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Posts posted by iconoclast
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19 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:
I had no choice so to say, at that time where I tried it first, APu was not able to open IDML so I opened a 300 pages PDF. To my surprise it went well, apart from some text lines not meant to be grouped.
That would be cool. In my case, as I already said, the "Group lines of text into text frames" was already activated by standard. And it didn't work. Every line had its own frame. And depending on the content of the lines, some lines even were fragmented in several frames. May depend on how the PDF was exported. Possibly even from which software. However, you can try it, but it doesn't seem to be reliable.
I tested it with two PDFs. One didn't work at all, because the text was converted to curves. The other one was probably written in Publisher, because it was an Affinity Tutorial.
Edit: Just tested a third one. It's the same issue as the second one.
Edit again: Tested a fourth one, I created with LibreOffice myself. This one worked better. It created text frames for every side. And, of course, no separation between Headlines and running text. So even not really normal running text, but a lot better than the other PDFs.
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12 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:
There is the option "Group lines of text into text frames" to avoid that.
Have you tried it out? In my case it was activated as I tested it. There are also some other problems as it seems. Some characters seem to cause breaks between text frames also. Will check this out a little bit in the next days. Interesting hint. But I'm afraid, not really a solution.
By the way, I already had many similar discussions about PDF in other forums. It seems that there are many people out there to whom PDF seems like a kind of swiss knife or even a holy grail. Most times they finally got really angry if one clarifies the limitations. And in the end, as far as I experienced, it ended up most times with a lot of wasted time and bad results or no result at all.
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7 minutes ago, FredVN said:
No. Open a pdf, not import as a image.
With open you have normal text and images. You can move them, change the layout and change the style of the text.
Yes, that seems to work somehow. That's interesting. But not really with normal text. As I tested it a minute ago, the text was fragmented into text frames for each line (not as bad as I experienced it soe years ago). So it is not really a normal running text. But maybe good enough for jamesgangcreative's demands.
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4 minutes ago, FredVN said:
I still don't understand the problem. I agree with Joachim's first sentence.
What I do is using the pdf as a structured import document. Changes nare not made in the pdf, but in AP. So what is the risk?
In my opinion, you can import and use a PDF file in Publisher like an image file. But you can't edit the content of the PDF, except using adjustment layers etc.
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32 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:
I may be wrong, but initially PDF was meant as a document format looking consistent / exchangeable over several platforms. In those ol' days working in a prepress company (RIP50 and Linotronic 330 rule!) we experimented if we could use a PDF for making films and it was a bit adventurous. Anyone knowing Crackerjack, a plugin we used for separating colours?
That's how I learned it in my apprenticeship as a Media Designer, about fifteen years ago. You can also read the Wikipedia or other sources for this issue. I made some experiments with PDFs by myself, some years ago, f.e. using PDF Expert. But I never got any usable result. Nevertheless, venturesome users may risk it anyway. But don't grouse if the result is messy printing. The verry verry least that you need to use the formated text of a PDF file for a new document would be the absolutely identic font, because every font has its own spacing and kerning, individual thickness (in german we call it "Dickte") and so on. And there is f.e. a huge amount of Garamonds, Times', Helveticas... from different Providers available.
As I said, try if you really want. It's not my cup of tea.
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15 hours ago, jamesgangcreative said:
The "adding a couple master pages for standardization" is the "just simply" part that didn't work. I created the pub doc, placed the pdf and wanted to "add a couple master pages for standardization" which I thought I did. but the pagination did not appear. Or the test of the header's did not appear. I created the master page and the text frames, the number # shows up, but not on the pages that now have the pdf on them. So, any help (steps vs. concept) would be appreciated. Thanks.
I'm not sure if I understand what you really want to do, but a PDF is not a storage file for content that you can "unpack" to a layout document as you like. If you write a PDF, all content on the source document will be coded in Postscript. It is not meant to work in the opposite way. As I already said, initially it was only meant to transfer layouts savely to the printing house. It was not supposed to be manipulated after that anyway. Since that days some inventions have been done that made it possible to manipulate even PDF files. But it is risky, because there can be made several adjustments on writing the PDF that can cause damaged files if you try to "unpack" a PDF, to use its content in other documents. Sometimes the text gets totally fragmented, as I experienced.
Unless, sometimes it may work anyway. So try it if you want. But it is at your own risk. You should always be aware of that printing is verry expensive, and a goofed print job can't be reversed.
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8 minutes ago, jamesgangcreative said:
I haven't a clue as to why someone would do this. When I learned to format the book using Word.docx, and creating TOC, the headings, styles, odd/even, section breaks, pagination ... and saved as a pdf it was perfect. Why would I do all that just to put it into Af-publisher? I tested a pdf yesterday and tried to "just simply" edit (or add) pagination, text frames, etc and couldn't edit the page at all. So, the whole reason I am using Af-Publisher is to use the robust ability to do those things (fix Right-hand chapter starts, pagination, formatting of the header/footer) and as far as I can see, I can't do that at all. If I could save the word doc as a pdf THEN do all these additional things, that would be great. But I don't see that as a possibility. So, if you want to share with me how that works - how a pdf can be imported into the text frame - then all these other things added around the pdf, then great, I'll try it out.
8 minutes ago, jamesgangcreative said:I haven't a clue as to why someone would do this. When I learned to format the book using Word.docx, and creating TOC, the headings, styles, odd/even, section breaks, pagination ... and saved as a pdf it was perfect. Why would I do all that just to put it into Af-publisher? I tested a pdf yesterday and tried to "just simply" edit (or add) pagination, text frames, etc and couldn't edit the page at all. So, the whole reason I am using Af-Publisher is to use the robust ability to do those things (fix Right-hand chapter starts, pagination, formatting of the header/footer) and as far as I can see, I can't do that at all. If I could save the word doc as a pdf THEN do all these additional things, that would be great. But I don't see that as a possibility. So, if you want to share with me how that works - how a pdf can be imported into the text frame - then all these other things added around the pdf, then great, I'll try it out.
You can't import PDFs into text frames. But you can import them into image frames. But you should be carefull with PDFs. For example, I made the experience, that, if I copied text from a PDF I created myself, there were more spaces in the text than I inserted. That possibly had to do with the formating and how the PDF export interpreted it. I think, this kind of experiments with PDFs is a verry good way to create damaged files and bad layouts.
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Just tested it with LibreOffice. It's true that RTF saves formatings. But TXT doesn't. So I would suggest to save source text for layouts as TXT (*.txt) file, to prevent formatings.
To explain: in my old company we had people that wrote the text, others made the photographs and graphics and others had to make layouts outoff that stuff (with QuarkXPress and InDesign). I was one of the last ones. As far as I remember the text I got was always in RTF format. But I maybe wrong. It was some years ago. The important thing was that the text always had to be unformated, because, if it was formated, it always caused a lot of unnecessary work that did cost a lot of time.
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If I save text as RTF in LibreOffice, I always get a message that asks me if I really want to save as RTF, because it doesn't support formatings. Possibly a feature of Word? It's long a go that I worked with Word. Really don't know. But as far as I know, it's the same with TXT files. Don't know what Word does with it, but with LibreOffice also this works without formatings. Could be worth a test. Because the really important point is to prevent formatings in source text for layout projects, that only cause problems.
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In such cases, if you're not sure if what you will do next will be what you really want, you can make a snapshot.
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I wouldn't do any formating in Word. It's much easier and better to do the formating in Publisher than to correct all the formatings, you made with Word, afterwards. If you insert images in your layout or you change the size of the text box, the margins and so on a little, all the preset formatings will be troublesome and cause a lot of unnecessary work anyway. Because of this I learned in my apprenticeship always to save source text in RTF (rich text format), that doesn't support formatings, so it will be absolut clean of formatings anyway.
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Hi Sweatman!
You can blur strokes by using layer effects ("Gaußian Blur").
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Can't reproduce that. Possibly a screenshot could help us.
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11 hours ago, Affinity iPad Student said:
this is beautiful - it’s exactly what i’m trying to achieve, how did you get it to work?
Also upon reading your notes and @DM1 it seems you both have this issue - but in different ways?
It seems that for you @iconoclastyou have the very same cut off issue i have? how did you resolve it?
should i upload my files in.psd so you can look at it? and maybe help me identify what i may be doing wrong?
thanks.
As I already said (and you can see in the layers panel on the left of my screenshot - "Ebenen" is the german word for "Layers"), I didn't attach the curve layer ["Mega Ship (Kurve)"] to the Brightness/Contrast layer, because if you do this, its effect will only be applied to the curve layer, and everything below will be cut off. In Olivio's tutorial this doesn't happen, because his background is more greyish, I think, and it also seems that he rasterized the curve layer, so that it is a pixel layer. Edit: I have to correct myself. Olivio had no curve layer in his image, so this couldn't happen this way.
I also changed the gradient of the curve layer, so that the windows are on the hight of the shadow. That gives a better effect, I think. By the way, I'm not sure if light, that is shining through a window, really would produce such an extreme lightbeam in form of a spot light. Anyway, it wouldn't be the only lightbeam if there are more windows in a row. On my image, there is a bright light on one spot inside the ship, so through the windows to the left and right of that spot is lesser light shining. Nevertheless there must be some weaker lightbeams with wider angles coming through the neighbour windows, I think. It's all a matter of how realistic do you want it.
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During the last years I met a lot of people who had strange ideas of what PDF files are for and what to do with it. Some seem to think that existing PDF files could be a nice and cheap source to extract images and/or text from it (or even fonts) - without even thinking about copyrights and that there are possibly some adjustments made that could make the images and text useless for what they want it for, and so on. Some people even seem to think that PDF is the universal file format to save everything. As a kind of storage format or so. I always tell them then that PDF was primordial made to create printready layout documents that are not meant to be processed or to extract something from it. That was in the beginning one of the big qualities of this file format, because it was a reliable format for both sides - designers and printers - that even prevents them from legal controversies about damaged print-jobs. And even if I advise them to catch up some informations about PDF by themselves (for example from Wikipedia), they obviously prefered to shoot the messenger. So I'll better be quiet. 😄
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4 minutes ago, Lagarto said:
I am just commenting here a feature that exists (not something that should exist) and try to explain how it works, and partly also why it work as it does. This is common behavior with InDesign and I think it works as designed. I may be wrong, but If is a bug, I wish that Affinity apps had more these kinds of bugs.
OK, but why? Any rational reasons? Any advantage? And do you think that Adobe is the eternal idol for everything around graphics and DTP? I don't think so.
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55 minutes ago, Lagarto said:
There might be, but not related to the alignment of numbers. How do you middle align if there is no indent, as outdent off to left from the text frame is not supported? Word can do this without left indent because it does not use text frames and can "outdent" off the document left margin, when using center aligned numbers.
The preferred workflows of course vary, but personally I like this method as it does not require adding of extra tabs before the number to get the right aligned numbers.
If this should not be a bug, so it can't be intended to the best affords of usabilty. If it always needs additional space for right and center alignment, so the program should be developed to add it automatically. That should be possible and would prevent the users from a lot of confusion and frustration, it would spare valuable working time ("time is money") and make the work more economical.
Even the outdent to the left of the text frame should be possible somehow, I think, because it also works with the "Optical Alignement" (Character Panel). But if you like your accustomed workflow that much, nobody will forbid you to do it this way furthermore.
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40 minutes ago, Lars Kindell said:
...But I must say that we are a long way from MS Office in the logic – and why not…
I think, it should work only by clicking on the "Tab Stop right alignment" button. Even in LibreOffice it works this way. Possibly it inserts some additional space for that automatically. Don't know that. But why shouldn't Publisher be able to do so to?
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To be honest, I don't need that verry often, and I can't remeber how I made this in InDesign. But this doesn't seem to be the most economical way to do such a simple thing. Especially if you don't do it every day, because you will always have to remember this steps.
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OK, some minutes ago I found out how it works. But I don't really believe that this is the way it is meant to be. Never did this in such an uncomfortable way. I'm sure that this could be solved much more userfriendly.
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2 minutes ago, Lagarto said:
It just looks like one, but is not. The logic is that there must be room for making the alignment. If you have e.g. 5mm indent, then left, center and right alignment of the number works as expected.
Not in my case. I even tested it with a Tab Stopp Indent of 10 and more, and nothing happens. I wrote a bug report some minutes ago. Maybe we will have more clearness soon.
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Hi!
I tried to create a numbered list in Publisher and wanted the numbers to be aligned to the right, while the following text is still aligned to the left, because it would look more aesthetic. But it seems not to work. I think the option "Tab Stopp right alignment" (screenshot) should do this, but it doesn't have any effect. By the way, "align right" was predefined. But none of the three options shows any effect.
There are already two threads about this issue, as far as I can see:
and
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/139881-align-numbers-in-numbered-lists/
My version of Publisher is 1.9.2.1035 on Windows 10.

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For me this looks like a bug. There is an option to align the numbers or the TAB-Stopp or whatever, but I can't see any effect if I change this setting.
Edit: This thread also is about this topic, and it also comes to the final conclusion, that it must be a bug.




Format in Word First? or Import the docx first?
in Pre-V2 Archive of Affinity on Desktop Questions (macOS and Windows)
Posted
That is absolutely okay, if it works for you. But in general, if you want to create bigger projects, you should better only import pure unformatted text into Publisher (or even InDesign- or Quark-) documents, and do all the formating in the layout software. That would be a rational workflow and would prevent a lot of problems and unnecessary work.
It is generally a question of what you want to do. If you do all alone (text, photos, graphics and layout), and it is a small project, you can of course even write the text directly in Publisher.