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Text frames & font sizes?


PButler

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I'm just getting started with AffPub, and so far liking most of it. Howsomeverwise...

I created a text frame, and pasted some numbers separated by returns into it:

1

2

3

etc, all in Times Bold 24-point.

Then I created some other frames, linked them together, and shrank the first frame so that the text flowed into the new frames. But those frames seemed empty until I took a closer look, and saw my numbers in there, shrunk down to virtual dots; selecting those and viewing the Character panel showed they were, IIRC, 4.37 points. Using the Character panel, I reset them to 24 points, then had to go to the Paragraph panel to change the leading from 5 points, or whatever it had become to accommodate the 4.37 type.

Resizing the original and flowing the text back into the newer frames reproduced the same glitch(es).

Doing a Select All and resetting the type size and leading apparently had no effect.

There followed a frustrating interval of shuffling and re-sizing flowed text. Sometimes it changed to 133.3 points, with matching vertical spacing, sometimes to 4.37 - either multiplying or dividing by a factor of about 5.5 either way. The same thing happened with a second text series of words, also copied from an imported .pdf, only with further complications because the original had tabs.

Long story short: problem went away when I started with a single text frame, got all the setting how I wanted, then duplicated that frame, deleted all content, then linked to original. Still, this odd behavior needs attention from the Serif bug-busters. Or maybe I need to hire an exorcist...

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3 hours ago, PButler said:

I created a text frame, and pasted some numbers separated by returns into it:

1

2

3

etc, all in Times Bold 24-point.

Then I created some other frames, linked them together, and shrank the first frame so that the text flowed into the new frames. But those frames seemed empty until I took a closer look,

Your experience seems to be related to your way of using the tools and UI.

Layers Panel: Note that there are layers which may contain layers

Object handles: Note that you may scale some objects in various ways. One of them is the handle in the bottom right corner of some object types, this might scale more than other ways of scaling

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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thomaso -

I s'poze you're right in that this must come from my "way of using the tools...", but I still don't understand what I did to create this effect, or if there's a simpler way than my sort-of solution to avoid doing so again.

Thanks,

Pierce

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3 hours ago, PButler said:

but I still don't understand what I did to create this effect,

How did you shrink the first text frame? Specifically, did you use the bottom-center node of the frame, or the bottom-right corner node that's part of the frame, or the detached handle to the right and below that one. The detached handle scales the text as well as changing the frame size.

(However, even if you didn't use the detached handle, there have been reported bugs with performing text flowing like that, and I don't know if they've been fixed.)

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
    Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2,  16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1

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I have no experience with screen recordings, and am close to deadline on a major project so don't want to take time to learn how to do that.

Here's a sequence of screen caps.

The only difference between the first two is that I clicked on the text frame's preceding-frame text flow arrow and drew a text frame above the first one. The text I started with was Times 24-pt Bold, with spacing set to 25 pts; the same text in the new frame is Times 4.3-pt Bold, with spacing of 4.5 pts. Resizing the upper frame causes the text to flow between them as it should, except that it changes size up or down depending on which frame it appears.

This does not happen consistently: for example, from the same page on the same document, the 3rd cap shows a line of numbers. The 4th cap shows what happened when I did the same thing by creating a preceding text frame with flow between the two: the text which had been in that frame (24-pt Times Bold with 26-pt spacing) shrank to 4.3-pt (4.5 pt spacing), the next two numbers which flowed in to the preceding frame stayed at 24 pt, and the numbers which moved into what had been the first frame went to 133.3-pt (spacing 144.4 pt).

I'll attach the whole document in my next post, along with extraneous material. You will see on pg 4 that I tried to duplicate this effect using a following-frame text flow with the same sequence of numbers, but in that case the software behaved itself and the sizing and spacing stayed the same.

Screen Shot 2019-11-08 at 2.43.13 PM.png

Screen Shot 2019-11-08 at 2.44.06 PM.png

Screen Shot 2019-11-08 at 2.52.43 PM.png

Screen Shot 2019-11-08 at 2.54.56 PM.png

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This unexpected text size is an often reported occurrence. It is simply related to the specific way of scaling the frame.

Just do not use the outer handle to prevent text scaling when scaling a text frame.

658340504_textframescaleouterhandle.jpg.d369c77924ad99843e4f0fbb8c9e38a4.jpg

But, although, indeed, these tow handles are easy to distinguish:

It is a very pity that we have no UI to detect whether an object was scaled by the outer handle.
It would be useful to see the scaling value in numbers – and possibly even to reset it to back 100 %.

 

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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I didn't realize scaling an object in that way was "non-destructive." That's not quite the word I need when talking about vector objects, but I mean that the scaled object apparently always contained a record that it is scaled, whereas I thought it was just resized and the new values replace its past values. This indeed gives rise to the question why the scaling factor is not exposed in the UI.

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34 minutes ago, garrettm30 said:

the question why the scaling factor is not exposed in the UI

I asked for this long ago, since hidden parameters you can't control can only provide errors, and in a Murphy's kind of Law, they re the ones you only discover or that only happen at the last moment.

And it can be the text's size, or leading, or colour that didn't shift enough to be visible unless you check the styles' integrity (+).

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Gabe -

I started with the current version of the file I uploaded recently. That includes a string of numbers separated by returns, the first elevent in one text frame, then 54 in separate frames (two with accompanying text, "Dec " and "Jan ") on another page, and seven more separate frames on a third page, all displaying as Times Bold 26 pt.

I clicked in the first frame, did a Select All and a Copy, opened a new file (which defaulted to the same page specs as the first), drew a long vertical text frame and pasted within it, and got 1-11 in TImes 26 Bold and 12 in Times 144.4 Bold ("AffPub 01.png"). I widened that to allow 2 characters on a line, clicked the flow-arrow and drew another frame using the flow arrow on the left ("AffPub 02,png"): 1-11 in Times 26 Bold plus 12-13 in Times 144.4 Bold in the new first frame, 14-17 in Times 144.4 Bold in the now-second frame.

"AffPub03.png" shows what happened when I added frames and pages to display the whole text sequence: all but the first 11 numbers in 144.4 pts. I never used the outer edge handle, I promise you.

Next I tried a new document with fresh text, the alphabet separated by spaces, in a series of frames also created with the flow-arrows. Nothing I did with changing fonts or sizes could get the text to misbehave (unless you count overflow not appearing below the last frame as wrong) - see "AffPub 04.png". So I pasted the string of numbers from before into the same linked text frames, and go the same 1-11 in 26-pt, 12-on in 144.4-pt display I had before ("AffPub 05.png")

I don't know if you'd count this as replicating the problem - apparently the glitch is in the string of numbers, not in the frames. I'd play some more with that string, except that meeting my most recent deadline involved staying up to 3 am last night & I'm more interested in sleep than in bug-chasing at present.

Affpub xprmnt 02.afpub

AffPub 05.png

AffPub 04.png

AffPub xprmnt 01.afpub

AffPub 03.png

AffPub 02.png

AffPub 01.png

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ALL the text I copied & pasted displayed at 26 points - so why did it change formatting when pasted into new text frames?

I still feel sure I did not use the "outside handle" feature in any of this, but let's say I somehow mistakenly did. Though I see how it could come in handy in some situations, right now I'd prefer a way to just turn it off entirely - does AffPub have a way to do this?

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16 minutes ago, PButler said:

Though I see how it could come in handy in some situations, right now I'd prefer a way to just turn it off entirely - does AffPub have a way to do this?

No, none of the Affinity applications have a way to disable the scaling handle. It is up to the user not to use it except when appropriate.

Assuming there's not some bug involved, and that you really did use it, It's more of an issue in Publisher than the other applications because only Publisher has linked text frames, and if you scale a frame that's part of a set you're going to get odd results.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
    Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2,  16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1

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  • Staff

 

On 11/11/2019 at 11:30 PM, PButler said:

I started with the current version of the file I uploaded recently.

9 hours ago, PButler said:

ALL the text I copied & pasted displayed at 26 points

In that file, the text is not 26 points. The small numbers are 4.3pt , the majority of them are 24pt , not 26pt . 

Unless you attach a screen recording(https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208721) of your workflow, it's hard to guess what's going on 

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10 hours ago, PButler said:

I still feel sure I did not use the "outside handle" feature in any of this, but let's say I somehow mistakenly did. Though I see how it could come in handy in some situations, right now I'd prefer a way to just turn it off entirely - does AffPub have a way to do this?

Locking a text frame (via the layers panel) will prevent you from accidentally moving or resizing it or rescaling the text (which can still be edited) but I'm not sure how else this may affect what you are doing.

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

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Apologies for the lag in replying - bigger distractions than expected came along.

haakoo has it right about how I was reading the wrong figure.

And carl123 has it right that locking the text frame would probably interfere with other functions I need.

I hope to re-create my procedures with the tool Gabe suggests this weekend.

Thanks to all for your comments and suggestions!

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