Affinity Publisher unable to cope with large books.

[Jeffjn]

I’ve been having numerous issues trying to use Publisher to create an update of a book I’ve successfully published using Page Plus over the last few years.

There are a number of symptoms, all of them resulting in a crash. I’ve had to split the book into two parts, manually merging the TOCs and Indexs and merging the PDFs in Acrobat (which cost three times more than AP!).

I now have time to try and isolate the issue and have what I hope is a reproducable example of just one of the problems when the book size approaches the half way point, and I’m hoping that someone from Serif can investigate why AP doesn’t have the same functionality of PP9. I've discussed this with other users here -

I’ve attached two files. Both have been doctored so that they would be of no use to someone trying to use the content (so that I can put them in the public domain). In the process of the doctoring I may have introduced some formatting errors that don’t exist in the original files so please ignore any misplaced illustrations.

The files both have embedded illustrations. This means anyone can load them without access to the linked illustrations, but I can demonstrate later that using linked files changes the symptoms but still results in crashes (in fact the onset of issues is often earlier!)

I’ve been using the latest betas in the hope that the issue may get fixed, you you will need to be running 1.8.535, but this has been happening ever since AP was released.

Part 1 up to chapter 12 for bug report.AFPUB is about 570Mb in size. It has 379 pages and about 350 illustrations. Some are image files, some are AD files. It also has a TOC and Index.

You will also need Chapter 13 for bug report.AFPUB. It’s 28Mb, has 32 pages and 36 illustrations. It has index marks and the TOC picks up the Chapter and Section headings.

The Part 1 file should load OK. Locate the last page before the index – page 370 – in Pages in the Studio and right click to select Add pages from File. Locate the Chapter 13 files and select Open.

I just get a crash straight back to the desktop. There are other types of crashes. Often I see a constant CPU usage around 15% while trying to load a large file I’ve managed to create, particularly when using Linked resources. The file never loads.

I’ve been through a lot of the part 1 file to optimise it, but there is room to do so more. However, what I’ve found is that it tends just to move the point at which AP becomes unstable a bit further along.

If I delete a lot of the illustrations from Chapter 13, it will load. Then when I try to load the next chapter, it crashes. The book is over 600 pages, so we aren’t even 2/3rdsdone.

…and just to reiterate, Page Plus 9 can handle the whole book, without using Bookplus.

My computer has 32Gb of memory and 400Gb free on it’s main SSD. Graphics – 1070TI, CPU 4Ghz i7, so I don’t think I’m underpowered.

Part_1_up_to_chapter_12_for_bug_report.afpub Chapter_13_for_Bug_report.afpub

[Pauls]

Hi,

I've just tried your recipie on our latest beta and the adding pages is working for me. If you look in your %appdata%\Roaming\Affinity\Publisher\1.0 (Beta)\CrashReports\reports folder can you send me a crash report relating to this issue ?

[Jeffjn]

Thanks Pauls

Just emptied the crash report folder, tried the process again and the result was the same - i've attached the resulting crash report.

However, I've just noticed that the public beta is now 549, I'm running 535. So I'll upgrade and try the test again.

 

a70eca9e-f3f9-439d-94a5-76c16f0c97e1.dmp

[Jeffjn]

OK, installed the 549 beta and got the same resulting crash. Report attached.

Are you using a later build than 549?

ef58a812-6eec-415a-bae9-f62bf34602f1.dmp

[Pauls]

I've tried on 549 and our current in-house latest. The crash report doesnt really narrow down what the problem is. Are your graphics drivers up to date and you have no other pending updates waiting to be installed?

[Jeffjn]

Thanks Pauls

I've now made sure that my desktop machine is completely up to date. No Windows updates outstanding, graphics drivers up to date according the Windows.

I've also fired up my laptop. This is considerably less powerful than my desktop - an i7 6500U running at 2..5GHz, Intel 520 HD graphics and 8GB Ram. This is also now up to date.

Both machines are running the 549 beta, both machines reproduce the crash as I've described.

Just in case my receipe is ambiguous in some way, I've attached a screen recording of the event on my desktop:

Is there some way to reset Publisher so that any Preferences I've set over time could restored to the "factory" default? What about my software enviroment - I use Onedrive, for example, but there are also a few other background tasks that might be interfering. Is there a "safe mode" that I could emulate? I'm assuming that Photo and Designer don't need to be running matching builds of the betas for this type of activity?

Another Bug Receipe

This one gives a hang, not a crash.

• Open Publisher
• Load Part 1 up to chapter 12 for bug report
• Open the Resource Manager
• Use Shift select to select all the resources – they are currently Embedded
• Click on Collect
• In the Choose folder for collection dialogue, create a new folder to place the resources – I’ve created it on my desktop in this instance, and named it Collected Part 1
• Select the folder and then click on Collect. The Dialogue closes and Affinty starts putting the Resource files into the folder.

After a short time Publisher becomes unresponsive. If you switch to File Explorer and look at the folder, the resource files have all been added to the Collected folder. Open the task manager and you will see that Publisher is still using CPU cycles  - about 15% in the case of my desktop machine, 30% on my laptop. I can leave Publisher for hours in this state and it never responds and eventually an End Task or Reboot is required to close Publisher.

I have a number of other ways to crash Publisher. None of them happen until the document content starts to reach a certain size. However, untill you can reproduce them, or the crash report is more helpful, I'm not sure what to do. As I said in the other thread, I've spent many days trying to work round the various issues, and just when I think I have a workflow, something else rears it's head.

Thanks for investigating this.

 

 

Edited February 12, 2020 by Jeffjn
typo

[Pauls]

Thanks - Tried it on a onedrive folder and it crashed for me. I'll get that logged

[Jeffjn]

Ah, Progress! I'm assuming that's the intial receipe, not the second one.

I didn't realise (until just now) that Onedrive also monitored the Desktop and Documents folders when I previously tried eliminating it from my tests.

However, I've briefly tried the following:

• Moved all my data files to a new folder on my C  drive that isn't monitored by Onedrive.
• Told Onedrive to stop monioring Documents, Pictures and the Desktop
• Stopped Onedrive from starting up when Windows starts
• Rebooted the computer
• Tried the receipe with the files from the new isolated folder.

Sadly, the same crash straight to the desktop is still occuring. I have to go out now, but would there be anything else I don't know about using Onedrive that might be relevant? Does Publisher put files somewhere that might still be monitored?

[Pauls]

its a strange crash report - will need a developer to investigate to glean any further info.

[Jeffjn]

1 hour ago, Pauls said:

its a strange crash report - will need a developer to investigate to glean any further info.

Thank you. I'll poke about a bit, but wait for their feedback before pestering you with more information 🙂

[Jeffjn]

Hopefully this is still being investigated - it's happening in the latest beta as well.

Can I reproduce some more of the bugs I've seen, or should I wait for this one to be investigated first?

Thanks

[PaulEC]

On 2/9/2020 at 4:34 PM, Jeffjn said:

merging the PDFs in Acrobat (which cost three times more than AP!).

FWIW - There are several free apps available to merge PDFs, you don't need Acrobat.

[Jeffjn]

Thanks. I did google the subject, and downloaded one of the most likely looking (which didn't work with my files). Some of the google results offered a service (Upload your files and we will merge them, which is a good way to put something in the public domain). One site said that the least stress-free and safest way was to buy Acrobat, and as I was past my deadline I succumbed.

However, if you have a recomendation I'd love to hear it, as I now have time to experiment and don't want to spend £180 a year!

AP should be able to do this as one PDF, just like Page Plus, because I don't want to manually merge the indexes, which is the real pain.

 

[PaulEC]

Try - PDFSaM (Split and Merge) or  PDF24.
Also, (a bit faffy) you can "print" to Primo PDF and (if you give each file the same name when "printing" it,) it will append one file at the end of the other.
I'm sure there are others available. Maybe they are not as straight forward as Acrobat, but they are free! 😉 

[Jeffjn]

Many Thanks PaulEC, I'll try those later today 🙂

[Jeffjn]

PDFSaM seems to do the trick. Thanks Paul, and goodbye Adobe

Now, about this bug....

[Jeffjn]

I'm going to have to bump this thead, sorry. Are you guys looking at this, or shall I produce another bug receipe? (believe me, it's not hard to do so )

[Pauls]

We can see the cause but it may been a little bit of a rethink to get a fix out - sorry it doesnt look to be a quick/easy one

[Jeffjn]

Thanks for the reply Pauls. When this does get fixed, will you post back here please? I don't think its the only issue with large files, but the most obvious one to demonstrate.

[Jeffjn]

ADDED -  I've remembered one that is very easy to replicate. Load the large file I posted earlier, then save it with a different file name.

Now close AP and restart it (to clear out any memory it is hanging on to). Open the first file. Wait for the CPU load to drop to be sure the task is completely finished. Leave the first document open open and open the copy you just created. After  while open the task manager. It will be using about 15% CPU (in my case) or more on a slower machine.

You can sit and watch that all day, the file never loads. If you want to close AP you have to use the task manager.

[Jeffjn]

On 3/4/2020 at 2:20 PM, Pauls said:

We can see the cause but it may been a little bit of a rethink to get a fix out - sorry it doesnt look to be a quick/easy one

I'm just bumping this after all this time to see if anyone bites. I've since had to just use merged PDFs to create my next book.

[Jeffjn]

Having installed the 1.10 update with eager anticiption, bearing in mind it's claims to have done a great deal of work on Memory Management, I'm sad to report that this issue for me is still occuring.

At this stage I'm trying to merge the section of the book so I can work with just one file, making indexing less painful as well as simplying the publishing process, but I'm seeing the same issues with silent crashes as soon as I approach the page/illustration counts that was causing me issues before.

Is there anyone at Afinity who could take another look at this? I'm happy to work with them to provide examples and bug reports.

[Jeffjn]

I'm posting again on this thread, but this time with good news - it looks like this has been fixed in 10.4.

I've managed to merge the three parts of the latest update of my book. It's using 10gB of menory, but that's not growing as I sit here.

720 pages and at least 300 illustrations....

I'm going to trad carefully, but it's looking good.