Affinity Publisher: Preflight

[Pyanepsion]

Hi, everyone,

I would like to export the list of errors from the preflight to a file. How do I do this?

Thank you for your explanations.

[walt.farrell]

I don't think there's any way other than taking a screenshot.

[Pšenda]

Screen Capture (for example FastStone Capture with Capture Scrolling Window function - capture full list with one click), crop image, OCR (for example onlineocr.net).

[Pyanepsion]

This does not really serve the intended purpose. I will therefore propose this improvement.

[walt.farrell]

What makes you think the "intended purpose" is to be able to generate a stand-alone listing of the errors?

 

[kaffeeundsalz]

I think what @Pyanepsion means is that the proposed workaround isn't suitable for the purpose he intends to use the error list for.

[Pyanepsion]

I would like to get a list of errors so that I can deal with them automatically outside Affinity Publisher, and also to be able to report on the progress of the work done.
Using a screen shot and then OCR is one way to get such a list, but it doesn’t work very well.
It would be better if the pre-check functionality provided such an ASCII file directly, rather than going through complicated also tricks, that don’t also work very well.

[kaffeeundsalz]

33 minutes ago, Pyanepsion said:

rather than going through complicated also tricks, that don’t also work very well.

TextSniper works ecxellent with Affinity Publisher's Preflight panel and makes creating an ASCII list of errors a breeze. And there are similar utilities for Windows.

[Fixx]

11 hours ago, kaffeeundsalz said:

TextSniper works ecxellent

It does not though work in Mojave. I use PicaText which is quite similar.

But really, all that kind of text displays should have selectable text.

[Pyanepsion]

The preflight locates the errors precisely on the document and then creates a complex list of them, of which it will display a very simplified textual extract in a window. Clicking on a line of this simplified textual extract allows the user to position himself exactly on the corresponding error.

Optical character recognition can only be performed on an image of this simplified text extract displayed in Affinity Publisher. In other words, much of the original information in the complex list has already been lost. From there, the OCR software will try to find the characters and then convert this image into text. This is almost impossible when the original error was a character.

Only the export of a file produced directly by the preflight will solve this problem.

The original image of ASCII characters 178 to 226 (in Arial)

Look at what any OCR software can do with this simple column showing ASCII characters 178 to 226. For example ConvertIO.

Quote

t+>
O
■— O'Z'OO'O'OO X Qoooü> n. C2 -TO -TO *ro
« ^ ^ ^ -0<-<•<!<:<••<    (_> LU‘LU'LU LU__
(NO'^LO(ONCOO)<CûOÛUJU.O'r-CslCO'tlOCÛSCOCn<CÛÜÛl±lLLOr-CNCOrl-lfiCÛN.a)0)<CÛOÛLJJLLOT—<N CÛCÛCÛCQCÛCÛCÛCÛCÛCÛCÛCÛCÛCÛOOOÜOOOOOÜÜOOOOOÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛLULULU
coa>o^csjco-^rLo<or^-cocr)0->—csjco-^-Lo-:or^-cocn)0-r-csjco'^rLo<c>r^-cocn)Or—CNjco-^rLocor^-coaio-r-csjco'^rLoco SSCOC003COCOCOCOOD03COO)Oi(3M3)05a)a)(3)0)050000000000T-^^^^T-^^^T-C\jrMCSKN<NCM(N t-t-t-t-t- T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-^-T-T-    --—t—C'JCNICNICNICNICNICNICNICNICNICXICNJCNJCNCNCMCMC'JC'JCMC'JC'JC'JC'JC'JC'JC'J

 

[Pšenda]

2 hours ago, Pyanepsion said:

Clicking on a line of this simplified textual extract allows the user to position himself exactly on the corresponding error.

I assume, that this was exactly the purpose and goal of the developers when developing Preflight.
Exporting the list of errors for external processing would be possible and expedient, but I assume that there will not be many such applicants, and therefore that the priority for the implementation of this improvement will not be high.

[Pyanepsion]

Quote

I assume that there will not be many such applicants,

🤔 You are very much mistaken Pšenda!

Let's just say that this would be the same kind of thing you would see for the Macro feature in Word or for the Advanced PDF Export feature in Affinity Publisher. It's totally useless for an amateur user or a secretary who doesn't even know it exists; it's absolutely essential for a professional who will be working with publishing companies.

[Wosven]

An option to export this report, the same way as when archiving or making packages in other apps, with report or log files would be usefull.

Since the datas are processed to be displayed, a slighty different one to export as XML or CSV shouldn't be difficult to add.

[Pšenda]

3 hours ago, Pyanepsion said:

it's absolutely essential for a professional

Therefore, two years after the release of APublisher, it has not been requested by anyone yet. Hmm.

[Pyanepsion]

2 hours ago, Pšenda said:

Therefore, two years after the release of APublisher, it has not been requested by anyone yet. Hmm.

Are you serious, or is this humour?

There are so many other things that are even more important, such as the management of page notes, the management of folded documents among the predefined templates, the absence of the ‘Perspective’ and ‘Distorting Grid’ tools present in Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer, the addition of other personal ICC profiles, the importing of a video or an animated GIF, the resumption of a table on several pages, the absence of external tools, the fine management of typography, the impossibility of modifying the shameful and unprofessional translation of the suite, a workbook that exists in languages other than English and German, the impossibility of using most of the most widely used font formats, the impossibility of using a real correction aid, the absence of relevant management of customized dictionaries, the absence of reference management (APA, Chicago, Personal, etc.), Keyboard shortcuts that also work on non-English keyboards, etc.

Do I need to add more?

Don't act like a blind fan who will justify anything and everything. We all love this suite or we wouldn't be here, but you shouldn't defend and justify anything either.

[wonderings]

I am lost to why you would want to edit this outside of Publisher if you set the project up in Publisher? Why would you correct in another application when you can correct in Publisher?

That being said Indesign does let you save a preflight report but it does not give specifics for spelling errors. Indesign works in the same was as Publisher does in this regard, double click on the issue in the preflight tab and you are brought directly to the issue so you can correct. 

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, wonderings said:

That being said Indesign does let you save a preflight report but it does not give specifics for spelling errors. Indesign works in the same was as Publisher does in this regard, double click on the issue in the preflight tab and you are brought directly to the issue so you can correct. 

Which by the logic of this topic doesn't that make Indesign yet another app unsuitable for use by professionals??? 🤔

[Pšenda]

6 hours ago, Pyanepsion said:

.... Do I need to add more?

Are you serious, or is this humour?

How does your list of Affinity application deficiency relate to the aforementioned fact that your request to export the Preflight report has not yet been requested, and therefore it is definitely not an "absolutely essential" feature?

Did you try to understand my previous post? Please try to read the posts and find out their context before aggressively attacking everyone around again.

[Wosven]

6 hours ago, wonderings said:

I am lost to why you would want to edit this outside of Publisher if you set the project up in Publisher? Why would you correct in another application when you can correct in Publisher?

 

43 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Which by the logic of this topic doesn't that make Indesign yet another app unsuitable for use by professionals??? 

Text can be corrected in the layout app, and/or in the words processor app.

We use a script to correct aa lot of common errors in ID, but also macros in Words to do similar corrections, when possible.

It's best done before the layout app, since it's when the copy editor works.on the file, and it's his job, and more logical (than keeping errors that anoyher app will correct or doing them manually when it can be automated).

If an app can list some common errors, and provide listings, scripting eill be faster. Errors can exist at different level, like spelling or grammar, or with fonts, encoding, etc.

If an app can help listing those errors, and provide a file to check/correct/automate some process, I'll say "YES, good job!!!" Combining ideas from different minds is usually best, emcompassing larger views that what we can on our own.

Imagine you kept enough of those logs to create later some script/macro or automation to get rid of those problems. It won't be done fastly, but in the end it'll be a better workflow.

And there's always the unexpected requets you can solve with such files, as stats about the fonts we used in all our documents, etc. Some.needs can be unique or of a wider usefulness...

 

@R C-R

Sometimes, you need to think out of the box with the tools provided. We generate for example a 740 pages book from a web database, processing XML inside ID, since it is able to produce text formatted with all the needed text styles. It's also keeping XML tags, and scripts checking each character (no other way to retrieve thoses tags' page location in ID),  where able to process and generate full indexes.

With some added scripts, the whole process was reduce to 5/7 × 2 monthes work instead of long week days and saturday work. Some apps can provide half the tools/ideas, but when we add ours it can be more effective.

[loukash]

On 5/31/2021 at 11:42 PM, Pšenda said:

OCR

Excellent idea!

From candidates that are already present in my Mac Applications folder:
Keyboard Maestro (yet again, haha…)

First I'm making a standard MacOS screenshot-to-the-clipboard. Then opening KM's Clipboard History window. I've already noticed the "OCR Image" menu function before, but didn't fully realized yet what it's good for. Now I know. Not so bad.