skmwrp

Moved from other thread of unrelated problem. Publisher 1.9.3, macOS Big Sur. AP file with multiple linked Designer files would get no further than a blank window and Loading… when Publisher file opened. Figured out what's causing the crash. We renamed the folder containing the AP document and all the sub-folders that contain all of the AD files that are linked in. We went from a folder named "Layout Pages" to " Layout Pages" in order to force it to first position in the pop-up of the directories on the dock, basically placing it first alphabetically. The AP file was in this renamed folder, and the AD files are in subfolders of that renamed folder. Figured this out because we went back to a Time Machine copy of the AP file from this morning and it did exactly the same thing, just showed a blank window, Loading…, then crash. This file had no problems before. Then it struck us about our renaming that directory, so we named it back and the file now opens properly. We then tested if it was the name starting with spaces was the problem, so we renamed the folder "The Layout Pages" and it went back to crashing again, so it appears that renaming the directory in any way leads to this problem. Strangely, if we go up a level, where we can see the "Layout Pages" folder and create a new folder, and drag the AP file into there, without the AD files even being in the same hierarchy, it handles opening that just fine. Okay, maybe not so strangely, we thought. Not if the problem is that the AP file is keeping full paths to the linked documents and crashing on that when it changes. It should open the document & say they're missing, though. To test this, we moved the AP document out of the folder into the other, and then renamed the folder containing all the subfolders of liked AD files, then tried opening the AP file. Well, it opened, and told us the files were missing! So the crashing problem seems to only happen when the folder that contains the AP file and the AD files, is renamed. We're trying to come up with a simple test case where this happens. Also, the app crashes in this case because it tries to malloc an orphaned pointer.

Well, this was more of an issue of Publisher starting to crash violently on us again and finally throwing up our hands, thinking we'd move back to using the many, multiple Designer files. We were trying to rescue what we could and just happened to stumble upon this oddity in behavior. We've since figured out the reason of the crashing Publisher file (renaming the directory) and have been able to rescue all our work. We'd just feel better having a backup plan in place. (Well, we'd feel much better if Publisher would stop crashing on us, 'cause we've gotten rather fond of it.)

Ah! We've never seen this, and never thought to look for it since it's not there usually. Is there a way to show the thumbnails in Designer? Because it's kind of weird otherwise, not really seeing other pages.

No, we're in Designer, not Publisher. We opened a Publisher file and switched it to Designer by using Edit in Designer. There's no status bar in Designer. (That we know of.)

Moving this problem, which has to do with directory renaming, to its own entry, because it's not related to the issue we've been seeing with loading linked files.

Had two-page Publisher document, which we sent to Designer by way of Edit in Designer menu item (not just changing to the Designer Persona in AP). We then saved it as a Designer document. The document in Designer showed only the first page, which didn't surprise us. Figured there'd be some translation problems. But when we export to JPEG, we get two files, one for each page. And when we try Print, it shows that it will print both pages, which we can see in the Preview. We zoomed out as far as possible, but we cannot find the location of the second page. And the Layers panel shows nothing of the second page. Where is the thing?

Okay, now unable to open that backup file. AP just shows a blank window, "Loading…" at the top, then after about 30 seconds, it crashes. We give up. Oh, it dies on attempting to free memory on a dead pointer.

AP 1.9.3, MacOS 11.2.3. Okay, the problem returned. AP was loading linked AD files, locked up, and had to Force Quit out of it. Happened three times in a row. The only extra information I have is that we were trying something new with a text style (changing font size) on one of the linked documents when it struck us that we were altering the original files, so we quit out of AP, went onto our Time Machine backup, found the file we were altering in pre-altered state, and dropped it into the folder containing the altered copy, so we were back to original state. We were planning to archive the entire directory so we can have a backup of that state in case we decide the changes aren't working out. Opened the AP file and it quit updating/displaying the linked files on the page where we had altered that one linked document. Double-clicking thumbnails didn't jump us to another page, scrolling just showed blank pages and thumbnails. Opened Activity Monitor and it was using little RAM and the CPU usage had dropped to about nothing. App became non-responsive, beach balled when trying to quit, so we Force Quit…ed(?). And, as I mentioned, this happened the next two times we opened the AP file. Fortunately, we had just made a duplicate of the AP file itself, because we weren't thinking at the time and thought we were saving the original state, not realizing the whole linked document thing until later. We tossed the file that didn't work, renamed the copy to the original name, and it opened fine (though there was some real CPU run-up by AP, kicking on the fan of our 2018 Mac Mini, but that settled.) Images slowly showed up and everything's fine. Anyway, it appears that bad file had become corrupted? By evil, maybe? We don't know. We just wanted to give y'all this information in case it helps track down this issue.

Okay, we're trying this out, but how do you embed a Designer file into a picture frame that comes from the master page? It's not obvious to us at this point. Thanks for the help. Okay, figured it out. It seems doing Place… with the Frame selected puts it into the Frame.

This seems to only select the embedded files on the current page, not then entire document, so no different than going to each page in Publisher Persona and selecting the embedded layers. Unless we're missing something. Thanks, though. And now we just read your added response. Thanks anyway.

Have about 100+ Designer files linked into a Publisher document. Added a paper texture to the Master Pages so it's applied to all of them. Now, we'd like to change the blend mode of all those linked files, which are on the individual pages, to Darken. Is there a quick way to do this, something faster than doing each-and-every-one-of-them-one-at-a-time? (Plus, we'd like the ability to back out of it quickly if we need to.) Back in the QuirkXpensive days, we'd use AppleScript, so we could figure that out if it's an option. (Though select all pages, change, would be nicer.) Thanks!

We're using a 20W Anker Nano Charger. If it actually charges at that speed, we don't know. Anyway, more information to give others.

Turned off WiFi (in Settings, not the bogus swipe-down shutoff) and the problem still occurred, though it came & went, and took a bit longer to start. Still, rotating & pinching came to a complete stop for about 10 seconds, while opening & closing studios using keypad was unaffected. Had to restart iPad. (Well, maybe didn't have to, but the problem was still occurring after I unplugged it and I'm just too impatient otherwise.)

Okay, we got it to happen again, this time using the new charger. It wouldn't happen at first, but the iPad was already at 100%, so we thought maybe it has to be actually trying to charge it up, so we unplugged it. Then after working for a while, running down the battery to 97%, we plugged it in again, but this time we were in AD. Maybe that's how it starts, by plugging in the charging cable while in an app. The non-responsiveness was almost immediate, seen primarily in attempts to zoom & rotate using two fingers. Switched to Apple Pages, had no issue, but you really can't do much there. Then switched to Procreate and while we could draw fine (raster vs vector), the gestures to zoom & rotate also became non-responsive, sometimes taking multiple attempts to rotate as nothing but an Undo when it finally came back. Had to restart iPad to get it to stop. Anyway, this seems to be an Apple issue, not specific to AD, though we're in AD 98.16% of the time, madly zoomin'n'rotatin', where it's more pronounced because we're trying to do something, you know, useful & productive. So not you! Sorry about the kerfuffle, but we couldn't get this to happen in Procreate until we realized the two-finger gestures were the key. (Now if y'all'd just get that Deselect key working.😉)

We haven't been able to test this again the past few days, as we're preparing on the Mac the files we'll be working with on the iPad. But this is what we can give you so far… When charging the iPad and the device becomes slow, do you notice the iPad is particularly warm/hot to the touch? iPad's on an aluminum laptop stand, and is covered across the back by a fairly thick case, so we wouldn't noticed that, but we'll check next time. As far as the surface, no one remembers it seeming particularly warm. Does this happen in any document, or only a certain document? It may be that the document you're editing is causing this issue and the fact the iPad is charging may not be related. Always the same kind of document, which is an AD file with multiple layers, because that's the only documents we're working on at the moment. We do most work on the Mac, but actual inking on iPads. We're inking, so we're adding many, many brush strokes, but this has never been an issue when using iPad unplugged. And the battery didn't seem to drain particularly fast when used unplugged, so it doesn't seem like any sort of constant resource usage. That's why we're leaning towards thinking it's an iOS issue, but we need to try using other apps when this happens to see if they're affected as well. If they have problems, iOS issue; if not, AD issue. The problem just seems to creep up on you. What steps are you taking in the app whilst it's charging? Are you using any specific features? I'd like to try replicating your workflow as closely as possible. Vector brush using Apple Pencil or Logitech Crayon, pressure is off, we manually select brush thickness using the calculator interface (which is why we really wish the Enter & Delete key were working in that interface) using a paired bluetooth numpad. How long after starting charging the device do you notice these slowdowns? About 2-3 minutes? We'll pay more attention. After restarting your iPad, you mention the issue appears to be resolved, which could indicate a memory bug rather than one related to charging - if you plug the iPad back in right after restarting, does the issue return immediately? We'll test. Are you charging the device from a particularly low charge point (ie under 10% battery) or does it not seem to matter what the battery charge value is? Charging from 60% or higher. This was never an issue before because the iPad iss on its own special artist table and to charge it, it had to be moved to the charger on the desk, so we weren't using it while charging. Have since run charging cable to the table so now it can be charged while being used, and the first time we tried this, the issue appeared. Using a standard 5w Apple adapter back then with standard Apple USB-A-to-Lightning. Now have USB-C adapter and matching Apple cable, but haven't used it yet. If the problem doesn't appear with this new charger, we'll try switching back to the slower charger and see if it occurs. That's about it. We just about have a whole boatload of files we'll be working on the iPad, so we'll be able to do further testing shortly.

So far, AP 1.9.3 is rock solid! \0/ UPDATE: The problem seems to have gone away with 1.9.3. Yes, there's a bit of lag (not enough to seem unreasonable) with updating the thumbnails when first opened after restart, but the pages themselves show the linked Designer files file. Haven't locked up, haven't crashed, and we're just slapping Fate across the face by writing this, but we take our chances.

First time I tried this and twice it happened. I needed to charge my iPad and while it was hooked up to standard outlet charger, I worked in AD for iPad. But then, after a while, the UI became slow and non-responsive. Two-finger tapping wouldn't Undo, two-finger rotate wouldn't rotate the canvas, pinch didn't zoom half the time. Buttons became non-responsive. Brush drawing lagged the pencil. Both times, I unhooked the lightning cable but the problems persisted. I then dumped AD from memory and started it again, but still a problem. I tried Procreate, but had no issues, though I didn't try much else because I pretty much use the iPad only of AD. The only way to fix this was to restart my iPad (which I did with the home-power force restart on startup to make sure anything funky was out of the way.) Still can't figure if this was an AD issue, or a iOS issue. Will keep trying to figure this out when I have time, but wondered if anyone else has seen the same. iPad Air 3 with latest iOS & AD. And it happened the third time I tried it.

AD 1.9.3. Example: Draw lines with a vector brush. Because Deselect is not working, many times end up with one of the lines selected when we switch to pencil tool. (Must switch to pointer/move tool and click in the background to deselect everything, another step added because of Deselect not working.) Make changes to pencil tool settings, to include adding color to the stroke. That color change gets applied to the last brush stroke. When we Undo this, the change back to the original color does not happen with one two-finger tap, but it instead steps its way through the entire drag of the color picker sliders. We counted over 100 two-finger taps to get from red back to original black. Would expect Undo to change color from what it is to what it was when color picker was opened in a single Undo tap. Note: The attached video is a bogus test situation where it's obvious that there's a brush stroke selected when the color of the pencil tool is being changed. Issues occur in reality because we're zoomed in and moving about, so the selected stroke is off screen. Also, why is the color of the brush stroke even changed because we're changing the color of the pencil tool? Shouldn't the the tool settings change only the tool? The intention was not to delete the brush stroke, but when you're drumming that hard, it's hard to know when to expect the color change to end. Anyway, avoid watching if you have issues with repeatedly blinking blue dots… Undo Color Change.mp4

Okay, sorry, don't know why I was thinking 1.9.4. You're right, it's 1.9.3. I think I got 1.94 from looking at my bank account yesterday.

If you're using a Mac, we opened Activity Monitor and watched as Publisher ate up RAM. We could see what appeared to be a memory leak (opening a linked file for editing would not release the used RAM), but Publisher 1.9.4 apparently fixes some memory leak issue. Our problem might be unrelated to what they fixed, but it could've also been a knock-off effect. Anyway, it should tell you pretty quickly if Publisher is opening all 144 pages for each link, as that would really use up memory. Don't know how to do the same if you’re using Windows. If you haven't updated to Publisher 1.9.4, do that. For us, it seems much more stable.

We're not even worried about the crash. It was just another thing that happened and we want to provide all information we can. It's the redraw issue and the app locking up while updating links and getting stuck that we care about, as that happened more commonly. The reboot was just weird. Since updating to 1.9.4, we haven't had the issue (knock on bits), so we'll hold off to see it returns. Also, for added luck, we did the whole "duplicate the app to fix permissions" thing, which I don't know if it's even a problem with Publisher, but superstitions are cheap & effective. Problem with sending the file is a) it's proprietary, b) packaging it up would not recreate the elaborate file structure (The Designer files are scattered among folders within folders, many levels deep, as we were trying to keep things organized when we used Designer only. We started using Publisher as a means to see, print, and work on them all in one location, kind of like Adobe Lightroom, which, when it's working, it works pretty well.), and c) because there should always be a c). Anyway, if it happens again, hopefully we'll be more aware of what's going on and be able to provide more information as well as come up with a test scenario. More hopefully, it won't happen again. Thanks!

It also reads as Put all blame and responsibility on the enduser.

This would only make sense if my system ever rebooted on its own, which it never has. As for the second part — if it only happens when Publisher is running, then, by definition, Publisher is the problem. Publisher has some issues, clearly, and I'm aware of it. Just trying to give them any information that might help them track down the issues.

Not ½ hour after writing previous post, found system rebooting itself. Had Publisher running along with Apple Pages & Mail. When opened my Publisher document, the blank pages returned. Quitting caused Publisher to become non-responsive and had to be Force Quit…ed(?) Found two things odd… 1) If I scrolled down the pages on the Page Panel and double-clicked a page, the document did not jump to that location as expected. Didn't move at all. I could scroll through the actual document, but other than the first two pages, no other pages showed the linked Designer documents. Now the first two pages has only embedded PNG images and text frames, so maybe they're the issue. 2) And now I forgot the second thing. Maybe I shouldn't've…. Actually, I remember. 2) I opened Mac's Activity Monitor and watched the RAM usage by Publisher and while it usually crawls up to approximate 1.9 Gb of RAM (on 32 Gb system), it was stuck at approx. 550 Mb. So Publisher appeared to not even be trying to load the linked Designer documents. Not sure if this is because it stopped trying, or it was stuck at the last thing it did, which would make more sense because of the lockup on attempting to quit. Anyway, shouldn't've tempted fate with that last post. ADDED: In the time it took to write this post, opened my Publisher document again and it opened fine, albeit with slow redraw of the thumbnails on the Pages Panel. Could use it to jump to pages as expected and eventually all the thumbnails appeared. This seems to be consistent: if it locks up, Force Quit out of Publisher and wait about five minutes, then it'll work. Still love you, Affinity! Or Serif. Never sure what to call you.

This problem appears to have gone away after a day, so not sure if it has to do with a new Publisher document "settling in," a hardware or system issue at the time, or maybe a separate task that was doing something else, like checking license with MAS that was having its own problem at the time.