping with the floating one, but it didn't seem to do anything... 4. Formatting Hell I have a page in the appendix that is pretty tight—I'm trying to squeeze just one more line of text into it so that the rest of the book flows correctly. The place on the page where I could conserve some space is around three tables that contain example text. But, no matter what I try, I can't seem to control the space around the table. I have tried adjusting the "Frame Insets" at the top of the Table panel, the "Cell insets" nearer the bottom, the "paragraph format" the table appears to be in, and several other things. What seems to work on one table, won't work on the next, etc. Very frustrating!! I would love to be told I'm doing it wrong, and instructed on how to manipulate tables. (BTW, for me, Affinity's "Help" is pretty much useless—it explains things that most users would be able to figure out on their own. That's why this post.) comancheTodd

OK, that make's sense. I was trying to type in "<ZWSP>" into the field (with various quotes around it or not), because some other post made is sound like that's what you do. I also tried copying it from the text, and for some reason that didn't seem to work either (though that may have been my fault). On my Mac, the Character Selector (badly named "Show Emojis and Symbols" —I guess we know what audience they care about!) was confusing to copy from, but I found that if you go to https://unicode-table.com/en/search/ and search for the character ("ZWSP" and "Zero Width Space" both work), it "shows" you the character, and has a convenient button to "Copy" it. It worked perfectly. Thanks for the clarification, Old Bruce!!

Old Bruce, I have encountered the concept of using Zero Width Space with "Initial Words," to delimit the initial words BUT— —I cannot enter a ZWSP character directly into the "end characters" field, because all the characters under the "Text > Insert > Spaces & Tabs > menu are shaded —the code in angle brackets, <ZWSP>, (as suggested in a post somewhere) DOESN'T WORK. —I can't find anywhere in any documentation, forum, or on the Internet where the use of HTML codes like that are suggested or allowed. Please elaborate. PLEASE. comancheTodd

Hurrah! It worked! (I knew it had to be something I was doing wrong) Thank you so much! Todd

Sure. Here it is. map—7th_Empire_Complete_(20⋅12⋅01).afdesign

I'm working on a map used as an illustration for a fantasy novel. It was imported from Adobe Illustrator CS4. It involves lots of text labels as well as drawn vector features. I've been organizing all the layers and groups to make it easier to navigate to fix and change things. I've been cleaning up and adapting the larger font fields, and I'm now ready to start working on the smaller text fields, and they aren't there. They appear in layers; when I select the layer with the Move Tool, the box and handles appear, but there's nothing inside the box. If I select the text box, then select the Text tool, it acts like it is selecting text, but nothing appears. I've double checked all the places that control transparency (I think) and they all look normal. Something like 30 text fields now have "invisible text" inside them. I've even tried converting to text to curves or rasterizing it to see if that makes it visible. Nothing I've started and stopped the program several times, still nothing. The other text I've finished working on is all still visible. Any ideas?