Text Style with Initial Words and across Text Frames

[Blue Iguana]

Hi. I am currently shifting from InDesign to AfPublisher and noticed a few things:

1. When I apply a Text Style to a paragraph, it doesn't apply the format I indicated in the Character or Paragraph Style. Instead, it comes up with formats totally different from what I entered as a Text Style, as seen in the uploaded video. Here it significantly enlarges the text. In the other book I am working on, it significantly reduces the text (to 1.4pt) when I adjust text frames! Then, when I reapply the text style, it enlarges the type to 166pt! Like the attached video.

2. In Initial Words, I set the application cut-off to <ENSP>. However, the character style applies to lines when I enter a line break <Shift>+<Enter>. Very frustrating because I want some words, specially the start of sentences or honorifics to stay with the next word. I want only the date at the end of the caption to have that brown Futura typeface. In the attached still screen capture, notice how the formatting is applied to the last line because of the line break I entered between "while" and "Mr."

 

I followed the tutorial of saving the files in IDML format in InDesign before opening them in Publisher.

 

Hope you can help since I will have to go back to InDesign just to meet my deadline for this.

 

Thank you.

[walt.farrell]

I can't play any of your videos except the last, and that doesn't cover your first question. So I'm going to make a guess on that one. It sounds like you've been adjusting the size of text frames by dragging on the scaling handle (the one that is not attached directly to the frame), rather than one of the attached handles. Don't do that

 

[Blue Iguana]

Hi, Walt.

Nope. I know the difference between the scaling handles and the problem isn't with the text frame adjustments. It's with the application of text styles. Following are the two problems I encountered. Hope the videos load this time.

1. Problem with type style and initial words: I set the formats I wanted first for the caption - Palatino 10 Black for the Caption Text, and Futura 10 Brown for the photo date at the end of the caption. Photo Date is separated from Caption Text by an En Space. This is what I use to apply the Initial Words condition. I've attached the screen caps for your reference. If you look at the video (Style gets lost... screen cap), you'll see the style isn't applied when I click on it in the Text Styles palette.

 

 

Edited March 31, 2020 by Blue Iguana
Added the last screen cap showing the problem.

[Blue Iguana]

Hi, Walt.

Here's the second problem.

2. Problem with text frame insertion/adjustments: I've attached two videos (along with 3 screen shots in case you can't view the videos). The first video (SS2 photo) shows how the style gets lost (texts are resized to 1.4pt) when adjusting the text flow / creating a new text frame. The second video (SS3 photo) shows how the remaining texts that flow into the previous text frame also lose their style and are enlarged. Texts aren't treated as bitmap images in Publisher, are they? So resizing text frames shouldn't change the font size.

Hope Serif can work on these bugs.

All the best,

Igy Castrillo

[Old Bruce]

Hi I started to watch one of the videos and you start with clicking on the overflow text triangle. Don't.

Make a Text Frame then insert the text then resize the frame.

Also in the Screen shots you have a + next to the Style names, this means that (somehow) values have been overridden. If you click on the recycle/rewind/circular arrow it will return to the original set values.

[Blue Iguana]

Thank you for your reply, Old Bruce. Tried what you said. Got the same results. Nothing was reset when I clicked the recycle/rewind/circular arrow. (Text Frame Problem 2.mov and Text Style Problem2.mov)

As for the + next to the Style -- I've been puzzling about that too. You've seen the screenshots. I didn't apply anything else to the paragraph. And in the video, you'll even see that I applied the paragraph style selecting the Clear Character Styles option which should've cleared everything.

I really want to switch to Publisher but these problems are driving me crazy and they're taking up a lot of my time to apply specific formats (to a 540-page book!) to something Initial Words should be capable of doing automatically. So frustrating. You can see in one of the videos that the Text Style works when I turn Initial Words off.

And even after I've manually set the styles, Initial Words doesn't follow the End character (En Space) I set! It resets to the Line Break I insert in the text! As you can see in the Line Break video.

[Blue Iguana]

Perhaps it's a bug in the IDML import engine?

[Blue Iguana]

Hello? Hmmm … seems like I have to go back to InDesign then.

[walt.farrell]

5 hours ago, Blue Iguana said:

Hello? Hmmm … seems like I have to go back to InDesign then.

Serif staff have not had time to get to your bug report yet, apparently, but I'm sure it's somewhere in the queue. They're very busy right now and working under unusual circumstances, which doesn't help.

[thomaso]

Your input is hard to follow, you seem to mix various subjects, for instance: text style, text flow, line break, ..., and possibly unintended: text frame scale, ..., and .idml import.

I watched your most recent video (the 16th?) where you insert a line break successfully – but I don't know for what purpose you posted it.

If you assume for all (?) your subjects the import of .idml as causing any questions then I recommend to test your issues in a document without .idml import and with objects created in Affinity only.

If you already got a blue "Edit" option below your posts: Eventually you might want to edit any of your posts, either to delete blank videos or to clear/sort different subjects.

[Blue Iguana]

On 4/10/2020 at 8:02 AM, thomaso said:

Your input is hard to follow, you seem to mix various subjects, for instance: text style, text flow, line break, ..., and possibly unintended: text frame scale, ..., and .idml import.

I watched your most recent video (the 16th?) where you insert a line break successfully – but I don't know for what purpose you posted it.

If you assume for all (?) your subjects the import of .idml as causing any questions then I recommend to test your issues in a document without .idml import and with objects created in Affinity only.

If you already got a blue "Edit" option below your posts: Eventually you might want to edit any of your posts, either to delete blank videos or to clear/sort different subjects.

Thank you for your reply, Thomaso.

Yes, they are two subjects relating to text style. They involve: (1) text styles getting lost when I adjust the text flow (create a text frame and adjust the text flow to go through this new frame); and (2) text styles using Initial Words applying at the wrong place (should start at an EN-space but applies even when I just add a line break). Both problems are illustrated in the videos using two files I imported from InDesign IDMLs. I have been working on those two book projects in InDesign and wanted to port them to Publisher.

Speaking of the videos, why do they sometimes load and sometimes don't load? I double-checked that all videos loaded before I clicked on the submit button.

[Wosven]

Some frames can get a percentage when resized with the wrong handle, or when opening a PDF, etc. I'm not sure how it comes when we are careful, but it's disrupting the workflow, since there's no visible display of this percentage and no way to correct this.

When it happens, I use a trick that's the fasted way to keep sane and working: I copy the previous correct frame, put it at the same position, width and height of the one I want, delete the text inside and link the previous frame to this one.

With long documents it's a pain, but without doing this I would just stop using this app (and I only do tests or personal works with it, I wouldn't accept this with my main app).

 

About the Futura and Initials words problem, a sample of your pages could help find the problem. But APub treats line breaks as paragraph breaks.

I've got an uggly trick for you: using "no break" on the paragraph style, and not in the character style. It'll keep the last part together with the right font and colour, and disable the "no break" on the previous text. And using "0 width space" instead of en-space.

captions2.afpub

Edited April 15, 2020 by Wosven
Added screenshot

[thomaso]

garbagegarbage

2 hours ago, Blue Iguana said:

Speaking of the videos, why do they sometimes load and sometimes don't load? I double-checked that all videos loaded before I clicked on the submit button.

I assume you did not want to upload all of them. Makes me wonder how they came in.

Note, there is a 2-step procedure:
1.: Upload a video (by dragging or by click on "choose files..." ).
2.: Place the uploaded video into your post (by clicking on its icon below your post)

If you don't do step 2. and submit your post without having your upload within your text area then it unfortunately will become moved to the end of your text automatically after you clicked "Submit". To eliminate those after submitting you would need to edit your post and delete them in the area below your post, where your uploads appear as group next to each other with squared preview pics and a garbage bin icon on each - click the garbage bin. There is no need to delete them in the text area. But if you delete them in the text area only then they will reappear after you submitted again.