Endless process

[rayf]

I'm trying to produce a book containing many photos. Reached page 42 of 113 and found in Activity Monitor that the process "Affinity Publisher" is continuously running at over 100%. Placing more linked photos is causing crashes. The attached screen-dump shows Mac model, MacOS, Activity Monitor, as well as Publisher in the background. The .afpub file is 6.88 GB in size. What is going on?

[thomaso]

Hi rayf,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums!

100% CPU usage aren't too much, the possible total max is related to the number of CPU kernels in your mac.
But the 6.88 GB .afpub file size sound odd and reminds to a former version of APub.

a.  What APub version do you use?
b.  How much space is left on the system disk when this .afpub is opened / and how much when it's closed?
c.  Is this .afpub stored locally, or on an external / network disk?
d.  Do you have "Save History ..." activated in menu 'File' for this .afpub?

[rayf]

Thomaso, I'm using APub v 1.7.3 under Os X 10.10.5 on a Mac Mini (mid-2011) with 16 GB memory and a 1 TB SATA HD. All components of the document and the app reside on the local HD. My Time Machine backup disk is a dedicated external 2 TB HD.

My local HD currently has 219.02 GB of free space with APub not launched. After launching APub the free space is still 219.02. After opening the problem document free space is 218.39 GB.

The attached screen-shot shows that APub seems to be stuck at loading 96%. What's it loading, and why is it stuck at 96%?

Activity Monitor now shows APub is using over 100% of CPU, and it's being doing so for quite a while. Sreenshot attached.

The book's file, Find_Flower_3 book.afpub, is 6.93 GB in size. By using Save as… I've managed to shrink that file slightly. Even though all images are linked, its filesize has grown remarkably since I started placing the first image.

Thankyou for replying. As sole producer for a very small Western Australian publisher (capetocapepublishing.com.au) I'm desperate to get away from the hungry Adobe products, so any help with solving this problem with my first big APub production will be much appreciated.

[thomaso]

The loading process probably is related to the linked resources. The large .afpub size still makes me wonder.
I'm afraid I can't help here and we would need to wait for a reply of a Serif moderator.

On 6/20/2019 at 4:16 PM, Jon P said:

It depends on what you are linking at the moment, image file types shouldn't really cause much of an increase in filesize, but linking afphoto/afpub/afdesign/pdf/eps files will still cause file size increases.

Although this moderator's hint relates to a former APub version:  • What file type are the linked images?

* One more thought you could check: was the file increasing that way continuously when working on it? Or is there possibly a previous .afpub version in your TimeMachine which is not affected? If yes you could try to detect any culprit object on the pages you created afterwards (possibly with deleting first all "healthy" pages before those).

Finally you could open that .afpub with the current beta v1.8.0.523 to see how it can handle your file (  https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/103864-affinity-publisher-customer-beta-180523/  )

* EDIT: sorry, I hadn't noticed before this info: "Even though all images are linked, its filesize has grown remarkably since I started placing the first image." – That makes my thought above redundant. But it might be a hint that the linked file types do influence the .afpub size.

[carl123]

2 hours ago, rayf said:

The book's file, Find_Flower_3 book.afpub, is 6.93 GB in size. By using Save as… I've managed to shrink that file slightly. Even though all images are linked, its filesize has grown remarkably since I started placing the first image.

6.93Gb file size is way too large if you are linking just JPG or PNG files

Check Document > Resource Manager to ensure you have linked the files and what file types they are. 

If you are linking APhoto files (or some other file types) that would explain the large file size. 

[rayf]

Thanks for all the ideas everyone. All of the linked images are .afphoto files. I'm surprised by the suggestions that this filetype could be the culprit causing the bloating. I'm using .afphoto files because I'm tweaking some of them after placing.

In all situations I avoid .jpg files because this is a destructive filetype.

I'll try the beta 1.8 version as soon as I get to a venue that has broadband access. Currently I'm in an isolated area, depending on a hotspot from my phone.

[thomaso]

Yes, APub's Beta v.523 will avoid that large file size, and probably prevent your issues, too. – Just a quick test:

By the way, although JPG is destructive it might be worth to use for print, too. Even a minimal compression (10-15%) causes a massive saving in file size, while its artifacts are rather theoretical than visual.
This site gives you examples of JPG compression + file size, just scroll down to an image with an amount of details of your interest and hover over the compression rate 'buttons' to see compression quality & according file size. regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/jpeg-quality

[carl123]

4 hours ago, rayf said:

I'll try the beta 1.8 version as soon as I get to a venue that has broadband access.

The current version 1.73 does not link APhoto files even though it shows them as linked - they are embedded in the document hence your current huge file size

The beta 1.8 version does correctly link APhoto files but it will NOT automatically result in a smaller document size for you as your current APhoto files will remain embedded (only new ones you add will be truely linked)

To change the current ones from embedded to linked you would need to go into Document > Resouce Manager and use the Replace button to replace each APhoto file with the exact same file.  This will then force those APhoto files to be relinked correctly.

If all your APhoto files are stored in the same folder you can somewhat automate this process by renaming that folder which will cause Publisher to display a message about "missing files" the next time you open the document.  When you see that message click "Yes" and navigate to and select the newly renamed folder and Publisher will automatically relink all the APhoto files it finds there.

If you get stuck just post back to this thread

PS Make a copy/backup of your current document before opening it in the 1.8 beta

 

EDIT:

There may actually be an easier way than renaming the folder and using the "missing" files option to update your embedded document. Especially so if all your "linked" APhoto files are not in the same folder.

The 1.8 beta has a new function in Document > Resource Manager called Collect.  If you highlight all your APhoto files and click Collect, you will be prompted to navigate to a folder where to "put" all your APhoto files.  These will be automatically extracted from your Publisher file and put in that folder, this process will also automatically relink those files so they are not embedded any more and will be truly linked.

 

Remember to "Save as" to a new file name when you are done with the 1.8 beta to ensure the file size is reduced as much as possible

Anyway, good luck and if it all goes horribly wrong post back so we can warn others not to try any of the above.  

Edited December 17, 2019 by carl123
New Information

[rayf]

Grateful thanks to all! I'm spending today, Wednesday, moving from my fieldwork location to 'head office' where I have broadband access and a nice big MacPro 1,5.

I'll then load APub 1.8 beta and try your fixes. Fingers crossed that I can then report success.

To help future users not waste the many hours I have Affinity should, on their APub 1.7 'Technical Details' web page,  put a warning about the phantom 'linking' of .afphoto files.

Thomaso, I'll also check your link about .jpg filetype. May use that for images that don't have characteristics like transparent backgrounds, layers, etc.

[rayf]

Thanks to everyone, after a bit of fiddling and trimming APub v 1.8.0.523 managed to open my document and I have started to slowly replace all of my images via Document > Resouce Manager > Replace. After Save as… the filesize is shrinking.

Both the Collect method, and rename the Links folder method, resulted in crashes and a document that would not reopen.

[thomaso]

10 hours ago, rayf said:

Both the Collect method, and rename the Links folder method, resulted in crashes and a document that would not reopen.

Oh, that doesn't sound healthy. Does it crash immediately – or does it seem before to work for a while? (if it takes time before crash: Would you mind to try the folder-rename-way later again, when you have replaced quit a bunch of the resources).

[Pauls]

@rayf - If you could package the document and associated files and upload them here we will have a look into what may be causing the problem

[rayf]

Pauls,

thanks for the offer, but the Images folder is currently 25.23 GB, while the .afpub file is 5.58 GB, so uploading is currently unrealistic. I'll continue with manual linking in the beta app and will keep everyone posted.

Everyone, have a good Christmas and First of the leap year.

Ray Forma, Publisher, Cape to Cape Publishing ABN 72 301 873 583, 50 Harvest Road, North Fremantle WA 6159, Australia, Mob +61 (0) 428 596 938, W http://capetocapepublishing.com.au, E capetocape@smartchat.net.au

[tallulahlucy]

I am having a similar problem but am using no photos at all for my book. The page count is over 300 though. It hasn't caused a crash yet (possibly because I have more RAM than the OP?) But saving or loading the file takes about 20 minutes (last load: 16:34,46). I am MacOS Catalina 10.15.2 and running version 1.7.3 of Publisher. 

The file is 3.12 gigs - again I have no images, just styled text. I have 40 GB of memory and it uses between 30 and 35 gigs just to run. 

Something seems fishy to me even with the large number of pages.

As with OP, I cannot upload files of this size on my connection. It would take too long and be too expensive. But please let me know if you require any other details. 

Edited January 10, 2020 by tallulahlucy
Added exact time to load to show I'm not exaggerating

[tallulahlucy]

On 1/11/2020 at 12:00 AM, tallulahlucy said:

I am having a similar problem but am using no photos at all for my book. The page count is over 300 though. It hasn't caused a crash yet (possibly because I have more RAM than the OP?) But saving or loading the file takes about 20 minutes (last load: 16:34,46). I am MacOS Catalina 10.15.2 and running version 1.7.3 of Publisher. 

The file is 3.12 gigs - again I have no images, just styled text. I have 40 GB of memory and it uses between 30 and 35 gigs just to run. 

Something seems fishy to me even with the large number of pages.

As with OP, I cannot upload files of this size on my connection. It would take too long and be too expensive. But please let me know if you require any other details. 

I seem to have solved the problem by deleting all overflow text and adding again. I used an Indesign command to select all overflow text (Cmd+Shift+End after my last sentence)

[rayf]

T, your experience with finding a way of reducing massive filesize is interesting, but  mysterious. However, I must warn you to not switch to the current Beta of Publisher because it crashes as soon as you alter any style definition.

Very reluctantly, I'm back with InDesign because I cant use Publisher 1.7.3 while it embeds all placed APhoto images rather than linking them, despite me asking for linking. The filesize therefore quickly bloats to unmanageable. I also can't use the current APub Beta 1.8.0.523 that does link APhoto images, but crashes as soon as I edit any style. The book has many style definitions.

I'll continue waiting patiently.

[thomaso]

2 hours ago, tallulahlucy said:

I seem to have solved the problem by deleting all overflow text and adding again. I used an Indesign command to select all overflow text (Cmd+Shift+End after my last sentence) 

What problem did you solve this way? – Did the enormous 3 GB file size shrink?

[tallulahlucy]

14 hours ago, thomaso said:

What problem did you solve this way? – Did the enormous 3 GB file size shrink?

Yes it went down to 30.2 MB and the load/save time dropped to nearly nothing. I have no idea why this made such a huge difference, but in future I will add a chapter at a time. 

[thomaso]

It appears very weird that just adding text made the file increase so massive – regardless of text overflow, because all text is saved anyway in the .afpub, regardless of its visible or hidden state.

That makes me wonder what kind of data did increase the file size. Do you remember whether you had done a "Save As..." with that 3 GB file – and experienced any change of size?

You say "in future I will add a chapter at a time" – does it mean that you had filled a lot of pages and text frames + ignored their overflow first, and then, in later steps, cared for their many overflows page by page, e.g. by linking text frames, changing frame sizes or formatting text size? – What makes you think that the order in your workflow was responsible for that extreme file size?

[tallulahlucy]

12 minutes ago, thomaso said:

It appears very weird that just adding text made the file increase so massive – regardless of text overflow, because all text is saved anyway in the .afpub, regardless of its visible or hidden state.

That makes me wonder what kind of data did increase the file size. Do you remember whether you had done a "Save As..." with that 3 GB file – and experienced any change of size?

You say "in future I will add a chapter at a time" – does it mean that you had filled a lot of pages and text frames + ignored their overflow first, and then, in later steps, cared for their many overflows page by page, e.g. by linking text frames, changing frame sizes or formatting text size? – What makes you think that the order in your workflow was responsible for that extreme file size?

It is very weird! I did do a Save As and it was 3.12gigs as well. I copied the text straight from Pages into my first page and then created pages and cared for the overflow as I went as you guessed (linking text frames as I formatted each page). I guess that maybe "storing" a book-length amount of overflow somewhere might have created the issues somehow. I don't know where it gets stored in Publisher as there is no story mode or way to access that text that I could find. And without that, it's impossible to know what the contents were. It was supposed to only be 130k words of text, but maybe I accidentally pasted it multiple times or copied something I shouldn't have somehow? I can't imagine how much text would be needed to make up that filesize but definitely more than 130k!

[thomaso]

tallulahlucy, I'd like to understand what made your .afpub file size increase that much. I can't reconstruct an increasing file size with overflowing text:

In short tests with copy/paste I get the result that an .afpub file size with not-linked overflowing text (1 frame on 1page, overflowing) is a lot smaller than the same document with not-overflowing but linked frames (over 80 frames and pages). The overflowing file is even smaller than the according plain text (.txt) document (174 kB / 278 kB). I wonder about the file size increase between an overflowing vs. not-overflowing .afpub, but it is not that much as in your file and rather in the MB range than GB.

• 
   
• _ There is just a little difference in file size with not-overflowing and formatted versus not-formatted text.
• _ A higher number of pages is influencing the file size less than the use of various text styles. (not-formatted, 95 pages: 7,6 MB / formatted: 85 pages: 8,6 MB)
• _ Also it doesn't make a difference whether the text was copied/pasted from the Pages.app or from a plain text document.
• _ Copy/paste from the Pages.app doesn't influence the .afpub file size if the copied text includes images.

To detect what made your file size increasing so massive it would be helpful to know the steps you used in your .afpub – e.g. how exactly the text came into APub (paste, drag, place), the number of different text/Pages files, the number of frames which contained different overflowing text, or the number of changes (paste, delete, save, close/open action) with that document – though I don't know yet in which way these steps would influence an .afpub's file size at all.

17 hours ago, tallulahlucy said:

maybe I accidentally pasted it multiple times or copied something I shouldn't have somehow?

This makes me wonder what thought let you possibly paste any text several times, and/or how you solved the overflow: either by a series of single clicks (frame by frame) – or by only 1 shift-click on the first frame overflow icon to get created all pages and frames automatically?

[tallulahlucy]

5 minutes ago, thomaso said:

tallulahlucy, I'd like to understand what made your .afpub file size increase that much. I can't reconstruct an increasing file size with overflowing text

...

To detect what made your file size increasing so massive it would be helpful to know the steps you used in your .afpub – e.g. how exactly the text came into APub (paste, drag, place), the number of different text/Pages files, the number of frames which contained different overflowing text, or the number of changes (paste, delete, save, close/open action) with that document – though I don't know yet in which way these steps would influence an .afpub's file size at all.

This makes me wonder what thought let you possibly paste any text several times, and/or how you solved the overflow: either by a series of single clicks (frame by frame) – or by only 1 shift-click on the first frame overflow icon to get created all pages and frames automatically?

Thank you for taking an interest in this, I too find it very curious. I do feel a bad for hijacking the thread though and I'm not sure how helpful I can be with answers since it was a few days ago and I'm not sure how many saves etc I did, but I will try my best to provide as much info as possible below:

• I can't remember if I copied and pasted the text in. Now that you mention it, I'm pretty sure I placed it.
• The total document now has 442 pages (so that's 442 linked frames) with 3 different master layouts (But I think at the time the file was that size it would have been at about 263 pages).
• I solved the overflow by a series of clicks - frame by frame - because I needed to apply different formatting for the chapter pages so chose to do this as I went. 
• Two of the master layouts are chapter header pages. I didn't use images here though, only symbols and same for the ornaments which I know some authors use images for.
• In terms of the number of styles, I was working with two main styles - one for the body text, and one with a dropcap for chapter pages. Then a single character style for italics. The placed text should all have been in Adobe Garamond Pro with no ornaments or decorations of any kind, and no style changes. However I did do a find/replace to apply that italic character style as soon as the text was placed. 
• In terms of number of saves, I tried to save after every chapter. At this stage I would have been at about Chapter 30. So maybe that's the issue? I had I think two formatting related crashes which were reported by someone in another thread so is a known issue to do with styles. Other than that I would have opened/closed about four - 6 times? So I guess 6 - 10 loads, one place, no deletes, 30 saves?
• After I deleted the unlinked text, everything came right. That was already much further in though. For the remaining pages I pasted them in one by one and all was fine. 

 

 

 

[Patrick Connor]

Sorry.

Thank you for reporting a problem using 1.7.x . It appears that a member of the Affinity QA team didn't get round to fully investigating this specific report posted in the bugs forums. We are very sorry for this oversight. Yours is one of a number of reports that I am posting this apology to, using an automated script.

Now we have released 1.8.3 on all platforms containing many hundreds of bug fixes, and we hope your problem has already been fully addressed. If you still have this problem in the 1.8.3 release build, then the QA team would really appreciate you reporting again it in the relevant Bugs forum.

• Report a Bug in Affinity Designer
• Report a Bug in Affinity Photo
• Report a Bug in Affinity Publisher

Each of those links above contains instructions how best to report a bug to us. If that is what you already did in this thread just copy paste your original report into a new thread. We appreciate all the information that you have including sample files and screen shots to help us replicate your problem.

This thread has now been locked as the QA team are not following the threads to which this automatic reply is made, which is why we would appreciate a new bug report if you are still have this problem in the current 1.8.3 release build.