Text Style resets when flowing to another frame

[Blue Iguana]

Please see the video.

The text style I apply to a paragraph or sets of paragraphs are suddenly reset when they are made to flow to the next text frame. I've experienced this problem quite a few times already.

Affinity Publisher 1.9,0
Mac OS X 11.0.1 Big Sur 

4 Pernia.afpub

[Old Bruce]

You have some weird stuff happening with Layer 1 brought in from InDesign. 

You have some weird stuff going on in general with this text. I opened your document and copied all the text then pasted it into Text Edit.app and Pages.app here on my Mac.You can see the Publisher document behind them.

[thomaso]

1. Like @Old Bruce I notice unexpected content within your text: There seem to be hidden special characters, e.g. a hard break (column/frame/page?) on page 82, that creates the empty space at this page's bottom after "…we read:" – though no such special character can be made visible, the paragraph break excepted.
2. Related or not, I can't cause the text from page 83 to flow on page 82 by deleting the first character on page 83. Instead with the first deletion it changes the text style, any further deletion doesn't do anything.
3. When I instead delete text on page 82 to force the flow then it flows first with a large font size. That, together with your video, might indicate that the frame on page 83 got scaled with the outer handle at any time during layout. – But ...
4. ... then deleting on page 82 once more sets the large font back to your normal 11pt.
So the culprit is quite likely any hidden content between page 82 and 83. Maybe it helps to check & clean in ID before importing the .idml ?

 

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

1. Like @Old Bruce I notice unexpected content within your text: There seem to be hidden special characters, e.g. a hard break (column/frame/page?) on page 82, that creates the empty space at this page's bottom after "…we read:" – though no such special character can be made visible, the paragraph break excepted.

That gap seems to be related to the Flow options (specifically prevent widowed last lines) in the text style Article, Body Text. If turned off, the gap disappears.

[thomaso]

36 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

That gap seems to be related to the Flow options

Hm, I had checked flow options before. Now, checking again, I notice Affinity starts behaving inconsistent when testing various situations. It gives me not only varying reports but in the 2nd screenshot also confusing flow options: what flow option would place the single first letter "w" there (regardless of the displayed 'none')?
Unfortunately conflicting/confusing UI report issues for applied text style properties or values aren't seldom in Affinity. It would be so useful if the a stroke (–) would appear more often in unclear / mixed settings.

What's going on below? What flow option is this in fact?:

[Old Bruce]

I should also point out that I am missing the font used.

[Blue Iguana]

Thank you very much for all your feedback.

I've tested again to try to look for a fix. The text style resetting persists even when I use different fonts and texts (yes, the same thing happened to the other articles that I laid out using the same template). I noticed that this problem occurs when I add pages to the end of my template. My template is originally 10 pages only. For the sample I uploaded, I added a few more pages so the whole article will fit. Notice when you open the document that the text styles are ok until the 10th page. It then starts acting weird when I flow the text to page 11. I've attached the template file here so you can test if you want. I couldn't find any problems in the flow options.

Old Bruce, I tried changing the font from Cardo to the stock Times New Roman, and still experienced the same problem.

Budyong Article Template.aftemplate

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Blue Iguana said:

For the sample I uploaded, I added a few more pages so the whole article will fit. 

Did you mean to upload a different file? The uploaded "Budyong Article Template.aftemplate" doesn't contain more than 10 pages, and it doesn't contain text. So, does it still concern your initial issue or is it related to another problem?

By the way: in both your documents there are text frames on document pages which have been edited and differ from the frames on other pages. This gets visible by different size which shows the margin guides behind the text frame borders. That makes me wonder how these text frames were created? Did you draw them manually or did you use APub's automatically frame creation across the entire document when placing the text on the first page? – I ask this because scaling a text frame with the outer handle will also scale its containing text/style.

I still wonder if the issue is caused or at least influenced by any formatting in the initial text file, e.g. hidden special character. When, in your first .afpub, I select all text and copy/paste it to a text editor app it results in large type + insets after "…we read:" (so, same position where the problem in APub starts):

[Blue Iguana]

On 2/17/2021 at 9:36 PM, thomaso said:

Did you mean to upload a different file? The uploaded "Budyong Article Template.aftemplate" doesn't contain more than 10 pages, and it doesn't contain text. So, does it still concern your initial issue or is it related to another problem?

I uploaded the template because that's the one I was referring to when I initially reported the problem. And yes, it only contains 10 pages. Like I said, it seems that the format resetting happens when I add pages.

 

On 2/17/2021 at 9:36 PM, thomaso said:

By the way: in both your documents there are text frames on document pages which have been edited and differ from the frames on other pages. This gets visible by different size which shows the margin guides behind the text frame borders. That makes me wonder how these text frames were created? Did you draw them manually or did you use APub's automatically frame creation across the entire document when placing the text on the first page? – I ask this because scaling a text frame with the outer handle will also scale its containing text/style.

To make the texts I place fit, I added pages. The problem happened in both ways I flowed text to the new pages -- when I used APub's automatic frame creation, and manually. But only to text that was at the bottom of page 10 (the last page of the template) which flowed to page 11 (start of the new pages I added). And yes, I noticed that when I created new text frames, they were somehow different from the ones in my original template.

 

On 2/17/2021 at 9:36 PM, thomaso said:

I still wonder if the issue is caused or at least influenced by any formatting in the initial text file, e.g. hidden special character. When, in your first .afpub, I select all text and copy/paste it to a text editor app it results in large type + insets after "…we read:" (so, same position where the problem in APub starts):

The original text file is an MS Word file with footnotes. It copies and pastes fine when I get it from MS Word and paste it in Pages or in a text frame between pages 1 to 9. I've attached the original MS Word file here.

 

Thank you very much for your help.

 

4. Encountering the Stranger-Pernia.docx

[thomaso]

1. If I place your word.doc into a new .afpub with 1 page, then shift-click the overflow triangle it results in a 8 page document without any odd appearance.

2. If I delete in your "4 Pernia.afpub" all pages after page 3, then shift-click the overflow triangle on page 3 it results in a 187 pages document, with the first paragraphs on page 4 in tiny font size (again "(…) Leviticus, we read:" is a breaking point).

3. If I create in your "4 Pernia.afpub" a new page before 1, then delete all pages after 1, place your word.doc on page 1 and shift-click the overflow triangel it results in a 19 pages document with odd formatting (e.g. visually quite large leading). It appears your style "Normal" gets applied which is based on both "[No Style]" (char & par).

Somehow the default character-"[No Style]" in your "4 Pernia.afpub" appears to be defined with a leading override (15p) & set to "Superscript". That might explain the tiny font size and the visually large leading. If I create in your "4 Pernia.afpub" a new text frame set to "[No Style]" (par & char) and add filler text via menu it is set to superscript.

If I open your "4 Pernia.afpub" it's layers panel shows an unclear, darkened selection color and still with no object selected the character panel has leading override + superscript set. That makes me assume you have either saved it in any style (maybe in "[No Style]" + Sync Defaults ??) or this .afpub got corrupted somehow.

[Old Bruce]

There is so much weirdness happening here....

You only have one style in the *.docx file, body and it is overwritten frequently or always in that  document. In the Publisher template the styles are also overwritten.

Most interesting is this, you use a Narrow Non breaking space as the end character for a text style's Initial Words. There are no Narrow Non breaking spaces in the word document.

 

[Blue Iguana]

4 hours ago, thomaso said:

1. If I place your word.doc into a new .afpub with 1 page, then shift-click the overflow triangle it results in a 8 page document without any odd appearance.

2. If I delete in your "4 Pernia.afpub" all pages after page 3, then shift-click the overflow triangle on page 3 it results in a 187 pages document, with the first paragraphs on page 4 in tiny font size (again "(…) Leviticus, we read:" is a breaking point).

3. If I create in your "4 Pernia.afpub" a new page before 1, then delete all pages after 1, place your word.doc on page 1 and shift-click the overflow triangel it results in a 19 pages document with odd formatting (e.g. visually quite large leading). It appears your style "Normal" gets applied which is based on both "[No Style]" (char & par).

Somehow the default character-"[No Style]" in your "4 Pernia.afpub" appears to be defined with a leading override (15p) & set to "Superscript". That might explain the tiny font size and the visually large leading. If I create in your "4 Pernia.afpub" a new text frame set to "[No Style]" (par & char) and add filler text via menu it is set to superscript.

If I open your "4 Pernia.afpub" it's layers panel shows an unclear, darkened selection color and still with no object selected the character panel has leading override + superscript set. That makes me assume you have either saved it in any style (maybe in "[No Style]" + Sync Defaults ??) or this .afpub got corrupted somehow.

Thanks much for your feedback, Thomaso.

The Normal text style is MS Word's default style. I didn't apply it and have no idea how to remove it. It's just there after I insert the Word DOC file into the AFPub. I guess it defaults to No Style which then should remove all applied paragraph and character styles, right? I double-checked the MS Word file for any hidden characters in the place where it reformats but there was none. I even tried pasting in different text (from a different file) and that also resulted in the format resetting when the text flows from page 10 to page 11 (page numbers 82 to 83). I've also tried removing and reinstalling AFPub.

4 hours ago, thomaso said:

I couldn't find this anymore. The workaround I did was to select the reformatted paragraph, apply No Style from the Character and Paragraph Style dropdown on the Context Toolbar (it doesn't work when I tried clicking on the same in the Text Styles studio panel -- another weird thing), then reapply the Body Text style (again from the Context Toolbar and not from the studio panel). I attached the screencap and file of the "fixed" layout. 

4 Pernia.afpub

[Blue Iguana]

4 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

There is so much weirdness happening here....

You only have one style in the *.docx file, body and it is overwritten frequently or always in that  document. In the Publisher template the styles are also overwritten.

Most interesting is this, you use a Narrow Non breaking space as the end character for a text style's Initial Words. There are no Narrow Non breaking spaces in the word document.

Thank you for your response, Old Bruce!

IKR! So weird that AFPub somehow gets confused by that one Normal default MS Word style which I didn't even create -- MS Word just includes it when the file is imported in AFPub or InDesign. Is there a way to not include any character or paragraph style when importing an MS Word file into AFPub?

The Narrow Non Breaking Space though is set for my Footnote text style. I use it after the footnote number only.

Thanks again!

4 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

 

 

[thomaso]

Sorry, honestly this .afpub & .doc meanwhile are too confusing to me. The complexity of such a set of .afpub & .doc can be quite time consuming to detect an issue.
Usually I prefer to avoid importing a word.doc with / because of its text styles. In my experience they often aren't set or applied properly and therefore may cause additional work in the layout app. I am aware this way requires all style settings getting done in the layout app.

9 minutes ago, Blue Iguana said:

Is there a way to not include any character or paragraph style when importing an MS Word file into AFPub?

There no way to 'ignore styles' and unwanted hidden/special characters when importing via menu File > Place… .
So if you want to import this way you would need first to create (convert or save-as or copy-paste) an external file without styles, preferable in a pure/plain text format (.txt). – Another option to import a pure text is to copy/paste (note place) the pure/plain text content opened in a external text editor app.

[Blue Iguana]

4 hours ago, thomaso said:

Sorry, honestly this .afpub & .doc meanwhile are too confusing to me. The complexity of such a set of .afpub & .doc can be quite time consuming to detect an issue.
Usually I prefer to avoid importing a word.doc with / because of its text styles. In my experience they often aren't set or applied properly and therefore may cause additional work in the layout app. I am aware this way requires all style settings getting done in the layout app.

Thanks, Thomaso. I understand. It is indeed very confusing and time consuming. But like I said, I didn't apply any styles to the Word file. I even tried exporting it to RTF and placing that. When that still didn't work, I tried copying and pasting. Still the same problem. Maybe it's an issue with AFPub when pages are added to a layout which started from a template? Or maybe it just happens when the original text file had footnotes or endnotes? It happened to my other layouts where the texts had footnotes and endnotes.

4 hours ago, thomaso said:

There no way to 'ignore styles' and unwanted hidden/special characters when importing via menu File > Place… .
So if you want to import this way you would need first to create (convert or save-as or copy-paste) an external file without styles, preferable in a pure/plain text format (.txt). – Another option to import a pure text is to copy/paste (note place) the pure/plain text content opened in a external text editor app.

The problem with plain text is it loses all formatting from the original submitted manuscript -- bold, italic, underlined, etc. So this isn't an option for me.

Again, thank you very much for trying to help. Do stay safe and keep well.

[Pauls]

there has been an issue fixed regarding text styles and footnotes /endnotes. It maybe worthwhile tring the next beta version although given the complexity of the document I'm not 100% sure that will fix all the problems.

[Petar Petrenko]

If you import Word document into InDesign and then saved to IDML to import it in Publisher, you may face with this problem:

you can see caret sign(s)  ^  (with "Show Hidden Characters" activated) in DOCX file which is an indicator for a hidden text, but usually there aren't any. You can get rid of this "hidden" text in InDesign by placing ^S (caret with upper letter S) in "Find" and one space in "Replace". Only after that you can save it as IDML and import it in Publisher.

[janehannah]

Hello everyone! This problem is simple to fix. Just go in your Text Styles and "edit" your text style. Then go under "paragraph" and "uncheck" flow: keep with previous paragraph. Voilà!