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Bug-Report: Publisher always crashes when opening a specific file.


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Hi Forum,
I'm quite desperate.

Thursday I contacted affinity@serif.com and have not received any feedback yet.
Maybe I have to "apply" for support via this forum. Unfortunately I can't find out on the website of Affinity how to behave if publisher obviously has a problem or maybe a bug.

With both Files, short time before there was no problem with working on it in Publisher. Than in the first File, Affinity Publisher has crahed immediatelly. Then no way to reopen the file without crash the Publisher again and again. I restart the MacBook many times since the problem. No change.
In the second file, while working Affinity Publisher has freezed by changing some Link-Stuff. I had to close the application with TaskManager... Than no chance to reopen the File with Publisher without a crash, again and again..

So here my Bug-Report:

  1. Are you using the latest release version? YES => Affinity Publisher 1.8.3
  2. Can you reproduce it? YES => Everytime I open the file, Affinity Publisher will crash!
  3. Does it happen for a new document? If not do you have a document you can share that shows the problem? With new document => no problem | With 2 documents I can share there are this problems. No chance to reopen the files. Also when I use Time-Machine Backups, the same problem APulisher is crashing imediately...
  4. If you cannot provide a sample document then please give an accurate description of the problem for example it should include most of the following:
  •    What is your operating system and version (Windows 10, OSX Mojave, etc)? Mac OSX Mojave 10.14.6 (18G5033)
  •    What happened for you (and what you expected to happen) APublisher is crashing every time when I like to open one of the 2 files. > Should open the File and I can work on the documents, like before.
  •    Provide a recipe for creating the problem (step-by-step what you did). Double-Click on the File => crash! Or: Open APublisher and click on «File» there «open...» select one of the 2 files, click «open» => crash!
  •    Screenshots (very handy) or a screen capture/video. have Bug-Reports (from popup window after Affinity Publisher is crasched). Can also send you the 2 original Files (have done with one Thursda<, 4. June 2020 18:33, no answer still now)
  •    Any unusual hardware (like tablets or external monitors or drives that may affect things) or relevant other applications like font managers or display managers. (No new or updateded in Hardware)
  •    Did this same thing used to work and if so have you changed anything recently? (software or hardware) (No changed stuff, only change some document-settings in Affinity Publisher => in first file | and did some Link-Text change in the second File)

 

  • Should I post the text files with the debug contents here? Or do I have to ask for a Drop-Box link? (found some entries for other bugs with this approach)

I can also share the two files. But because they are customer projects I don't want to post them directly in the forum.

  • Does anyone have an idea if I "have to" report such problems here in the forum? Is my way the right one?
  • Or is there a better approach to get help as fast as possible and to continue working?

I already had a similar problem in February this year. At that time, I got help via the support email (see above).
Probably the procedure has changed a bit, because of the ammount of customers...

Thank you very much for your feedback.

 

Martin

 

 
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I will pass these fils to our developers. Were they stored on a cloud drive at all?

On 6/6/2020 at 11:49 AM, mad99 said:

Thursday I contacted affinity@serif.com and have not received any feedback yet.

At the moment it's taking a bit longer than expected to come back to emails / forums. 

 

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Hey Gabe, 
Sorry, but English is not my mother tongue. So what you mean with:

Quote

Were they stored on a cloud drive at all?

I got a Email from Dropbox (see attachment).
So I'm quite sure they are stored on the cloud drive from dropbox.

If you ask me, if I had stored the files in the cloud for my own. => NO - I did not store the files in any cloud before I uploaded to your dropbox! 
The files are only on the harddrive and in the external Backup-HD.

Hope this are the anwers which you need?!
Please tell me if this is OK.

  • Or should I upload the Files again? (Because your question means, they are not stored in the cloud drive from dropbox)

Regards
Martin

 

 

Dropbox-Report.jpg

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I was asking where you were keeping the files before uploading them to Dropbox. We've seen some corrupt files that were stored on Google Drive recently and we're trying to figure out what's going on. 

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Sorry Gabe,

Do you have an idea, how long it will take until a Affinity-Developer can modify the file, so that I can work on it again?
I can't open any version from the past in the Time-Machine. All the restored files also crashes Affinity Publisher. So I stuck with this project and client...😓.

Any suggestion?

 

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Hey Gabe, 
G-R-E-A-T-!-!


You are my hero (and the dev, who has heal or fixed the file)!
I could open the file. The first thing I did: Backup-ed the file with 3 different File-names. To be sure on this point.

  • Is there anything I shouldn't do? So I don't run into the same issue and publishers will crash? (before there is a bugfix in the next version of Publisher)

 

Do you have heard something from Callum @ Affinity Support? He replyed to my direct email (before I wrote this topic in forum).
I wrote him back and asked about the best way to avoid unnecessary effort or duplication of work.

Hope you are in contact. Sorry for this double-sitation.

Now I can continue working on the project.
Thanks up to this point.

Regards Martin

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He believes it's connected with having that embedded document on the master page. Nothing wrong with your workflow, but that was the cause of the crash. Can you remember if you have done anything with that placed document? Keep some embedded, some linked?

I've sent you another PM with the second file fixed :D

 

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Hi Gabe,

To be honest, I can't even remember, that I placed a document in the Master-Page. It is to long ago.

What I can remember I tried to change the layout-settings from iPhone 6/7/8 Plus (Retina) to A4. Lack of the possibility to set this directly, I created a new Page in Publisher with layout A4 changed to pixel an copy-pasted the value to the form fileds under Abmessung with the Typ «Vorgabe».

228537046_Bildschirmfoto2020-06-11um10_52_05.png.2beaa35a4fa01c09870b6a0a9388c274.png

I remember too, that I realised this change was only effected one page. So I did the same with the setting «Alle Layoutseiten».
On this point I'm quite unsure. Maybe Publisher was freezing at this situation.

Because of your question, it could also bee, that I tried this change also in the Master-Page.
But I can't remember. I thought this only because of your question about.

Whether I have made this change in the master page or previously with the setting "All pages", at the end frohr Publisher completely freeze.
I tried to find a hidden popup anywhere behind an view-box. But there was no one to find. I closed all view-boxes.
I also tried to close the publisher with the context-menu in the dock.

Dock-Close.png.5eed79e827c8ce1de911a9207ef408a6.png

No way.
So I had to kill Publisher with the Task-Manager.

Task-Manager.png.4d45960d173d4ecc1220024a6b9184d2.png

 

After this «sofort beenden» I can't reopen the File you heal.
 

The second file, what is not healed/fixed there was a totally other approach to the crash. No freeze, only crash and no chance to reopen... There was no particular work at the Master-Page or the layout-setting.I did some usual work with writting, I guess. I can't remember to a particular unusual point of work, like in the other file, described above.

Hope this will help to find the bug.
Regards
Martin
 

 

 

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Hey Gabe,

4 hours ago, Gabe said:

I've sent you another PM with the second file fixed :D

 

Thank you for your second hero-action👏.
Works fine!!! Same => backup twice ;o))

Any idea, what could here be the reason for?

Regards
Martin

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I've said this before, but it's worth repeating: 

It's of course very nice that Affinity can fix files that go corrupt. But in a professional setting, a file should never, ever become unopenable in the first place. With hard deadlines, and angry, paying customers waiting, or printers waiting for materials, these kinds of mistakes cost not only money, but reputations. 

I really, really like Publisher, and i'ts now my main layout app in my own, small graphics company, where I'm going totally ”Adobe-free”. But back at my "real" day-to-day work we still use InDesign. You can say a lot about InDesign or Adobe's subscription model, but Adobe seems to have got at least something right. In all my years, ever since using the first InDesign version, I haven't even once encountered an ID file which could not be opened. Sure, a crash could make the last few edits disappear. But nothing more.

I hope a lot of serious development resources at Affinity goes towards making the file format rock solid. It simply has to be. (and then of course II'm hoping for footnotes, but that's another story).

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hey @Rabari
I quite agree with you: «rock solid» would be great. And I'm sure, Affinity will do everything possible to make it happen.

But applications in this complexity and on so many different systems are simply very difficult to debug.Of course it would be nice if such things neeeeeever happened. 

But I think it is dangerous to use Adobe, the industry suppressor and billion-dollar burner, as a comparison or to stylise it as a desirable standard.
Of course Adobe has a lot more money to spend on debug. In addition, Adobe listens very little to customer requests, and the support is rather a joke in relation to the amount of money paid.

It might be better to define Blackmagic's «DaVinci Resolve» as a desirable target:

  • Industry leading product
  • Very stable application
  • Super fair price
  • Not a subscription model and still a great price for professionals
  • Highly innovative
  • Listens very much to the wishes of the community
  • Think out of the box
  • Incredibly good support

Anyway, I am absolutely sure Affinity is on a very good way!

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I''m not trying to paint rosy pictures of Adobe, or ”stylize” Adobe as a desirable standard. I'm simplysaying that a robust file format is a desirable standard.

Granted, I have not myself encountered unopenable Publisher files. And with paying customers breathing down my neck almost every day, i sure hope I never will.

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Well I just lost about 3 hours of work from this situation. I have a file that won't open. I luckily have a backup iteration of it, but will have to redo plenty of work. It's very hard to trust your hard work and time if the most important thing gets potentially lost .. your files. I save often usually after anything substantial. I do back ups almost daily, but do I need to start doing them hourly or by the. minute!

This frankly is demotivating.

It would be great to share how your dev team is able to recovery/fix files so perhaps more tech savvy user can do it them self when on a deadline.

This is the first time this happen to me, how it's really bad time.

So I really hope you guys figure out a consistent way about this issue. I've been mostly happy with Affinity software, but things like this are hard to manage.

Thank you for you time.

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I've created a simple document with one image to see if I can edit images out of the document,

So far all I could do was find the image, any edits creates a corrupt file.

Curious where does the image files begin and end? All I have is 

/Volumes/Store/af-workbook.pngˇˇˇˇ

Never figured affinity file were so complicated.

Attaching the files in a dmg for macs and the .afdesign with small image file too (I'm assuming this should be the same for .afpub too)

Feel free to move this if it too off topic. thx

 

af-workbook.png

test-remove-code.afdesign testhd.dmg

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On 6/21/2020 at 9:21 PM, xman said:

Well I just lost about 3 hours of work from this situation. I have a file that won't open. I luckily have a backup iteration of it, but will have to redo plenty of work. It's very hard to trust your hard work and time if the most important thing gets potentially lost .. your files. I save often usually after anything substantial. I do back ups almost daily, but do I need to start doing them hourly or by the. minute!

This frankly is demotivating.

It would be great to share how your dev team is able to recovery/fix files so perhaps more tech savvy user can do it them self when on a deadline.

This is the first time this happen to me, how it's really bad time.

So I really hope you guys figure out a consistent way about this issue. I've been mostly happy with Affinity software, but things like this are hard to manage.

Thank you for you time.

Can you attach the corrupt document so we can have a look?

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Hey Gabe, sadly I've moved on .. deadlines you know. I had to remake it from the point I recovered. Additionally the file is too big and client work so can't really share.

Appreciate you responding to my post and offering to have a look though.

Any comment on the second question about finding the location of the  begin and end of the image files in the document?

I think things went wrong when I open the full document in photo to edited a picture (wish we could do targeted image editing, meaning sending only the image and not The Whole doc to photos). I think jumping btwn your 3 apps somehow combine with an over taxed system contributed to my file getting corrupted.

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15 hours ago, xman said:

I open the full document in photo to edited a picture (wish we could do targeted image editing, meaning sending only the image and not The Whole doc to photos)

There are various options inside APub to edit an image without opening the .afpub in APhoto.

You can open the image only instead of The Whole .afpub via the Resource Manager window:
• Select the image –> press the button "Show in Finder" –> open the file in the APhoto app.
• If the image is embedded press the button "Make linked..." before.

Alternatively you can do this within APub without launching the other app by using the Photo Persona:
• If the image is linked: Select it and press the "Edit Image" button in the toolbar –> the image will open in a separate document window, containing the image only –> select it and click on the Photo Persona icon in the toolbar to switch to the photo editing tools inside APub. You will be asked to save the linked file when closing this window. Note: depending on your editing way the image layer in APub can convert to a pixel layer and disappear from the Resource Manager window this way.
• If the image is embedded: press the button "Make linked..." and continue as described above.

• Furthermore you can switch to the Photo Persona in APub without pressing "Edit Image" before. If you edit an image this way the Assistent informs you that the image will get converted to a pixel layer. That also means the image disappears from the Resource Manager and you will not be asked to save your edits. It occurs as an object you created inside APub.

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

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Thomaso, thank you very much for taking the time to share some possible workflow alternatives. Nice to see these all grouped up nicely.

However in this particular instance, I was working in designer and only opened publisher to add or remove columns. Designer nicely supports multiple columns, but it doesn't let you remove them. I remember needing to adjust this during my issues. Lesson learned.

So I still think creating a copy of your working file during a project is still important.

Cheers!

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On 6/27/2020 at 5:28 PM, xman said:

Any comment on the second question about finding the location of the  begin and end of the image files in the document?

I'm afraid our file format is not "open-source", and we don't provide any guidance/reference for editing/viewing/modifying it outside our app. Sorry. 

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I understand. Don't agree with it the model, but understand. It would lovely if affinity could do a similar thing that sketch did. But Honestly, I don't know how their format fits into there biz model. Frankly I'm not sure how it fits affinity's either :D.

No sorry needed, but appreciated. You guys have mention on several occasion that it's closed. So I thought maybe this could a tiny loop hole to solve this particular issue. I have no desire to reverse engineer the format.

Btw, if you guys feel my post is unwelcome attention to the innards of the file ... you can go ahead a remove it or edit it. No worries.

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