Dave Harris

Publisher supports most kinds of spaces even if the font doesn't. U+202F is a typical example: if the font defines it, we use the font's glyph and width, and if it doesn't, we use blank space and a hard-coded width. Indesign invents features, such as flush space, and then assigns them to Unicode code points which it thinks nobody will miss, such as EM QUAD U+2000. I believe that's what it does with U+202F. It figures nobody needs a narrow non-breaking space because their thin space is already non-breaking, so it reuses the code point for a non-breaking fixed-width space. When the text is pasted into Publisher, we do treat it as a narrow non-breaking space so our line length is different to Indesigns.

Unicode defines various fixed width spaces, including one called a Thin Space. Previously long lines could be broken at a thin space; now they can't; it is treated as a non-breaking space instead. This is preferred behaviour when the thin space is used as a separator in numbers. Also, previously Publisher always used its own widths for fixed spaces, according to their Unicode definitions. Now if the font defines the space, Publisher uses the font's width instead. More discussion at https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/71532-thin-space-should-be-non-breaking-and-fixed-width-157/.

You can also get rid of just the text boxes by unticking Show Text Flow.

Each font contains a setting that says what the leading should be for that font, as decided by the font's author. That leading is what Publisher uses by default. As far as we're concerned, the font's leading is the standard for that font. Yes, of course. The leading control is in the Paragraph panel, with a shortcut to it in the Text context toolbar. You can also change it via text styles. Any change will also apply to new text created from that point in the same document. Edit > Defaults > Save will make the current default apply to new documents.

Earlier you seemed to be saying that Indesign treats U+2009 as breaking if the font supports U+202F and non-breaking if it doesn't. That's the part I was querying. If I misunderstood and you merely meant that Indesign uses the font's widths for spaces if the font has them, then I agree. Earlier versions of Affinity apps don't do that, but I think the latest Publisher beta does. In your screen shot, the character widths for the first line are the same. The blue graphics we use when we render invisibles don't need to match Indesign. In fact, some of them are completely different (eg digit space). We also give graphics to characters Indesign doesn't. It's not our intention to make an Indesign clone.

When we implemented this for PagePlus, the pasteboard items had to be moved around when you switched to spreads of different size. You could also lose text behind the page if it started on the pasteboard. We weren't really happy with it so have decided not to take that approach for Publisher. In Publisher each spread gets an independent pasteboard area instead of a shared one.

This is because entering a tab at the start of a paragraph indents it. If you don't like that behaviour, you can disable it with Preferences > Auto-Correct > Use tab to alter paragraph level instead of inserting a tab.

I'm not sure exactly what you want either, but a similar approach may work. I just created a master page with a text frame and gave it an empty paragraph formatted as a numbered list. I gave it a name "Pages" and ticked the Global checkbox, and set Restart numbering to Manual. I then copied that 4 times to represent 5 pages. I then created several pages using this master page. Every page had the five text frames numbered consecutively, continuing on from one page to the next in the natural way. To force the numbering to be different, I went to the Layers panel for the second page, found the master page, and beneath that found the frame where I wanted the numbering to change and selected it. I then went to the Paragraph panel and ticked the Restart numbering now checkbox, and set the Start numbering at to the number I wanted.

You can show leading zeros by setting the Number style in the Section Manager. That goes up to 0001; if you need more than three zeros you can probably enter them by hand.

This bug has been fixed now, and changed wrap settings should affect any object created after the change (in the same document). Synchronise from selection should pick up the defaults of whatever object is selected, as they are when you hit the button.

Are you sure? I've not found a font that supports U+202F to check, but it seems unlikely. My Indesign has a menu option that inserts U+202F, which works even if the font doesn't define the character, but it calls it Nonbreaking Space (Fixed Width) and it has the same width as a default normal space. It seems to me Indesign has done something contrary to the intent of the Unicode standard here, by making Narrow No-break Space not be narrow. The references I've found variously say it should be 1/3rd em, 70% em, or similar to Thin Space. I also notice that Indesign gives Thin Space U+2009 a width of 1/8th em with the default composer, and 1/5th em with the World-Ready composer. I suspect Indesign always treats U+2009 as non-breaking, and so does MS Word, but Pages treats it as breaking. There isn't a whole lot of consistency. I currently think it best if Publisher treats U+2009 as non-breaking with a width of 1/5 em. I'm still not sure what width to give U+202f. Currently it is fixed at half the width of a default space.

You can apply opacity to the whole object via the Layers panel, or just to the frame fill and stroke with the Transparency tool or the Text Frame panel. And each colour has its own opacity too.

There are several things happening here. First, the Ordinal OpenType feature often only applies to o or a, which are used in Spanish and related languages for masculine and feminine gendered numbers. Many fonts implement it for those and not for English ordinals like 3rd. Publisher doesn't do fake ordinals currently, and if it did it would probably only do so if the font had no support at all, so as not to interfere with the font author's intent or get mismatched glyphs. Second, Publisher has two ways of setting Superscript. The typographic way is based on replacing glyphs, and is either implemented by OpenType or by switching Unicode characters. Either way, it only works for characters that have suitable superscript glyphs defined by the font. This is why the Superscript from the Typography section works for 3 and not for rd. The other way just scales and offsets the original glyphs, and as such works for all characters. This one is set from the Positioning and Transform section and is probably what you should be using here. Third, Publisher does indeed have an option Preferences > Auto-Correct > Superscript ordinals as they are typed and it sounds like you have this enabled on one machine and not the other. It switches on the scale and offset method, so always works. That this is working on your desktop makes me believe that Publisher is working as designed, and that you are simply using Superscript from the Typography section rather than the Positioning and Transform section.

No problem. Thanks for confirming it works.

Did Document > Font Manager not help?