philipt18

I'm very close to finishing the layout of the book I'm working on, but I can't finish it until AF-279 gets fixed, so the footnotes show up properly. Any chance this will get fixed this beta cycle? I haven't seen anyone from Serif mention this bug recently, but it's still there, and makes it impossible to publish a book with many footnotes. I'm holding out hope I won't have to scrap all the work I've done in Affinity Publisher and move it to another app to actually publish the book.

I just realized that Filter is not actually search. It only filters based on the beginning of the text, so if you're searching for a last name, but the first name is shown first, it doesn't show anything. So it would still be helpful to add page numbers to the regular search, or perhaps to expand the search capabilities of the Filter in Index (or both).

I'd love to be able to output multiple indexes in Publisher. For example, a general index, an index of Places, and index of People, etc. The book I'm working on is very complicated, and I'd love to be able to separate out a few indexes, and introduce how they work. Another example is that I'm defining many words used in the book. I'd like to separate that out into a different index, a kind of lexicon for the book. You could keep the current UI for indexing, just add the ability to tag specific Index items as separate indexes (i.e. have a Places index item, and tag that, and all the sub-items of Places can be placed into a separate generated index. Maybe separate out each index into separate sections within the Index tab, but allow dragging between them.

@Patrick ConnorAs long as you're posting about the status of bugs, I'm curious about the footnote bug in I don't know what the bug number is, but it's very clearly a bug and @Hangman debugged at least some of it, finding some specific cases where it happens. I've posted a bunch of videos recently showing how footnotes are being displayed improperly, especially when there are images on the page. I'd love to get this fixed soon, as even when it's fixed I have about 600 pages of the book I'm working on that I will need to go back and check. Thanks.

I see the problem, that when I add a reference that is for a new topic, it doesn't yet know that it's a new topic. Then my suggestion is that when adding a new reference, it should still offer the Sort By field, but grey it out if it's not a new topic. Publisher obviously knows when it's a new topic, as it needs to create a new topic if it doesn't already exist for the reference, so if the reference is for a new topic, it un-greys the Sort By field. Something along those lines. The way it works now it's a lot of extra work.

When inserting an index marker in Publisher, it would be helpful if the Sort By field was present in Insert Marker dialog. Right now, when inserting a name, for example, I need to add the marker, then find the marker, edit it, and then add the last name to the Sort By field to get it to sort properly. It would save a lot of time if this was simply in the initial Insert Marker dialog. I don't know why the Insert Marker and Edit Marker dialogs are actually different. On a related note, why is Style Override in the Insert Marker dialog, but not in the Edit Marker dialog? Why not just have all four fields (name, parent, sort by and style override) in the same dialog?

Thanks. Yeah, I guess changing the shortcut to something easier fixes the problem somewhat, but I'd still like to see it in the contextual menu for those times I forget what I set it to.

Ah, the Filter on the bottom. Yes, in my above example that works great. I still think it would be useful in other cases, however, where knowing where in the document text shows up is useful. But thank you, for indexing the Filter search is great.

I think it would be very useful to see the page numbers lists for each of the Find results in Publisher, at least as an option. This is especially useful when working on indexing, where you want to insure you have all the references in the index, but can skip over references on the same page. A check-box above the results, that when checked, would display the page number in a column on the left of the results, would be great.

In Publisher I know you can do command-shift-option (or presumably windows-shift-alt) to insert an index marker, but I think it would be useful to add that to the right-click menu. There is Insert Anchor, Insert Hyperlink, and Insert Cross-Reference already, but please add Insert Index Mark.

Here's another video showing the bug showing up by moving an image a single point up or down. footnote-flow-bug3.mp4

@DanC Did you see @Hangman's debugging of the issue? I hope this helps get it fixed soon.

I'm attaching another video. This one is really weird. Here you can see me moving an image just within the white space, and the footnotes change position, even though the text doesn't move at all. footnote-flow-bug2.mp4

I just wanted to add that I had a problem where I couldn't export to PDF, and this also helped. When I went to export, it would say it was generating a preview, but would never finish. And if I clicked Export anyways, it would say there was an error and not export. I followed the above instructions, reset just the default settings that were selected, and I was able to export normally.

From your mouth to Serif's ears...

Another video example of the bug when moving an image and the footnote hugs the image instead of staying at the bottom of the page (and forces text to the next page). footnote-flow-bug.mov

In Publisher, when adding a Marker for the index, it generates auto-fill suggestion based on what you're typing, although only if it starts with the same exact text. I'd like to suggest widening the suggestions to include at least two more options. First, if what the person is typing matches the Sort By text, then also show the name of that item. Second, if there is a See: reference on matching suggestion, then show the referenced name as well. This is very useful because if you're using a See: reference, it likely means you're consolidating several names into one, and you only want the page numbers in the index to show up on the primary one.

Still having these issues. It's maddening trying to lay out a page and seeing the footnotes follow an image up the page.

I don't understand the logic of including fields from the side not used.

Okay, I tried the above and it, in fact, didn't work. First, I just created a blank master page, and applied that to the right-side page. That didn't work because the left-side page still had the right-side fields listed. Then I created two master pages, Text-Blank and Blank-Text (Text-Blank is my text fields on the left page, and a blank right page. Blank-Text is the reverse.). I applied Text-Blank to the right-page, but the same problem. I then applied Text-Blank to both sides of the spread, but that also didn't do anything. Finally, I re-created a Blank-Blank master page, and if I used the Left-Blank on the left page and the Blank-Blank on the right page, it worked properly. This seems like a bit too much of duct tape and rubber bands for my taste. Is this somehow the right way to do this, or is Publisher doing something wrong?

Presumably I could create a new Master called Text-Blank where the left side is the same, and the right side is blank, and using that would fix this problem. However, I spent some time reducing the number of Master pages I was using because it was causing hard to determine problems. I'd hate to have to add two master pages (I need one for when the image is on the left as well) just to fix this. I guess it would be helpful if someone could confirm that this is not the correct behavior. If it is for reasons I don't understand correct, then I guess I can just add the master pages and move on...

Okay, this shows what is going on, but it still doesn't make any sense to me. I have a Master page which is for book text. There's a left and right page to the Master. You can see in the drop-down on the left that there is no master applied to the right page. Then you can see in the Layers panel that among the Left side layers, the right-side Section Name exists (and is highlighted at the top of the right page). It can't be correct that when only the left-page of the Master page is used, that the right-page fields also exist.

Adding a bit of info. On a different page, which is before the beginning of a new Chapter, I cleared the master and there was no problem. I then put back the master, and styled the header with the Header ToC style, and then cleared the master. Now the page shows up twice in the ToC (even though again it doesn't have any text with the Header ToC style), and the next page (the beginning of the chapter) shows up twice pointing to the same page.

Okay, this is weird. I am fairly certain this hasn't happened before I started testing 2.3, but it doesn't come up that often, so it might have happened earlier. I'm laying out a book in Publisher. The page headers are determined by the Section Name. So in my master pages for pages with text, I have a header field that grabs the text from the Section Name. Since some pages have the same section name (the section covers several pages), I have a duplicate style for the header that is what is grabbed by the ToC. For example, for the first page of each section, I switch to the Header ToC style, while all the other pages are just the regular header style. Occasionally, I add a full page image, and in those cases I clear out the master, since I have no headers or footers on those pages. However, this is where it gets weird. When I clear out the master for that page, the page still shows up in the ToC, even though there is no text on the whole page with the Header ToC style. In fact, the fields that would normally have that style are not even on the page, since they come from the master page. I only noticed it because the ToC entry showed up twice - first where it is supposed to be, and then pointing to the page where the full-page image is. Definitely a bug, as this should be impossible.

Great to see the 2.3 Beta get started. I'm hoping the disappearing footnotes, footnotes that don't stay at the bottom of the page, and other footnote issues get fixed in this beta round. Crossing my fingers @Dan C.