Ridiculous Crashes

[DieterW]

I really love Affinity, really I do. But AP drives me crazy. With each and every document I create, I end up with crashing issues, sometimes when opening the file, sometimes when doing certain things. So I keep several versions of the file to be sure to have a recent backup for recovery. And in most cases the only fix is to copy the whole content into a new file (well, it is a lot more work than it sounds).

This time it is really annoying. Just by moving the cursor (sometimes beginning/end of line, or line up/down, etc.) AP crashes. The problem started today out of nothing. This happens every 1 or 2 minutes while working with the document. Now I save after every word. But this is just too annoying.

The crash can be reproduced. For example by doing this:

At the end of the document in section "Explanations" go the the second line of the paragraph "Immune", i.e. place the cursor before the "or". Then type ", " (comma space). Then go back 2 characters (press cursor left 2 times). Then press Backspace (to delete the space after "attacks" (see image). Then press cursor down to go to the next line... well, got you, this will not happen as AP crashes in this very moment... every time.

Ah, wait, I found something out while taking the screenshot. Wait 5 seconds before pressing Cursor down. Then AP does not crash. So, this is even more strange...

Package.zip

[Joachim_L]

4 hours ago, DieterW said:

well, got you, this will not happen as AP crashes in this very moment... every time.

Followed your recipe and had no crash no matter if HWA is on or off. So it might be helpful to upload the crash report.

[DieterW]

For me it happens on two computers in the same way (latest release 1.10.1.1142; and yes HWA does not make a difference as it is on one PC and off on the other). You may have waited too long. If you do this slowly than it does not happen (roughly a key stroke per second). If you do this in normal work speed (roughly 300-500 ms per key stroke) than it happens.

Uploaded several crash reports in a ZIP

reports.zip

[Joachim_L]

2 minutes ago, DieterW said:

If you do this in normal work speed (roughly 300-500 ms per key stroke) than it happens.

I typed as fast as my age permits and had no crash.

[DieterW]

1 minute ago, Joachim_L said:

I typed as fast as my age permits and had no crash.

As I am over 50 I assume this was even faster than me 😉. Very strange indeed. Did you install the fonts? I confirmed it is also happening when working locally (normally I always work with the files on the NAS, but I copied the package folder to the desktop and it happens too).

[Joachim_L]

2 minutes ago, DieterW said:

Did you install the fonts?

I am 55 and I installed the fonts and everything was ok. What I saw, was, that Dax Medium is a restricted font and your crash happens at the word attacks with Dax Medium. Don't know what restrictions apply on that font. Perhaps you should replace Dax Medium with a "normal" font like Arial and try again to see if the font is causing the crashes?

[Andreas CH]

Bei mir stürzt Apub bei verschiedenen Manipulationen. (ohne Geschwindigkeit, ich bin doch schon 64 😊)

Absturz bei

1. Komma hinter attacks
2. attacks markieren und auf Text zurückstellen klicken.
3. alles markieren Schrift DAX anklicken und andere Schrift wählen
4. Textstil Body Normal wählen

Bei einem weiteren Versuch habe ich im Textstil "Base" die Schrift auf Arial gesetzt und konnte keinen Absturz mehr produzieren.

Ich nehme an, dass es, wie Joachim schreibt, an der Schrift liegen könnte.

 

[Joachim_L]

9 minutes ago, Andreas CH said:

Absturz bei

1. Komma hinter attacks
2. attacks markieren und auf Text zurückstellen klicken.
3. alles markieren Schrift DAX anklicken und andere Schrift wählen
4. Textstil Body Normal wählen

Nichts von alledem führt bei mir zu einem Absturz.

[Joachim_L]

Ist mir jetzt gerade erst aufgefallen, aber die Dax-Fonts werden alle doppelt aufgeführt im Font-Menü. Warum das so ist, weiß wahrscheinlich nur unser Font-Guru @LibreTraining.

Why the Dax fonts are doubled in the font menu could possibly only the font guru @LibreTraining explain.

[DieterW]

Yes, the answer to why the Dax fonts are doubled is 42! 😄

I tried to get rid of this, tried to delete the Windows font cache (some files I could not delete). I use MainType for font installation. If I uninstall the fonts they do not appear in the Windows Font Manager and also MainType does not show them in the Windows Font Folder. If I install them then MainType shows them once in Windows Fonts, but with "(1)" (an unused font even with "(2)") at the end (e.g. "C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\Dax-Medium(1).otf"). AP reports them twice.

However, I replaced the restricted font with an unrestricted. Strangely enough the Dax Medium is not shown twice anymore. I attached a new package with this.

Unfortunately, it didn't help and it crashes in the same way.

1 hour ago, Andreas CH said:

Absturz bei

1. Komma hinter attacks
2. attacks markieren und auf Text zurückstellen klicken.
3. alles markieren Schrift DAX anklicken und andere Schrift wählen
4. Textstil Body Normal wählen

 

1) crashes for me too (select "attacks" then pressing cursor down), 2 to 4 does not crash for me. And it crashes if I select "attacks" make it non bold (apply "No Style for Chars"), then do the same (place cursor before "or", ...).

I also should note that I used the (restricted) Dax font in other AP projects and it did not cause issues (well, I had issues, but related to images and no crashes like here).

Package.zip

[DieterW]

Well, I am not sure if it is related to the Dax font, but it seems to be related to Fonts in general. I completely replaced Dax with Arial and did not have any crashes by doing the reported thing and by doing random things for some time now. With Dax it would have crashed several times.

But I also created a new file and used Dax and could not produce any crashes no matter what I did.

Edited September 8, 2021 by DieterW
Added info

[kenmcd]

@DieterW @Joachim_L

Those Dax fonts are definitely broken, and could be the source of your problems.
There are duplicates in the names which will cause issues in the caches/apps.
And some other stuff was just missing or wrong.
The ManuskriptGotisch font also had a couple settings off so I fixed it too.
Try these and see if that fixes it - Fonts-Fixed.zip
They look like old conversions from Type-1 fonts.
I did not test the fonts to see if anything else is wrong.

Close all Affinity apps first.
Un-install the old fonts and make sure there are no other duplicate font files still residing in either the system Fonts folder or your user Fonts folder.
The odd numbers in MainType may indicate the fonts were installed multiple times.
Or it too may have just been confused by the broken duplicate names.

[DieterW]

Thanks for the effort and the help. I really would like to confirm some good news, but I cannot. It still crashes. I did as you said:

• Uninstalled all those fonts (all Dax variants, I do not even use in this document). I made sure in Windows Fonts folder is nothing in.
• I deleted the old versions, replaced them with the new fonts you sent me (all 5).
• I installed the fonts with MainType.
• The double entries are gone now in AP. Filenames do not show "(1)" anymore. So everything looked good.
• Tried it (on 2 PCs, one with HWA on, other off), crashed (on both).
• I deinstalled the fonts and copied the font files directly to the Windows Fonts folder without MainType (hoping to circumvent the font cache).
• Tried it (2 PCs), crashed (on both).

In addition I can report:
Earlier I did what I always have to do in the end. I copied the whole content from the problematic file in a new AP document (even merged multiple documents with the same layout and fonts), i.e. Dax was still used. I did this actually with my old versions before you sent the replacements. I worked with this new document without issues so far.

So, IMHO it is not the font directly, although it may be involved in the issue. I do not want to play the wise guy, but this is what I think:
According to what I saw so far, I really have issues with almost every document after some time (at least with the larger and more complex ones). Sometimes it is misplaced/distorted images, sometimes layout issues, crashes when opening, or some seconds after that, etc. All of them I could fix by copying the content to a new document. And issues started slowly in most cases. It is hard to explain and I do not remember exactly what happened. However, to me it feels as for some reason something gets scrambled in the save file, as the issues persist after restarting and reloading the document. As soon as the issue is there it won't go away and gets worse the more I try to fix it, as if the data structure is damaged and depending on where and what the issues are always different. So, maybe the problem lies in the document data structure...

Also, isn't is strange that the crash does not happen if you do this slowly enough? How should a broken font be involved in that? What happens in these few seconds to avoid the crash?

[kenmcd]

44 minutes ago, DieterW said:

So, IMHO it is not the font directly, although it may be involved in the issue.

We may have just eliminated another possibly contributing issue.
It was a problem, but probably not what is causing the crashes.

You need to get the crash reports reviewed by Affinity.

[Pauls]

Looking at the crash reports it would appear to be related to the use of Columns in text frames. I'll start experimenting with the fonts/package file to see if I can recreate it

[Pauls]

I've recreated this and logged an issue