.523: Preflight error? Or text flow error? Both?

[walt.farrell]

Recipe:

1. Create new facing page document (starting on right) in .523
2. Add a text frame to document page 1.
3. Place a .txt file into the text frame.
4. It overflows.
5. Try File > Print. Preflight warning dialog pops up. Invoke preflight check.
6. Preflight correctly shows that there is overflowing text on page 1. Definite improvement over prior betas!
7. Shift+click on the red linking triangle. Publisher creates 12 more pages.
8. Preflight panel now says there are no errors. Yay
   
   All is good so far, but then for fun:
9. Go to page 12 (of 13). Click on the linking triangle leading to page 13. Click again, and press Delete to delete the link.
10. Expected: Page 12 would now have all the text it previously had, plus the text from page 13, and would show an overflow.
    Actual: Page 12 is now empty. All the text from pages 12 and 13 is now on page 13, and overflows. Page 11 links to page 13.
     
11. Also, Preflight now says that there are text overflow errors on pages 10, 11, and 13.
    As pages 1-13 all show red dots on the text frames, why aren't all pages reported in Preflight?? Or, more usefully, shouldn't it report only page 13?

Possible bugs:

• The behavior that actually occurred in step 10 above.
• The reporting in Preflight in step 11.

 

Sample .afpub file after step 8: preflight.afpub

Sample .afpub file after step 9: preflight2.afpub

[Jon P]

Quote

As pages 1-13 all show red dots on the text frames, why aren't all pages reported in Preflight?? Or, more usefully, shouldn't it report only page 13?

It should only report the last one, and I can confirm it doesn't and have logged it (well, a dev read this and logged it but i'll pretend it was me).

Quote

Expected: Page 12 would now have all the text it previously had, plus the text from page 13, and would show an overflow.
Actual: Page 12 is now empty. All the text from pages 12 and 13 is now on page 13, and overflows. Page 11 links to page 13.

I'm struggling to see this, if I click again in the frame it breaks the link, but then you say press delete to delete the link? If I press delete it then just deletes the frame. Might have misread/misunderstood this.

[walt.farrell]

15 minutes ago, Jon P said:

I'm struggling to see this, if I click again in the frame it breaks the link, but then you say press delete to delete the link? If I press delete it then just deletes the frame. Might have misread/misunderstood this.

Sorry for the lack of clarity, Jon.

To delete a link you:

1. Click on the linking triangle, and the tool icon becomes a black triangle and two linked bubbles.
2. Click on it again, and the tool icon gains a red x between the bubbles instead of a link.
3. Press Delete (or click within the frame), and the link is deleted (not the frame).

This is explained in the Help for Linking Text Frames.

My understanding had been that all of the text would then collapse into the source frame (where you clicked), not the target frame. But perhaps I've simply misunderstood, or things have intentionally changed at some point that I did not notice.

The Help text is somewhat vague about that: " When unlinking a frame in a populated frame sequence, all text after the unlink point will be placed in the previous frame, and will overflow that frame." I can read that as either describing how I thought it worked, or how it actually works now, but perhaps "previous" needs a clarification there, and maybe a diagram, if it's working as intended.

[Jon P]

Quote

Press Delete (or click within the frame), and the link is deleted (not the frame).

When I press delete, the link isn't deleted but the frame is. If I click inside the frame again when the icon shows the red x the link to the frame on page 13 is broken so page 12's frame now overflows.

If I press delete the frame is deleted so the link is moved onto page 13 and that frame contains the text that would have been on Page 12.

[walt.farrell]

My frame isn't deleted when I press Delete, as long as I have that tool icon.  But perhaps that method is acting as though it were deleting the frame.

I'll play more in a few hours when I'm back at my PC. Thanks.

[Patrick Connor]

We have made fixes/improvements to this area (Preflight: Overflowing text frame complains about every frame in an overflowing text flow
) of the program in the latest customer beta. If you would like to try these changes the beta software is available in the forum posts listed below.

The latest beta builds are downloadable from links at the top of each of these beta forum posts.

• Affinity Publisher 1.8.0.535 for Windows
• Affinity Publisher 1.8.0.535 for Mac

These betas install parallel, next to the release version (they do not overwrite your release) and so the fixes can be tried in the beta without affecting your normal workflow in the release version.

Once these programs have been through a full beta process the change will be released in a future free 1.8.0 update/patch to all customers.