Affinity Publisher for macOS - 1.8.4

[Patrick Connor]

We are pleased to announce an update for the macOS release of Affinity Publisher, version 1.8.4

Changes in this build

The changes in Affinity Publisher for macOS 1.8.4 (made since the last release Affinity Publisher on macOS 1.8.3) are as follows:

Fixes & Improvements:

General

• Preparations to our macOS apps to ready them for the release of Big Sur later in the year
• Fixed recent regression when saving Linked Image placeholders which was causing large document files
• Recoloured K-only images with transparency lose their transparency
• Stability and Performance improvements
• Fix for zero-height / width objects moving to the wrong pages when switching to / from 'Facing Pages'
• Text > Interactive - Options mismatched with Context Menu 
• Fixed Colour chooser UI
• 'Lock Children' wasn't updating correctly on the Context Bar
• Fixed Paragraph Panel 'Use Space Before' popup
• Page view doesn't change when double-clicking pages with OpenGL (Basic) display
• File > Edit in Designer and File > Edit in Photo customisable shortcuts missing
• Convert to Text Frame now handles stroke and fill correctly
• Fix for stale preflight results persisting when Pages are removed

Multi-spread

• Allow immediate dragging of objects on other spreads
• Constraining while dragging objects between spreads now works correctly
• When dragging between spreads, snapping is now performed on the target spread candidates
• Dragging objects between spread using the Focal Point handle now works correctly
• Fixes for dragging curve nodes across multiple spreads
• Fixes for 'restart drag' when translating across spreads
• Fixed issue with auto-panning in the text tool

Text

• Improved performance of text when rendering text
• Avoid generating infinite filler text when leading is zero
• Further improvements for ideographic line breaks, mainly for quote-marks
• Allow OpenType kerning between glyphs with different settings (if they are the same font and size)
• Fixed 'Indent To Here' not working if lines are broken by drop cap or wrap shape
• Fixes for line-breaker around Fixed Spaces
• Index Find - match words with following punctuation
• Index Partial loss of parent topics when adding pages from file
• Fixed crash after editing text styles if changes caused pinned objects to move between spreads
• Option to preserve Text Frame width when changing Column Gutter in the context toolbar
• Double click multi-word selection could leave the original word not selected
• Fixed handling of local objects pinned to master page text when subsequently unpinned
• Improved line breaking for ideographic languages
• Fixed shortcuts for backspace key
• Fixed Text entry issue in separated mode with multiple documents

Import

• IDML Import - Text frame corners are now scaled correctly
• IDML Import - Fixed instances where text wrap path could fail to import, or be scaled incorrectly
• IDML Import - Generic OpenType features not being imported from IDML file
• IDML Import - Effects settings not scaled correctly on master page items
• IDML Import - En-Space in numbered list imported as a 0
• IDML Import - Elements could be positioned incorrectly in some instances
• IDML Import - Question mark in file path breaks link during the import
• IDML Import - Initial Words not scaling correctly
• IDML Import - Placed EPS files are slightly clipped
• IDML Import -  Better handling of master page items with overridden properties
• XLSX Import - Fixed hang with cells with gradient fills
• PDF import - Improved performance
• PDF Import - Improved handling when importing password restricted PDFs
• PDF Import - Import now allows creation of Artistic Text if 'Group lines of Text into Text Frames' is switched off
• PDF Import - Import now provides fallback if the used font doesn't define space
• PDF Import - Fixed text positioning which could be incorrect due to spaces being treated as tabs under certain conditions
• PDF Import - Fall through to alternative mappings when importing text, if necessary
• PDF Import - Better handling of restricted files
• SVG Import - 'ClosePath' doesn't have to be followed by a 'Move'
• SVG Import - Now treats gradients with one stop as solid fills
• SVG Import - Other fixes for specific files, including malformed files

Export

• Fixed vector export of text occasionally filling characters
• PDF Export - Better support for RGBA16 and RGBAUF images
• PDF Export - Export could fail for glyph ids that happen to match surrogate pair values
• PDF Export - Fixed issues exporting to PDF/X-4 with content with embedded profiles 
• SVG Export - Fixed source of numeric overflow causing curves to be exported incorrectly in some cases

Earlier changes and fixes in 1.8 since 1.7 (including the new 1.8 features) are listed in some detail in this 1.8.1 update announcement. and the 1.8.2 update announcement

 

UPDATING TO THIS VERSION (Free for existing customers)

The software version can be seen on the splash screen and the About dialog (in application menu, Affinity Publisher > About).

If you’ve purchased from the Mac App Store— updates are done automatically next time you run your software after it is available in the Mac App Store. If this does not happen for you, open the Mac App Store app and go to the Updates page and then Store > Reload page or press CMD+R. This should hopefully force the update to show. Apple sometimes phase roll outs around the world which can mean it may take up to 72 hours for your update to be available.

If you’ve purchased from the Affinity Store— each time you start the software it will check for updates and offer to download and install any available update, or in the application main menu there is an option Check for Updates. You can download the latest installer by logging into the affinity store here and find the order in your account and use the "download" button in there. Alternatively, this new release (and previous versions of Affinity Publisher for macOS) can be downloaded from this link (that installer is NOT for Mac App Store purchases and needs a product key).

[Patrick Connor]

All Readers

This thread is solely for commenting on this announcement. 

Please do not post bugs or problems that you find when using this version of the software in this thread, instead make a new thread in the Publisher Bugs on macOS section and questions about usage go in the Desktop Questions forum.

[benwiggy]

Can I ask what does "Import now allows creation of Art Text if 'Group lines of Text into Text Frames' is switched off" mean?  Does that mean all text gets turned into Artistic Text?

[Patrick Connor]

19 minutes ago, benwiggy said:

Does that mean all text gets turned into Artistic Text?

Yes if that is what is chosen on the import options dialog.

[Palatino]

Is Publisher spotless now? 😎

[Mike Perry]

• Quote

  Preparations to our macOS apps to ready them for the release of Big Sur later in the year

  Apple isn't going to support Big Sur on 2012 Mac minis—and I see no reason to upgrade. Will that impose any limitations on us as users? 

[Patrick Connor]

18 minutes ago, Mike Perry said:

• Apple isn't going to support Big Sur on 2012 Mac minis—and I see no reason to upgrade. Will that impose any limitations on us as users? 

No these changes are mostly to offer the same functionality on Big Sur as earlier OS's not really about new/exclusive functionality.