benwiggy

After updating the OS, the problem has returned to the duplicated apps.

We know! The question is ... how long before Affinity catches up?

Yes, this does seem to improve things. Thanks. I can't imagine what duping the files changes.

Thanks,

Then you need more options: Embedded Passthrough, Embedded "interpreted"; linked passthrough, linked "interpreted".

This is all very interesting, but why do other apps not have the problems that Affinity does with importing PDFs?

Does 'embedding' differ from 'interpret' and 'passthrough' only in terms of adding the document to the Affinity file? Presumably it's also 'interpreted'?

Is a placed PDF not opened, read, displayed, and printed? What many people want to do with PDFs is open them in a vector package for editing. Other apps manage to do this, outlining glyphs where necessary. Lots of Photo editors can raster a PDF page, without altering the text because it's tried to 'interpret' the contents in some bizarre way.

Now that we have Passthrough PDF in Publisher, will we see a similar feature in Designer to open PDFs accurately, outlining any glyphs you're not sure about? (Or even an "Outline fonts" checkbox in the import options?) And similarly being able to raster a PDF in Photo without text being "interpreted"? Thanks

Affinity's "interpretation" of PDFs is even more unreliable, so I can't see that being a fix. If there's a mismatch in PDF spec, then rasterizing is definitely the wrong solution, so that's the bug. Obviously, if a placed PDF has one spec, and your output another, then the placed PDF needs to be converted to the output spec.

If a selection is made of text that has different attributes, there is no indication of that in the relevant settings. Only the attributes of the beginning of the selection are shown. So it's very easy to select a whole bunch of text and assume that all the attributes are the same, when they're not. E.g. leading, alignment/justification, line spacing, hyphenation, etc. Only point size and font style/weight give any indication - by going blank, which is perhaps not ideal.

The relevant thing is that the apps are much slower to launch than they used to be, and slower than is usual for any app.

See my comment above: I've already tested with Wifi off, and it's no different. Apple has promised to include an opt-out of the OCSP server in the future.

Most AV software causes more problems than it fixes. While macOS is not immune from vulnerabilities, it does have very good built-in security, and newly discovered threats are identified and locked out with security updates just as quickly as any third-party software might manage. (The same is true for Windows Defender.)

I suspect the exact details of the mumbo-jumbo may shed some light on the issue. I don't seem to have it with other apps - at least not to the same degree. I also tested launching with WiFi off, in case it was the OSCP server issue again, but no change.