narrationsd

Hello Chris, and thanks for looking carefully into this. it felt perhaps a remaider/continuation/ix result of the recent issue where Photo and Design would come up with unwanted 'unsaved' copies of earlier edits, and lock refusing to delete them or do other work. Being a softwareish guy myself, you'll know how that thinking would run. I'm scratching my head for a detail to excite this. I believe I had five tabs up, I think all of them created 'from clipboard', that special selection. Four of the five would have been 'from clipboard' out of selections from others of this set of sort-of clones. it may be significant that I hadn't saved any of the tabs during the work on them, other than (maybe) the first, left-hand tab. Maybe not even that one. It's also interesting that an event from the Win10 bottom bar icon 'close all windows' actually got the program to pick up sticks, and start paying attention to its own events again. in the earlier case you fixed of locking up on irrelevant old safety copies, you had to shut the execution down from the Task Manager, only thing that would do it. There's also the sense, but not fully in memory, that once i got events running again, when I closed that last tab, that Photo went ahead and closed down its full execution, which that would normally not do --- that we had one or more events stuck in the queue. That's about all I have. The business of events being blocked for sure, and then possibly having a queued one possibly around (if it was) to cause a closedown (if it did) are the main pointers to where the trouble ought to lay. I _think_ this machine is very stable -- in fact recently done up to be especially so, in anticipation of another software load coming from Microsoft. I did things like create another main user, remove a suspect/old background-running program, etc.. But it is Windows, and therefore we know you can never be sure. I'd give over even money there's a bug actually in Photo/probably Design...and if so, quite possibly generated out of the recent safety files lockup fix, as i never saw anything like this before, in light use but persistent over your beta times. So that's another clue, isn't it. Hoping this helps, anyway, and cheers, Clive  

a p.s. I was also running the contemporary before-today Designer Beta, and a clip or two shared between, but likely this is not a source of problematic interaction, still thought you should know. No memory issues etc., as before.

I see you've got a new Beta id up, downloading, but this may still be relevant. - I was editing several images, not large, and with plenty of laptop resources, especially stable and up-to-moment but not yet 0319 Win 10 - two or three out of four were created New from Clipboard - I'd done some exports of the main one - closing down, each of the clips properly asked if I wanted to save: no - on the last one, the want-to-save dialog froze, and Photo with it. - no moves would make it live (escape, other mousing, keys, etc.), so I used the Win10 bottom bar right-click-close-window - with that, bang, Photo started responding again. With a few extra perhaps clicks I could get out of the dialog, see the page again, and close it by tab close button. - memory fails, but it seems Photo shut down of its own accord then, so an original event may still have been there to be acted upon. Cheers - quite appreciative of all design and pub software you are pressing ahead with...and how it works, full of intelligent surprises... Clive

So many ways a Windows PC can get these... I believe an application of any form isn't one of those, however. The most typical actual cause will be a Windows driver which is not fully compatible, or updated so it is. Display drivers are the most usual culprit -- and of course heavily invoked by graphics apps such as Affinity's That you had sluggishness leading up to the fail suggests something endemic like this was already in trouble -- and memory starvation, which shouldn't occur on a fully functional Windows, would defintely make sluggishness. Real fail should not occur because swapping will be invoked, unless you are also out of disk space. Swapping (ram to disk movements to keep ram free) would itself slow matters down. It is possible then that there's a memory leak in Designer current-Beta which your activities happened to excite, but if so, only slowdown should have happened, not a blue screen. Once again, though, 'because Windows', sensible view doesn't necessarily agree with what happens That you didn't apparently get a crash dump might suggest about low disk space? This is something you can look into... And, check your drivers for updates. I had been dead set against online offers to do this, but recently used Driver Easy (https://www.drivereasy.com/) to good advantage to discover a crucial one or two that Lenovo didn't bother to test, needed to keep up with Windows 10's machinations. Do be _very sure_ to create a Restore Point in Windows, as they recommend, before proceeding to install anything. I took one driver that was ok from a technical standpoint, but whose features differed from the original, such that my trackpad became almost unususable. Very comforting to be able to simply back out of that, which the Restore Point works well on in such a case. So, good fortune p.s. and by the way, it was Windows Update which was serving me the out-of-date driver (for a Broadcom wifi chip) -- Lenovo had signed out long ago, and I for a time believed the later Windows-offered driver was best available. It kept failing, however, hence the try with the apparently decent driver website. I would do all your checking and pre-scanning of downloads on that -- drivers would be a great place to introduce malware of course.

Late to the party, but not because not needed here. I just noticed the one thing missing in a paper I did over from InDesign. I wonder if Endnotes wouldn't be the easier implementation, and thus something that could avoid reviewer criticism on this point, for first release success? An elegant program...thank you.

Err, I don't think there is any such Design Aids > Construction Snapping for Curves section in the English help either... I figured it out from what you said about it, but the feature needs explanation, diagrams, and clarity, thanks... In particular, such things as @anweid asks, such as drawing a line perpendicular to a construction item would be helpful.

Wanted to let you know this previously reported basic problem, linked below, appears worked well so far: It's dealt with in as much as you can now fix it in a document. Where a font identification was previously mangled (see report), now you can successfully select the text, re-apply the proper font name and variant, and will see and be able to save the repair. No problems either upon re-opening. What I noticed still missing is a stable way to find a missing font, as the mangle caused to appear in this case. - what actually happens is that you get a temporary toast as the file opens. - this rapidly disappears, and there could be many of them, given conditions of having moved the file away from asset paths, for example - Warning toasts are fine enough, but I think what's needed is a document sanity/preflight panel, as this can be steadily worked on to clean up a Publisher file. I kind of imagine you're planning such a sanity panel, so hope this can highlight a couple of cases it needs to handle -- missing fonts, apparently missing because no longer properly pathed assets or any kind of inclusions. I have to say Publisher is a joy somehow to work with. I have InDesign CS6 and actually like it well, but come to you because of two things: no subscription handcuffs (thus security updates, purchase substantial upgrades per need, etc..), and that I keep finding, your very real insight and intelligence evident in design -- things that just work better, are intuitive and prominently nicer to work with. Thanks for all, and here's that original report:

I've got a document Publish isn't treating very well this way. Pix attached, I hope in order. The text is placed from an rtf, which _may_ misidentify the font in question Frutiger Neue LT Pro, Book face, improperlya On opening the afpub in Publish, it flashes an alert that there are missing fonts. And this alert soon disappears, either on a timeout or first touch of the trackpad, not sure. _Please_ do not disappear such information until closed; and please do give a button to go to the Document Font Manager, which I discovered only by easter egging is apparently where you can deal with this. Now, afpub-bad-font-presentation.png shows how this missing font looks in the font window. Yes, wrong name (should not have Book on the end of it, and Face should be Book instead of greyed. So, go to the Document Font Manager to try to substitute it, and then the fun begins. Reference afpub-wrong-substitution.png I can find the actual font, Frutiger Neue LT Pro; ok but sometimes there are big delays (circa 10 second) before a font name will 'take' and show, after selection. Varies. I can _try_ to set a face. Once in a while, it will set, but not 75% of the time or so. Instead, the face selection shows for a few seconds and then reverts. Meanwhile, the text you see behind the dialog may or may not actually end up with the selected face. Usually not, whether or not the face name 'took'. In this case, Book Italic seems to be selected, but what Publisher decided at some point before stuck, which is Condensed Medium. So, now try to fix by changing the actual font applied to the text. This works, but given not all of the text was selected, we have the Document Font Manager showing both fixed and unfixed font listing...with the apparent same _wrong_ font name. It should not ever have 'Book' in the font name...see afpub-mixed-up-substitutions.png. Saving, closing, and reopening, I still get the fugitive 'Missing font' alert -- even though the font has been substituted. Maybe you think this is good, but what should really happen is that there is a Preflight ability, which I don't find -- and that is where font substitution warnings should appear, once they've been done. Quite possibly this is simply on your list moving forwards, would imagine your good imagination I'm attaching how InDesign sees the same font: properly separating name and face. And also what Windows 10 latest thinks, which is actually proper though you can't easily discern it from this static shot, but can when you switch which face it is giving info for. See indesign-proper-font-choices.png and (Win10) frutiger-new-fontinfo.png Ok, and so you know, I'm finding Publisher very neat already. More excellence in thought and designed abilities from you guys at Serif. Very much appreciated, yes. Regards, Clive p.s. yes, I'm also going after where that original wrongly-concatenated font name apparently came from, which is a Scrivener Windows beta. But would remind that you are seeming to do the same thing in your font substitution dialog, point 5. Since you have it properly separated in the Font window, it's probably just a formatting need for the substution dialog, so the font and face don't get entirely mixed, as they are now.

A lot of useful thoughts are collecting here. I've noticed some quite buggy things about text frames and master pages, so I think Walt's advice about doing things another way for now is good. Appreciating also the extensions to that others have added...

I had a look at the excellent pre-review here, and think I'd modify what I'm saying about the overflow: https://creativepro.com/affinity-publisher-first-look/ Apparently you show overflow continuing down the page so we can judge it. I'd still go for this not being the default; that the button highlight so we can see overflow is available to link. Once clicking to link perhaps showing down the page could make some sense -- I would make that presentation an option. And would think it should go away again if the link cursor is released without linking. Then you'd be back to an indicator, not hiding anything that's on the page outside the frame. It is a bit tricky, yes, appreciated...

I suspect it's all true about volume-experienced using font managers, and in fact I've been evaluating NexusFont and FontBase myself. But I also suspect Affinity would benefit from having significantly cache-speeded opening on all apps, as this is the one thing that's uncomfortable right away for new/test/trial users. And because it's sure to be remarked by those doing reviews. With a few hundred fonts, it seems to me that Publisher does open markedly faster than even new or beta versions of Designer and Photo -- so this is a very good step indeed. Apparently not as effective fo thousands, but again that may point to sensible use of a font manager.

Just to add a kudo for you guys in gettting this Beta out now. It's quite fun, and in what we are coming to recognize as the Affinity way -- clever. It's pretty possible you'll want to change the default for text pasted into a frame, that at present it overflows downward until the flow button is exercised. This looks messy, and comments here show it can be quite confusing. Better to highlight the flow button to show you have flow to do, no? But, immedately attractive, this. I get along with InDesign fine, but as with the rest of CS6, security and Microsoft fiddling make its days numbered.

Have a look here -- it's got things I discovered also about this; your issue first among them. I think I'm finding there are further issues in this area of the early beta, but this will get you started on the path... In some summary, what you see is how it's intended to work, differently from InDesign, and then you use the triangle-'eye' symbol to hide the overflow and prepare to flow it to another frame.

Yes, the red x is definitely confusing. How about just a down arrow?

I thought you'd like to have some, with all the continuing hard work on Photo and Designer. I was cleaning up some seaside flowerbox rust stains from a building photo, for a website, and really having a problem with it on Adobe Photoshop CS6. Cloning wasn't an option because of gradation and texture. I gave your latest beta a whirl -- and what a difference. Your healing brush is markedly better. This because of its action, but also due to that small window you provide to show in detail where it's going to be applied. I could go right up to the edge of the dark box border and fix the off-white stucco wall, without dragging in color from the border -- and done in one pass, a few strokes. I know you're proud of other image processing you've invented, and this one proves the point -- both the math and the UX. Very impressed. Kind regards, Clive

Just to let you and Sean know, the 'colour profiles' and hence intensity mapping issues are gone again. Hoping you can put a test in, with the files I sent you on previous reports perhaps, so that this doesn't regress yet again. Great to see the new version, thanks. Regards, Clive

Unfortunately, you have a serious regression making this version unusable, though it's always very welcome and appreciated to see so much good work. As the attached image will show, you have something very wrong in rendering, so that high intensities wash out and color-invert. The hot side of the gold rectangle and its green-now-purple rim is the most obvious place to observe this. This occurs just the same on the matching Photo Beta. On both, as before, the effect is extremely sensitive to 'Exposure' or Brightness adjustment; i.e. gets much worse rapidly. i think the fix was simple once problem recognized. The original report is here, with proper appearance also attached. The fix now regressed was in the subsequent Beta, though unacknowledged except as an obscure-to-unknowledgeable item

Happy to report the color inversion at high luminance is gone again with this beta. 'document to screen' conversion does indeed sound like the place for this to have happened, on both Designer and Photo. - on Designer I put an inner glow on items, and pushed it to whiting out considerable area: no false colors, gradual action, no problem - on the matching Photo release I pushed Exposure, now get same good results. Somehow missing a report system where you feed back on fixes, but this worked this time. Cheers on progress, and the products. I'm foolishly hoping to win a free iPad to be able to run versions there :) Clive

QA, here are two. One is the root Design test file I've been running for months. The other is a Photo file that was made from this, also months ago. A couple of notes: due to the way this goofy file uploader works, I managed to create two links to the Design file. Be aware there's only one Design file. Ths material in the files begins with a painting by a famous Chinese artist which i really liked. There are no rights gained to this image, so it's important that the file doesn't go anywhere but in your test and development area. Thanks. Both files appear to exhibit the same render issues, which should be very apparent to you -- especially if you tweak the Exposure up and down on the Photo version. Just below centered Exposure, the problem goes away, so don't think you've fixed it, and I would say, don't save the files. With the files as they are, raising Exposure just a little really spreads the misrendered areas. It's very sensitive. These bad effects didn't occur with the previous Beta (62?). They don't appear whatsoever on the 1.5.x release -- Exposure varies smoothly as it should, and with no color inversion even in blowout. Regards, Clive hart.afdesign hart.afdesign hart.afphoto

Great to see another progress beta -- thanks. Here's a rather serious problem, though. I think it's been reported on Photo Beta, but the same shows up in Designer. As you can see in the images, 'hot' or highlight portions of the image get color-inverted and otherwise blown. I'm showing you how my long-term test image looks in released and Beta versions. In Photo, reducing the Exposure just a trifle removes the problem -- but also lowers overall image exposure quite a jump. Increasing Exposure has the bad effect growing wider, increasing very rapidly. Moving Exposure on the released version works as expected -- gradual decrease or increase of uniform intensity, with no color inversions or shifts. Looks like something fundamental to both products on the rendering went awry at the last minute, and without a highlights test image, was missed. Cheers and fortune, Clive

Just to give a kudos, actually two... - 1.5.0.5 installed very cleanly on Windows 10 latest, over 1.5.0.4. - I just discovered the PDF editiing ability -- marvelous, and at first glance is much more capable -- and clean about it -- than Adobe Acrobat. I really resist upgrading Acrobat post release X, and had to deinstall that for the lack of security updates while they obviously keep coming. Thus I suspect you have a sleeper extra selling market for Affinity Designer - good fortune with this.

Indeed, very much better, thank you for the pre-weekend effort, surely worth it for impressions of this program. - the PDF that crashed Designer no longer does. Text layout somewhat broken up and funky, which also confuses spell checker, giving lots of red until you turn it off. Presuming this will all hone in. - no more crashes on certain fonts that I could find. May have been 4-byte ones, likely. - you do still show and default choose something other than Regular/Book/etc. weights on some fonts when choosing from the handy top bar dropdown, typically Black, but not always. Adobe Arno Pro chooses Subhead rather than Regular; Adobe Hypatia Sans Pro picks Black rather than Regular; (Adobe) Minion Pro picks Bold Cond. Other Adobe fonts `such as Myriad Pro used Regular or Book as expected. In fact I couldn't find a non-Adobe font that had the problem, so maybe it's an issue for fonts with Optical alternates or something? Anyway, again, great and confidence-building work...