Can't see Fields under View>Studio in Designer

[R C-R]

23 minutes ago, imacken said:

Good grief! No one is talking about file names. We’re talking about how to edit the title. 

I was just pointing out that for Macs, the document title does not appear anywhere in Finder windows. This is a consequence of the document title not being stored in the Mac's native file system(s). So to edit it, it is necessary to use an app that has write access to the document title embedded in the file itself.

[imacken]

6 hours ago, R C-R said:

I was just pointing out that for Macs, the document title does not appear anywhere in Finder windows. This is a consequence of the document title not being stored in the Mac's native file system(s). So to edit it, it is necessary to use an app that has write access to the document title embedded in the file itself.

We’re not talking about MacOS or Windows, we’re talking about Designer retaining the title of a previous save when a pdf is exported, and not being able to edit it! This causes lots of issues, particularly when the file is linked to in a web site. 

[lacerto]

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[imacken]

33 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

As it is at the moment, you'd need a third-party tool to set or erase title of a PDF document.

One such tool is ExifTool at https://exiftool.org/ -- an unbeliavably powerful utility, and much an overkill for a single purpose, but it runs on Windows and macOS (and Linux) and would allow erasing a title by a drag and drop operation, or replacing a title by using a simple command line operation (like exiftool -title="New title" filename.pdf).

We have shown workarounds here already.  The simplest is to use Affinity Photo to change the title of the Designer-exported pdf.

That is not really the point here, I feel.  Why should we not be able to edit the title of a document that Designer created in the first place?  Why should we have to use Photo or Publisher to do this task when it should - in my opinion - be a basic function of the app that is creating the document.

[GarryP]

One idea that popped into my head is to have the document Title as an optional field in the Document Setup dialog, which is available in all the applications. (If necessary a little note can be placed next to the field telling the user that this won’t be used in all export formats.)
Wouldn’t this get us what we want without much fuss?
I haven’t thought about how this might work with multiple artboards or anything like that, it just came to me as a simple potential solution.

[lacerto]

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[Pšenda]

51 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

an unbeliavably powerful utility, and much an overkill for a single purpose

Just for information - I use it with ExifToolGUI, and that's just great 🙂

[Pšenda]

8 minutes ago, GarryP said:

with multiple artboards

I think this is the main reason why you can't take solutions from APh and APu so easily. In the case of ADe, the Fields should be adjustable for each ardboard separately.

[GarryP]

8 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

In the case of ADe, the Fields should be adjustable for each ardboard separately.

Agreed. If every artboard is exported with the same title – the original document name (minus the suffix) – then that doesn’t sound like a good thing for people who are, for example, creating multiple products (e.g. flyer, business card, etc.) from the same document.
What if the user could give the document (as a whole) a title in Document Setup – good for people who only use one artboard or don’t use one at all – and the user could then override that title in the Export Persona?
Actually, which formats use the concept of “Title”? Is it just PDF, or others too? (I only really use PDF, JPG and PNG.)

[lacerto]

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[R C-R]

1 hour ago, imacken said:

We’re not talking about MacOS or Windows, we’re talking about Designer retaining the title of a previous save when a pdf is exported, and not being able to edit it!

Because Designer automatically adds the saved file name to its PDF export & provides no direct way to change it, as (among others) @Lagarto has mentioned, some other method must be used to do that. Tools that modify file system metadata are useless for this because (contrary to what some users believe) that is not where document titles are stored.

Of course, there are several tools that can edit embedded PDF document titles. Some work on both Windows & macOS systems, some only run on one or the other OS. But weirdly, even though AP & APU can set document titles & they are included in PDF exports from either app, both apps seem to ignore those titles if the exported PDF is then opened in either one of them. This seems to be true for both the Windows & Mac versions.

There is also a way on Macs to set the exported PDF document title from within Designer using the Print > Save to PDF option built into the macOS, which allows setting the Title, Author, Subject, & Keywords fields. But once again both AP & APU ignore them. All those fields are written to the PDF export by Designer -- Finder's Get Info & Preview app's Inspector both display them perfectly. 

So the problems with how not just Designer but all three Affinity apps handle embedded PDF titles (among other PDF attributes) goes deeper than just the inability of Designer to set the PDF title via the normal export options.

Considering all of this, until such time as how all the Affinity app import PDF's improves, I think the only viable option whenever setting the title (among other {PDF attributes) is important is to use a third party tool for this, & to do so only as a 'post processing' step that does not in any way involve editing the PDF in Affinity.

[lacerto]

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[R C-R]

8 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

I had a brief look on this but I could not find a means to have the title tag edited with it (it shows the title amongst PDF attributes but does not seem to allow editing this information on the Workspace tab). Probably just my ignorance.

I do not use ExifToolGUI but I do use XnViewMP on my Mac. It does support editing many IPTC/XMP metadata fields using the ExifTool library backend, but it does not support editing PDF metadata attributes. If fact, it does not even display anything for them other than their file attributes, all but two of which are file system attributes.

[Pšenda]

42 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

it shows the title amongst PDF attributes but does not seem to allow editing this information on the Workspace tab

Select file, select Title tag.

Write new tag value,

Click Save (store all changes to pdf file).

[imacken]

I still say, that the best workaround here - and it still seems crazy to me that we have to use one - is editing the title in Photo for those who have it.

[Pšenda]

34 minutes ago, R C-R said:

but it does not support editing PDF metadata attributes

In ExifToolGUI isn't problem

[Patrick Connor]

@imacken

I feel I must agree with you. If you cannot change it in Designer if should religiously follow the Filename and only use the equivalent Field value when/if it is over-ridden in Publisher. I will ask the developers to comment, as there are sometimes things I have not considered.

 

[lacerto]

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[Patrick Connor]

This issues has been reported to the developers, thank you for your help with this report. Due to the work around discussion I will leave this thread here (even though it could be moved to the bugs section).

[Pšenda]

44 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

on the Workspace tab

Yes, only items located in "Workspace" can be edited directly.
However, Workspace items can be customized as needed (menu Program, Workspace manager...).

[lacerto]

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[imacken]

3 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

This issues has been reported to the developers, thank you for your help with this report. Due to the work around discussion I will leave this thread here (even though it could be moved to the bugs section).

Thanks Patrick.

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

If you cannot change it in Designer if should religiously follow the Filename and only use the equivalent Field value when/if it is over-ridden in Publisher. I will ask the developers to comment, as there are sometimes things I have not considered.

Please also ask them about neither AP nor APUB recognizing document titles that have been embedded in PDFs exported from any of the Affinity apps when those exported PDF's are imported back into AP or APUB.

For example, in saved doc.afphoto I set the Metadata > File > Title field to "my new title," saved the afphoto file to make sure that it includes it, & then exported it to PDF using the PDF (for export) preset, creating saved doc.pdf. Opening that file in either AP or APUB, there is no title field shown. The PDF definitely includes the "my new title" document title, which can be verified on a Mac via Finder's Get Info or with Preview app's Inspector.

   

It doesn't seem to matter what PDF preset is used or which Affinity app is used to create the PDF -- even using the Mac Print > Save as PDF option to set the title, author, etc. fields definitely sets those fields but they are ignored when opened in Affinity.

[procrastanita]

On 7/13/2020 at 7:31 PM, R C-R said:

Because Designer automatically adds the saved file name to its PDF export & provides no direct way to change it, as (among others) @Lagarto has mentioned, some other method must be used to do that. Tools that modify file system metadata are useless for this because (contrary to what some users believe) that is not where document titles are stored.

Of course, there are several tools that can edit embedded PDF document titles. Some work on both Windows & macOS systems, some only run on one or the other OS. But weirdly, even though AP & APU can set document titles & they are included in PDF exports from either app, both apps seem to ignore those titles if the exported PDF is then opened in either one of them. This seems to be true for both the Windows & Mac versions.

There is also a way on Macs to set the exported PDF document title from within Designer using the Print > Save to PDF option built into the macOS, which allows setting the Title, Author, Subject, & Keywords fields. But once again both AP & APU ignore them. All those fields are written to the PDF export by Designer -- Finder's Get Info & Preview app's Inspector both display them perfectly. 

So the problems with how not just Designer but all three Affinity apps handle embedded PDF titles (among other PDF attributes) goes deeper than just the inability of Designer to set the PDF title via the normal export options.

Considering all of this, until such time as how all the Affinity app import PDF's improves, I think the only viable option whenever setting the title (among other {PDF attributes) is important is to use a third party tool for this, & to do so only as a 'post processing' step that does not in any way involve editing the PDF in Affinity.

Thank you for this, your suggestions are really helpful - you mentioned this as an issue in 2020 and it's May 2022 and it's still a problem

Your suggestion above is really helpful but a shame that we have to find numerous workarounds instead of there being a Designer equivalent studio option such as "metadata" for Photo or "fields" for Publisher. You'd think that Affinity would have fixed this and given Designer its own studio option.

[Martin511]

I found my personal workaround for this:

Export as PDF
Right click on PDF --> open with: Notepad++
STRG+F and search for text strings you want to change
Overwrite the text

Save.

😄