Publisher Crashing on Start

[nwhit]

Been having this issue for a few weeks using previous version of APub, so after finishing a project upgraded to 1.86 this morning to see if it would fix it. Didn't. Routinely get a crash (fails to open and get the Report dialog) with a cold start. Additionally, if I click to reopen the previously open docs, it never does. Have not had this occur through many versions of APub including numerous betas. Not sure what it causing it. None of the open docs are complex, etc., so doubt they are to blame.

Also, never have this happen with APhoto, so just APub is doing this.

2019 iMac with internal SSD, Catalina latest. Last 2 crash reports attached.

Affinity Publisher_2020-12-08-100020_TRAC-Main17.crash Affinity Publisher_2020-12-09-120542_TRAC-Main17.crash

[Jon P]

Both the crashes seem to have happened as it was loading a document, can you upload the document you were opening here? I'll see if I can reproduce it with that.

Can you also navigate to ~/Library/Application Support/ and rename the Affinity Publisher folder to Affinity Publisher old, then run the app up and check it still crashes.

Thanks

[nwhit]

Jon, since upgrading to 1.8.6 and then subsequently closing and reopening, I haven't had a crash. That said, I was working on several similar docs this last few weeks, so can't really remember which ones were open when the crashes were happening (typically have 4-6 open). Can you tell which docs were trying to open from the crash reports? I could save them as resource-embedded and send to you just to see if maybe I'm not currently working on one of those that were previously causing the crash.

Thankfully I may not need to start with a new App Support folder since, if I recall correctly, I would lose my prefs, workspace, defaults, etc., which would be a real pain to try to reconstruct. I'm VERY pleased to see that the 1.9 beta will have savable workspaces/Studio layout. Takes some time to develop a "friendly" workspace, so in the past was always a huge PITA to lose it from a crash, etc. Also will be extremely nice to be able to switch to various workspaces based on what a person might be doing in a project. 

But as of today, opening APub 1.8.6 with 5 docs has not caused a crash, so either I am not opening the "faulty" doc any longer, or the problem has gone away with my recent upgrade. 

 

[garrettm30]

On 12/12/2020 at 4:17 PM, nwhit said:

Thankfully I may not need to start with a new App Support folder since, if I recall correctly, I would lose my prefs, workspace, defaults, etc.

Jon recommended renaming the folder so that you would not lose those settings but temporarily deactivate them for testing purposes. Presumably, if the problem were one of those settings, then perhaps a reset would be required. If not, then you could just delete the new folder and rename the first to its original name.

But for now, that is just advice for a future time, for if the problem is not currently manifesting, then the test may not be of any value.

[nwhit]

Sadly, had another crash on Open. I have uploaded the 5 files that were open plus the newest crash report. I changed the APub docs to have embedded resources, so everything should be there (hopefully!), although I normally work with mostly linked resources for the most part.

On creating a new Prefs folder, can try that for an opening or two but can't do it for a longer time since I have work to get done and need my workspace layout and other defaults, etc. And since this has been an intermittent problem, not sure if that will do much, but can give it a temporary try. 

[nwhit]

Okay, I just tried opening multiple times with the 5 embedded-version docs open and it opened every time. I then switched to multiple opens of the original linked-version 5 docs and no crashes. 

The only "difference" that I can think of before this morning's crash was that the computer had been in Sleep prior to opening APub (woke up about about 20 minutes before opening APub). Not sure if that would be a cause of any issues, especially with the linked resources, but that's all I can think of that was different. 

And as originally reported, when it did crash and upon reopen asked if I wanted to reopen the previously open docs, it did not open them (as was the case with all previous crashes). Not sure why that has not been working as it should.

Anyway, the docs and crash report are uploaded.