Creating a new textbox makes text tiny for no reason!

[Koshpeli]

I create a brand new textbox using the textbox tool. I do not use any particular handle because I am creating a new textbox. I link a textbox to that textbox and BANG the text is tiny. 

This has nothing to do with the scaling or not scaling handle. 

[walt.farrell]

You do have linked text frames, though, and it is possible that your older text frame is the one that was scaled.

How did you make it?

[Koshpeli]

I linked them AFTER I made the other one. Did you watch the video? 

I made the other one on a master page. It's part of a 400 page document, every single text frame of which works perfectly except this brand-new one. This happens to me all the time, but I'm not going to screenshot myself working constantly!

 

Unless you work for the company (and you don't so basically you're doing the job of tech support for free for some bizarre reason that I will never understand), why defend them? Why not accept there might be a f*ck up here?

[Koshpeli]

3 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

You do have linked text frames, though, and it is possible that your older text frame is the one that was scaled.

How did you make it?

And what difference would it make how I made the other one? Are you saying that one is scaled and the default text setting of a new text box is 3.9 point size??? If so, that's whole nother bug!!

[walt.farrell]

2 minutes ago, Koshpeli said:

And what difference would it make how I made the other one? Are you saying that one is scaled and the default text setting of a new text box is 3.9 point size???

With whatever is happening (across many reports that I have seen) when it's a user error the error can be in scaling the frame that already contains the text, or in scaling the frame that will contain the text after the linking occurs.

You did not say that the frame that already held the text came from a Master Page, nor that it was repeated on many pages already. Given that, it is perhaps less likely that the common user error is to blame for this. However, given that this new one did not come from the Master, it is still possible (even if unlikely) that that original text frame, on the Master, was scaled. In that case, all the frames that were created from it might seem to work correctly, but the new one (not created from the Master) might behave incorrectly.

That could happen something like this scenario (though I might have the scaling backward in this specific example):

1. You create, and scale, the text frame on the Master Page.
2. You apply the Master to a document page, generating a (scaled) Text Frame there.
3. You set a font size, and add some text, and it looks OK, but the text (regardless of what the font size shows) is actually scaled larger. So, what appears to be 12 pt text is actually 5 pt but scaled up by a factor of 12/5.
4. You then create another frame manually, and what you think should be 12 pt isn't, once the text flows into it, as the new text isn't scaled. The visual comparison will be off, even if the numbers look the same.

That kind of thing is why it's important to know the full details of both the frames.

13 minutes ago, Koshpeli said:

why defend them?

I am not defending them. I was trying to get more details to, with luck, lead to a resolution of your problem, or provide additional information for the Serif staff when they get to this report.

We (users and Serif) are pretty sure there's at least one bug, involvoing IDML files, that exhibits this symptom.

And there's a simple user error (scaling, when not intended) that can exhibit this symptom.

Perhaps there are other causes, and possibly other bugs besides the IDML one, but out of everyone who has reported something similar to your situation that I've seen, one of these applies:

• The IDML issue.
• The user error.
• Or something else that no one has ever been able to demonstrate with enough details for Serif to figure it out.

If the IDML issue doesn't apply, and you're sure that neither text frame was scaled, then I'm sure Serif will be interested in looking at your file to see if they can see what happened. And when they get to this they can provide a private upload link for you so your file is only shared with the Serif staff, not all of us.

And with luck, they will figure out what's causing this. They already have said that they recognize that there should be some indication in the User Interface that a text frame has been scaled, and perhaps some way to reset it. Neither exists today, which makes it harder to see what's happening, and to fix a document when it has happened.

[Koshpeli]

I created the text frames on the Masters page the exact same way, by dragging a text frame across the page. Not to mention the book has several different masters and manual created text-frames and all the text flows in very nicely. Except this one text frame on this one page. I see this all the time, everything is fine, everything is fine. Some random textframe suddenly scales. Or I hit delete and then suddenly the text scales to a tiny amount. There's no IDML issue here. Sometimes it just randomly creates a scaled text-frame apparently. It needs to be fixed.

This is why I never report bugs. No one believes you and you have to spend half your time telling people you're not an idiot. I'll just go back to Indesign. It's expensive but at least it works!

 

 

[Koshpeli]

How about this. Same doc. I added a page. I added a new fresh textframe without scaling. Typed Lorem ipsum and cut and pasted it a bunch of times. Note that the first word or two of the new textframe is scaled and the rest aren't. This is another thing that happens. Text just randomly scales inside textboxes!

Note that it even looks like there are different sizes or baselines inside that tiny little text! Please explain what kind of program would allow user error in the pressing of Ctrl + V to make THAT happen!

[walt.farrell]

11 hours ago, Koshpeli said:

This is why I never report bugs. No one believes you and you have to spend half your time telling people you're not an idiot.

No one has claimed that you're an idiot, and no one is disbelieving you that something has happened.

The problem is with figuring out what might have happened, and for that more details of exactly what occurred in the workflow are often needed, and sample documents.  As I mentioned, when Serif processes this report, they can provide a private link so they can examine your document to see if it has any clues to what's going on.

11 hours ago, Koshpeli said:

How about this. Same doc. I added a page. I added a new fresh textframe without scaling. Typed Lorem ipsum and cut and pasted it a bunch of times. Note that the first word or two of the new textframe is scaled and the rest aren't. This is another thing that happens. Text just randomly scales inside textboxes

That is bizarre.

11 hours ago, Koshpeli said:

Note that it even looks like there are different sizes or baselines inside that tiny little text! Please explain what kind of program would allow user error in the pressing of Ctrl + V to make THAT happen!

I'm not sure there are different baselines. In the last screenshot I think you might be missing a space between the last small lorem and the first big Ipsum, which would throw off the apparent baseline for that lorem. Still weird that would happen, if all that text was copied and pasted from freshly typed text that all was the same size.

[Koshpeli]

When there's a problem and one dude keeps saying "Are you sure it isn't X?" it blocks people from getting real help. This happens ALL the time on tech forums. I googled the problem. I saw all your comments that it's scaling. I checked if it was scaling. It's not! But now people who may be able to help see your comments and go, "Oh it's probably scaling. I saw everyone forgets about scaling." Then the thread gets closed and the problem never gets fixed.

This happens to me and apparently a lot of other people all the time! It's bizarre but oh so common!

[Old Bruce]

Several things could be causing this.

One of them is text from a frame that has been sized using the outermost bottom right blue dot. That will scale the text up or down depending on the size being increased or decreased.

Another is text having a Character Style applied to it which can affect only the characters it is applied to. 

A third is from IDML files being used.

There are many many more things that could happen to result in what you have shown us.

I cannot tell for certain, but it appears that you have not used any Paragraph Styles or Character Styles in these presentations. Is that correct?Regardless, I would like to see the text cursor in the top text frame to see what the size of the text is that frame and again the cursor in the newly made frame to see what the size of that text is. 

I would also like to see the text caret placed in the text from the screenshot placed where the green lines are in order to see the text sizes in those two sections and to see if there are any Character Styles applied.

There is a possibility that between Walt Farrell* and myself we can help you. It will take some time and some effort on your part.

* Walt is a valued member of this forum who has helped dozens (if not hundreds) of people solve problems similar to this. And he has helped many more people solve other problems much more complicated than this. 

[Koshpeli]

I answered all these questions above. Not reading and making someone repeat the same thing over and over is not helpful!

If when you cut and paste, suddenly character styles apply then magically don’t apply, then this is a far bigger problem then text box scaling. Please if you don’t read what I wrote, don’t respond and make me repeat myself!

[Koshpeli]

Copyright law-I’m a publisher and this isn’t my work. It’s a 400 page book. Pretty sure I can’t just put that up for anyone to download.

 

why do I have to prove I’m not lying? This is exactly the kind of BS that makes tech forums such terrible places where problems don’t get solved. 

 And looking at the document may show things but whatever those things are, they are bugs. I created this document in a totally normal way and this is what happened. If styles were added to one phrase, that’s a bug. If one word scaled, that’s a bug. I’ve seen people swear up and down this happens and read you all tell them they are lying and it must be user error. Doesn’t seem logical to me and certainly not desirable. I cane here from a forum post where people kept saying “This is happening. I’m not using the text scale handle thing” and people were like “You still haven’t proved this happened.” I post a video proving it happens and it’s still not good enough. It’s a lose-lose. You will never accept that maybe I’m right and you’re decreasing the odds the company will look at their code. Why as a paying customer would you harass a dissatisfied customer rather than the company, knowing you may have the same bug and just haven’t seen it happen yet? It boggles my mind! 
 

I’d be happy to share it with an actual Affinity employee on a private link, but I’m sure when your car breaks down, you don’t put it on the street and listen to every rando’s opinion and answer the same questions over and over and over.

[Koshpeli]

I get that Affinity is cheap. But if it cones at the cost of not having proper tech support, then I guess I see why I should pay more for InDesign. 

[User_783649]

@Koshpeli Could you please also check Initial Words section settings in Paragraph Panel? Seems like first words are getting another style being applied on them. As anyone here in the thread, I’m just guessing. You can try our suggestions without sharing your file with us, “randos", and see if anything works for your case.

Or you can contact Serif directly. I believe they will solve your problem and will provide a solution: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/contact/

No one actually denies the fact, that there might be an error in the application. There are lots of them, actually, just as in any other complex software product. We as users, before filing bug reports, should take all possible steps in order to make sure it’s not our fault and our document is build and set up properly. That’s all we trying to help you with here with all our suggestions.

If none of our suggestions will work, then it will become evident that you’re facing something that needs to be reported to the developers. And sometimes there’s no issue at all as the solution is being found during the discussion. I’ve seen lots of threads where people actually helped the author to find the solution.

So, please, calm down, really. You should be thankful to all the users who are trying to help you here in your thread. There’s no one simple solution to any problem in the world. There are multiple ways to figure out where your issue exactly. And all these well respected people do is trying to help you to determine which settings you can check in order to solve your problem. Please, listen to them. Try what they’re suggesting to do.

This is professional desktop publishing software. It’s not Notepad or Paint. There are tons of various settings and toggles and switches. It’s always good to actually learn the software and most of its features before working with 400 page complex documents. Otherwise it might be an unpleasant ride where you can slip and stuck on every little bump.

We are all want good for you.

Edited December 13, 2021 by Alex M

[walt.farrell]

8 hours ago, Koshpeli said:

why do I have to prove I’m not lying?

No one has said you're lying. Everyone who has contributed is trying to understand what might be happening, and unfortunately that may require having a file that demonstrates the issue. I certainly can understand that you wouldn't;'t want to share the complete file, or for copyright reasons even a portion of the actual text. That's why I mentioned that when Serif gets here they can provide a private upload link for you so it can be examined by their staff, only, with privacy maintained.

But perhaps you could do a Save As from your file to a new .afpub file, and then delete all the existing text from that text flow, and see if the problem occurs with new text that you type into a new text frame. If it does, you might consider sharing that cleansed file with us.

That would make use of one of the benefits of this forum system: often we users can help resolve a problem before the Serif staff has time to get to it, as there are many more users than there are Serif staff. We're also more likely to be available outside Serif's normal business hours, as they have a smaller staff working evenings and weekends.

And that's probably why the forums are Serif's preferred customer support mechanism: we can usually get faster answers, because many questions can be resolved without the need for Serif involvement, freeing them up for the ones that truly need Serif for resolution. So it's a "win" for both sides.

9 hours ago, Koshpeli said:

But if it cones at the cost of not having proper tech support, then I guess I see why I should pay more for InDesign

This is a proper tech support system. For example, every topic created here creates a ticket in their problem tracking system, and someone from Serif will look at that topic when the ticket is next in the queue that they are assigned to work on. However:

1. There are many more customers than Serif staff, and many topics posted.
2. You started yours late on a Friday. Note that I do not know where you are, but it was started at 11:07 Friday morning my time, which is just after 4 PM Friday where the Serif office is, so things were winding down for the weekend. Evenings and weekends there are fewer staff available.

[Old Bruce]

11 hours ago, Koshpeli said:

why do I have to prove I’m not lying?

I do believe you are telling the truth. I have believed that from the first post.

[Koshpeli]

25 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

I do believe you are telling the truth. I have believed that from the first post.

Great. Then why did you suggest causes that could only have happened if I lied? I said it was not an IDML thing. I said I created the frame from scratch without handles. . I said I did nothing more than type a few lines and hit ctrl+C and ctrl-V. That was my process for the third time! I'm not answering these questions over and over.

[Koshpeli]

7 hours ago, Alex M said:

f none of our suggestions will work, then it will become evident that you’re facing something that needs to be reported to the developers. And sometimes there’s no issue at all as the solution is being found during the discussion. I’ve seen lots of threads where people actually helped the author to find the solution.

So, please, calm down, really. You should be thankful to all the users who are trying to help you here in your thread. There’s no one simple solution to any problem in the world. There are multiple ways to figure out where your issue exactly. And all these well respected people do is trying to help you to determine which settings you can check in order to solve your problem. Please, listen to them. Try what they’re suggesting to do.

I will listen to you when you listen to me. I can't do the things they suggest doing because I already said the things they suggest doing don't apply. I said 100 times I didn't scale. How can I CHECK if I didn't scale it? Do you want me to undergo hypnotherapy to ensure I didn't have a stroke and misremember?

I said it's not an IDML issue!  This is now the fourth time I've typed this. It's extremely annoying to get up every day and have to say the same thing to another person. 

If a Character Style magically appeared, then awesome, that's a BUG. If an Initial Words style magically appeared then that's a bug.

Thanks for telling me I can  contact them directly. The company says to come here. I'd be curious what process you used to decide that I could report bugs directly to the company. You really need to be familiar with a company's policies, to participate in their forums, wouldn't you say?

 

[Old Bruce]

3 minutes ago, Koshpeli said:

Then why did you suggest causes that could only have happened if I lied?

It is incredibly easy to make a mistake. Making a mistake is in no way a lie. If you inadvertently do something which you are unaware of and then say "I did A then B then C" I don't believe you have lied, you are and were unaware that you also did D or E or F. It is a simple mistake to make, not a lie.

Please see what I posted on Saturday regarding the text caret and screenshots. We are trying to solve a problem you are having.

[Koshpeli]

7 hours ago, Alex M said:

This is professional desktop publishing software. It’s not Notepad or Paint. There are tons of various settings and toggles and switches. It’s always good to actually learn the software and most of its features before working with 400 page complex documents. Otherwise it might be an unpleasant ride where you can slip and stuck on every little bump.

This is exactly the kind of condescending attitude that pisses me off.  What makes you think I haven't learned the software and most of its features? I'd suggest that it's always good to have some social skills before claiming you help people! Thank you for saying this out loud though, because this is exactly what I'm talking about!

 

And as I've said, it's not just this document. It happens to me fairly frequently. So even if you solved it here, it'll happen again. It always does. I've read a bunch of forum posts where people say the same thing, and get shot down and told it must be user error. Show me where in my video there is user error!

 

[Koshpeli]

 

No text styles no paragraph styles. Not sure what mistake one can make while pressing Ctrl-V a bunch of times that magically applies character or text styles! I would call that a bug if that was what happened. As I have said multiple times.

Also no initial words! 

Like I said!

 

I don't see why a computer program messing up means me and you and all these people have to do all this work. I wish when I screwed up at my job, I could get the whole world to run in and fix the problem. This has been 30 minutes of my life wasted responding to you guys. How much time are youa wasting responding to me?

[Old Bruce]

Sorry, I wasn't entirely clear. I want to be able to see the text caret in the small text and in the larger text. Multiple screen shots. Similar to these.   

And again for the one Text Frame with the small and large sized fonts.

 

[Koshpeli]

1) I'm not going to waste my time taking 50 more screenshots while you tell me whether I got it right or not. Trust me, I checked there are NO character or paragraph styles applied. As I said from the beginning! m

2) You're on a Mac, so if there's a bug in the Windows program you wouldn't even KNOW about it. Thanks for having good intentions, I suppose, but I am adding you to my ignore list. There's a reason this forum has separate Mac and Windows forums.
 

[Patrick Connor]

15 hours ago, Koshpeli said:

Copyright law-I’m a publisher and this isn’t my work. It’s a 400 page book. Pretty sure I can’t just put that up for anyone to download.

Your video in the initial post demonstrates that this happened on a simple 2 page document. Please upload that or any similar document that shows this problem. If necessary replace the text in the first frame with lorem ipsum, as long as the smaller text still shows. Screenshots are not the solution here, as I believe your document would display the same on any computer

I think that unless we can replicate your problem we will not know what to fix or what to suggest for you to avoid the problem, as what you are seeing is clearly not happening for everyone, however I am fascinated to see what it turns out to be.

[Koshpeli]

15 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

think that unless we can replicate your problem we will not know what to fix or what to suggest for you to avoid the problem, as what you are seeing is clearly not happening for everyone,

Yes, I created the 2 page document extracted from the longer document to show that it was happening. But I knew if I shared the short document, they'd be like "Oh well obviously the original document contains the error and there's no way we can solve it for you!"

I see that it is happening for lots of people. I googled and found several posts about this. However the team of so-called experts tend to try to explain it away. I made the video in response to a thread on a Mac forum (then realized my mistake and moved it here), Someone had written "You still haven't provided proof like a video that this is happening." Most people don't have screencasting software I suspect. I think this is more widespread than you think but we all get silenced by these alleged experts. I hope you will rethink your bug reporting process. I figured if I said "Well I extracted t
 

For fun I selected all the text that was meaningful and tried to cut and pasted lorem ipsum over it and Messed up 2 is the result. Now text that was normal is huge, text that was small is normal. This is something that happens relatively frequently. Normally I manually switch it all back or delete and start over and assume it's just I paid so little for a program, you'd expect glitches (this is normally what people on tech forums tell me about various programs), but I figured I'd give it a shot once. 

Messed up2.afpub Messed up.afpub