Wasp11b

Assuming you don't have Photo and Designer installed (if you do you just need to use StudioLink to access a whole variety of pixel tools including brushes), you could create a mask as follows: (1) use pen tool to draw the area you wish to retain in the photo or just use a shape tool eg Rectanguar Tool. This will give a new layer. (2) fill with black, white or any other colour (doesn't seem to make a difference - a bug?) (3) right click and select 'mask to below'. Only the photo included within the shape will be revealed. (4) you can adjust the mask by right clicking, selecting 'edit mask' and then use node tools to amend nodes. Best to do this by releasing the mask so that the photo layer is also revealed and then remasking. (5) you can also move the mask around, just select the mast layer and use the move tool.

1. Create new document. No need to create text box. 2. Go to Text Styles panel and press button for new character style 3. On list on left ie Style, Character, Font etc, just press any on that list. 4. Now try to go back to Style at the top. You cannot. Cancel. 5. Now File/Close the document. Repeat steps (1) and (2) above. Now try to go to Style at top of list. It remains inaccessible. Sometimes doing the above the program crashes without warning, often when testing above using paragraph style. Doesn't seem to be a problem in .404 Windows 10

If you just want a quick and dirty job then 'place' text with local character formatting, eg some words in italics, or underlined, or bold, then go to the text styles panel, right click on the style you want (which you may have created previously) and then pick "apply [text style name] to paragraphs and preserve local formatting". It does precisely that - applies the paragraph style but does not affect local character formating. Quick and dirty as although the character formating is retained, it is not a character style. If you want character traits to be character styles then it seems to me you will need to follow Old Bruce's advice.

Ah, yes, linking text frames on Master page seems to do the trick - perhaps. Then, Insert text (drag and drop) on first (right hand) page and autoflow works. Add double page spread. Insert text on left page - fills both left and right pages (because their linked?) Insert text on right page of double spread - instant crash - no warning but a bug report is made.

I can replicate this: (1) New document. On Master A double spread add a text box to left and a text box to right 2) on Pages panel, add say two or more double spreads. The text frames carry over from the master page. (3) Insert text on the first single (right-hand) page. Shift-click triangle to autoflow. The text only flows into right hand pages. (4) If undo so have blank pages again, and then double-click on the first double spread to make it active. (5) Insert text on the left side of the this double spread and then shift-click to autoflow - it only flows text on the left pages. This seems to be a problem when inserting text frames on the Master page. If you don't do this and only start by putting a text frame on a normal page, autoflow goes both left and right on double spreads. Hope this helps. Windows 10.

Following hr.mu lead, been doing a little experimenting. Publisher file 13cm x 18cm 40 pages with 83 jpg linked images amounting to 384MB. Putting the publisher file together ie inserting the linked images (drag and drop leading to image layers - nothing rasterised) leads to memory usage of around 8GB. This would suggest that a system with 8GB may struggle with such a file.Interestingly, when I redid the process a second time after closing publisher, memory usage was about half ie 4GB - goodness knows why. Perhaps before a project, starting the programme, closing and starting again may help??. If I export to pdf the resultant file is 175Mb. Memory usage actually goes slightlly down when saving. the .afpub file on save is only 8MB, presumably because of the linking of images. The interesting part is that when you reimport the afpub file, memory usage drops to around 1.3GB. This would suggest to overcome memory issues, save the file every so often, close the file and then reopen the file. When saving to pdf after reimporting the saved file, during the estimated file size calculation, which seems to take some time, memory usage does go up substantially, in this case from 1.3GB to 4.2GB. When the calculation is finished, memory does not drop down to its past level as one may expect it to do so -it stays at 4.2GB. If you redo the pdf calculation, memory usage stays about the same, around 4.2GB, ie does not increase again. This would suggest that instead of waiting to see the result of the calculation, just press export. After export, close publisher and reimport the file again to clear memory. Hope this may be of some help.

Windows 10 May have already been reported but for me: (1) Put cursor in paragraph of text. Go to Text Styles tab. Select say 'body' style (or any other style it appears), right click and choose 'Apply body to paragraphs and preserve local formatting'. Instant crash - no warning, no screen asking to send crash report. (2) Also, if I press the new group button at bottom of Styles tab, app freezes. (I think this was a bug reported earlier in the year).

Been playing around with this. A solution, I think. Go to the paragraph side panel. Go down to the section labelled Drop Caps Tick on enabled and then at the bottom of the Drop Caps section you will notice a style box. Click on that and at the bottom of the list you will see 'new...' Click on that. A 'Create Character Style' panel opens set for character style. Leave that. Rename Style name to what you want and then select 'font' on the side of that panel - select the font you want. Click OK. The first letter of the paragraph should be drop cap in the new font without affecting the font of the rest of the paragraph. For any paragraph go back to Drop Caps under the paragraph panel and just enable drop cap. You can have more than one drop cap style by going through the 'new..' procedure as set out above. If you now go to the Text Styles panel, you will note that your new drop cap styles are listed. However, if you cllick on them, it just puts the first word in the drop cap font without delivering a drop cap! This needs to be looked at by the developers - one would expect the text style to apply what style has been defined in the Drop Cap panel ie with the drop cap. Hope that helps.

"But that assumes manually assigning an A master to every left page, and a B master to every right page, correct?" If I set up two single page masters for left and right facing pages, as I think was suggested earlier, and apply whatever margins are required (unlink 'edit all margins together'), then if you right click on either master there is a list where there is an option 'apply Master to pages...' where it allows a master to be assigned to all odd or even pages, or indeed specified pages, so you don't have to go through your document manually assigning a master to each page. Does this do what you want? Interestingly, if you then look at the spread setup properties for a page assigned left or right masters, the margins do not reflect what is on the master page, although they seem to be displayed correctly on the page. Must be a bug, I suppose.

I find that a discontiguous selection on the page can be made by just shift clicking each item. The bounding box may appear to select more items but after shift-clicking whatever items you want, you can copy and then paste to the page you want. Note - you can also select from the layers panel - here Ctrl-click selects discontiguous items. Alternatively, you can zoom out (Ctrl-wheel) after selecting and then move your selection to the pasteboard ie off the page. You can then select an item or items on the pasteboard and move them directly to a page in zoomed out view or right click and cut or copy (or use the Layers panel) and then on the Pages panel select the page you want by double-clicking and then paste. Works for me on Windows. May be a better way of implementing but hope that helps.

Long time supporter of Serif, and am pleased that they are moving on to developing modern software for modern computers without the hangup of legacy software. There will perhaps be an issue with some of my legacy files but that's progress. I'm getting these behaviours on the current beta - 1.5.0.44 on Windows 10. Firstly 1. Take rasterised photo 2. select paint brush tool and set colour to white (or any other colour) 3. hover brush over photo - there's white within the shape of the brush, which if you wait without moving the brush will go transparent until move brush again (shouldn't this retain the visual of the selected colour?) 4. press Q for quick mask while the white colour is still in the brush shape 5. Brush leaves white brush mark on photo 6. If you go on to define a quick selection, ie paint in quick mask mode without clicking again, then press Q again to see selection - there's a white brush mark within the selection. 7, If you click off layer visibility and then click it again to turn on, the white circular paint mark disappears leaving just the selection - or wipe the brush over the white mark without clicking. Secondly Enter quick mask mode and then select a grey to paint with some transparency. When deselect Quick mask mode, there are no marching ants. However, if you duplicate the layer you have the selected contents (painted) area with transparency. I assume there should be marching ants to show the selection. Or am I completely misunderstanding how things work?