MickRose

I create a new A4 document using "Prefer embedded". I place an A4 PDF file. The default is Passthrough and the image preview is usually the wrong size. I click Interpret and the size is now correct. I click Passthrough and the size stays correct. It is just the Initial placement whose preview is wrong. Apologies if this has already been reported.

The right text has a 0.24 white stroke

Signage printing seems to vary from 72 to 150ppi. You need to ask whoever will be doing the final print.

You're welcome. I'd recently asked if text variables could be used and your question made me dig a little deeper and come up with a usable workaround. I just wish Serif would produce a proper in-depth user guide.

@larrystuartjrI'm pretty sure this can be done. I've attached a spreadsheet file and an afpub file. The afPub file contains a screenshot of the Data Merge Manager dialogue box settings used. The spreadsheet links into the pub file and any one row is selectable and the new content will flow through the document. Although text variables aren't directly supported, this way of doing it seems to be a good workaround. I think you have to be a bit careful with spreadsheet column headings - short & simple is best. Let me know if this is what you want or not. untitled.afpub Book1.xlsx

For simple headings you could both symbols on the top line, select them & just use a negative baseline shift.

If I print to a PDF file it is the left page of the spread which is displayed in the preview, even though I have just double clicked the right page in the pages panel. At least it is consistent. It looks like double clicking a right page on a 2 page spread doesn't select the page, only displays it.

Sometimes I need to repeatedly insert the same names/text into a text frame. It would be useful to add another category in the Fields panel (maybe just called "Text") in the Fields panel in which double clicking an item inserted it into the text flow. The number of items would best be determined by the user. I know there are 6 editable fields in the Document Information section but that is not ideal.

Thanks Walt - I just realised how easy it is. I'd guess that documents with hundreds of pages could be very large. It would be good if the Datamerge Manager could generate a PDF as an option. I think that has already been requested.

Yes you can have leading zeros. Section Manager. 1, 2, or 3 zeros.

Can you have leading zeros? 001, 002 etc.

A nicer way is to create a mask (with any non-empty fill) and apply the Gaussian blur to the mask. Works well for photos.

I think this is to do with the bottom right text frame scaling tool having been used on the text frame and has been mentioned before. For what it's worth it is also faulty if a single text frame is grouped with itself.

I don't think this is a bug. It looks like Text, Size, Bigger/Smaller work as a percentage scaling rather than as a fixed increment value. I can see why it might be useful sometimes. From 1pt to 10pt it changes by 0.1pt, from 10.1 to 30 it goes up by 1pt, from 31 to 56 it goes up by 2pt and so on.

This seems to happen when either of the text frames has previously been scaled with the bottom right text frame tool. I wonder if grouping reapplies the font size scaling a 2nd time.

I wonder if this is happening. It looks like for calculation purposes the page is being divided up into a number of whole pixels, the size of which is the inverse of the DPI value. When the page is exported to PDF all the fractional pixels at the page edges are treated as whole pixels and they all contribute to the exported PDF page size. So a DPI of 1 for an A4 page gives a pixel grid of 9 x 12 which gives an exported PDF of 228.6mm (9 x 25.4mm) x 304.8 (12 x 25.4mm). So what is being exported isn't the document page size at all, its the page as defined by the whole pixels. Hence the wrong page size values at very low DPI levels (large pixels). All of this doesn't matter at all for normal DPI values of 200 or 300 because the high DPI makes the pixels very small. I guess it's all a consequence of Serif deciding to use the same structure for Page Layout, Designing and Image manipulation - it's a compromise. But users need to be aware of this issue if using very small DPI values for whatever reason.

I'm sure that works fine for all practical uses. But if you use an extremely low DPI setting (1 for example) the physical output size does change. Using a DPI of 72 changes the PDF to 210.3mm wide. I know this is nit-picking but I'm just curious why this is happening. It seems there is some rounding up/down which is giving me a different size PDF to the Publisher document.

I agree my initial comment was somewhat off topic and I apologise for that. But could you explain what a canvas is in the context of a page layout program? I'm not aware that InDesign or Quark has anything like that.

I have read the article. It is mainly about screen resolution and resolution/dpi for desktop printers and large format printers. If I use Publisher to create an A4 page I expect an A4 PDF regardless of the resolution of any image within the page. A low resolution image will simply result in a poor quality print. There should be no link at all between PDF size output and the resolution of any linked or embedded images.

Changing the DPI changes the pixel count and hence the size in kB or MB but it shouldn't change the dimensions of the page of which it is a part.

I might be wrong but I wonder if this is an example of a sort of structural problem with Affinity software. There are issues in Designer and Publisher to do with page sizing and resolution. For example, if I have a blank A4 page in Publisher with a Document Setup/Layout/DPI of 1 and export it to PDF, then the resulting PDF is about 228mm x 305mm. A DPI of 72 gives a page width of 210.3mm. I know that a DPI value of 1 is stupid but it just illustrates the point that there seems to be a link between raster resolution and page size which shouldn't really be there. It might be that because all 3 apps are structurally closely linked, then they have to use the same fundamental measurement unit - and this might be causing problems If I am talking complete nonsense I'd appreciate being told so.

Yes - it does seem okay with 1 page PDFs. Thanks.

Hi Sean - sorry, I can't do that. I have installed ADesigner RC2 and that seems to have lost the Passthrough function. The blank preview was on RC1.

I don't know if I'm missing something but PDF Passthrough seems to have gone. Maybe it was to fix the missing preview issue on some PDFs.

Most placed PDFs don't have a preview when set to Passthrough. Ediing is okay and interpreting setting works okay.