Creating a new textbox makes text tiny for no reason!

[Old Bruce]

Couple of things.

One. Both documents you provided are messed up. I never doubted there wasn't a problem. My experience with Publisher made me think the problem was ...

Two. in my experience the only way that this sort of thing can happen is if a Text Frame is inadvertently resized using the rescale handle. Less likely is an IDML import. And last is my suggestion about Character Styles getting messed up.

The Scaling of text frames is far too easy to do. As you have pointed out more than once "that it is happening for lots of people." I lay the blame at whoever it was at Affinity who designed the Scale handle to look so [expletive deleted] similar to a resize handle. A different colour would be noticeable, or some sort of visual indication that scaling is happening as we drag out the frame would be appreciated.

The solution is to make a new proper size text frame, or several of them, and link the text into it(them) skipping over the bad frame(s) which can be deleted.

Another thing that catches us out is that when we copy text in Affinity the scaling of the text is copied. And then the mis-sized text gets pasted. This can be solved by using Paragraph Styles which can be reapplied to that pasted wrong sized text thereby straightening it out. Your documents have no text styles at all, aside from one Character Style, so none are applied. I made some for the Basic text and the two types of numbered lists.

I assume you actually have styles applied because I am certain that I could not put together a page as well formatted as you presented without using them. So feel free to ignore the ones in the following. I just find Paragraph and Character Styles save me a lot of time, plus they allow document wide changes to be easily applied.

Messed up bruce.afpub

[carl123]

In the "Messed up.afpub" file if you change the document units to pixels

The lorem ipsum text at the bottom of page 2 is 45.833333px

The small lorem ipsum text at the top of page 3 is 11px

45.833333px / 11px = 4.166666

300dpi / 72dpi = 4.166666

The same ratio applies to the text sizes in the "Messed up2.afpub" document

Coincidence?

Spoiler

Or is pasting text from the clipboard (72dpi) causing an issue sometimes?

 

 

[PaulEC]

8 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

The Scaling of text frames is far too easy to do. As you have pointed out more than once "that it is happening for lots of people." I lay the blame at whoever it was at Affinity who designed the Scale handle to look so [expletive deleted] similar to a resize handle. A different colour would be noticeable, or some sort of visual indication that scaling is happening as we drag out the frame would be appreciated.

IMHO – It would be better to have a keyboard modifier for scaling, rather than a handle!

[stokerg]

Hi @Koshpeli,

Our QA have had a look at this and this was caused by the frame being rescaled at some point. 

We do have this logged with the Dev team, as at the moment there is no way to see when scaling has been applied or a way to reset it.

I've updated the report with a link back to this thread, so we can update here when it's been resolved  

[Patrick Connor]

As Old Bruce has said, your text frame has been scaled by dragging it by the scale text with contents handle, where a new default text frame will show the unscaled text

The handle on the bottom right will scale the contents of the frame as well as the frame itself

If you did not use that handle perhaps there is a problem which Carl123 is alluding to in that the text frame could have come from a source document with a different DPI. We will look to see if this is a possible source of the problem.

2 hours ago, PaulEC said:

The Scaling of text frames is far too easy to do.

This is true, there is a long standing improvement that says you should be able to see the scaling that is set on a text frame and therefore also being able to reset it to 1:1

Sorry this has confused you and hopefully it will be addressed (made more obvious and able to be reset) in a future release

[Patrick Connor]

1 hour ago, Patrick Connor said:

We will look to see if this is a possible source of the problem.

Yes this does seem to be the bug

Quote

Start with 72dpi,
Add a text frame and some text at 12 point.
Copy the text frame
Start a 300 dpi document
Paste the text frame
Create a new text frame in that document and flow the pasted frame into the newly created one - text is 72/300 times smaller when flowed into the new frame

The problem is made worse by not being able to see (or easily set) the scaling on the text in a frame. (See attached example from the bug report)

 

Workaround: Not sure how practical this is, but...If you cut/paste the text from the top frame (one that came from a lower 72 DPI document) and paste the cut (or copied) text into a new frame created at 300DPI then when you flow from that new frame the text will not shrink. Copy/paste undoes (compensates for) the (invisible!) scaling on the text. I accept this is not ideal but I thought it may help you proceed

(invisibly) Scaled Text Frames.afpub

[Koshpeli]

4 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

If you did not use that handle perhaps there is a problem

I said so many times that I didn't. Nor did I change DPIs or docs. You saw how I made those textframes in the same document! I just pressed on the textframe button and immediately made a text box. 
If it was scaled, then the bug is that sometimes creating a textframe with the textframe tool. defaults to scaling, but only sometimes and not others.
 

And the only reason I did that was to prove to you guys there's a bug! It's like shouting into a void!!!!

 

Normally I use a master. The same master for every page. The master has the same DPI as itself. The textbox on the master was made the same way as itself. I place text and link textboxes and I guarantee you one textframe on one page using the same master from the same document, will have bizarre scaling at bizarre places and I will spend an hour cutting and pasting and turning knobs and buttons and messing around until it works! 

 

[Koshpeli]

16 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

Two. in my experience the only way that this sort of thing can happen is if a Text Frame is inadvertently resized using the rescale handle.

How many times do I have to say I never touched the bloody handle? Show me where in the video I touched the scaling handle! Prove I did this. I'm tired of saying over and over that I didn't so you prove that I did!

Another thing that catches us out is that when we copy text in Affinity the scaling of the text is copied

Then why did the same text scale differently? Please explain that!

I assume you actually have styles applied

Nope. I literally posted screenshots at your request and told you that I did not.

 

I unignored you because someone said something about this must be the bug, but honestly dude I am begging you to read before spouting off! I keep saying I didn't do these things. i cannot understand why you use your free time in this way!!

[Koshpeli]

5 hours ago, stokerg said:

Hi @Koshpeli,

Our QA have had a look at this and this was caused by the frame being rescaled at some point. 

We do have this logged with the Dev team, as at the moment there is no way to see when scaling has been applied or a way to reset it.

I've updated the report with a link back to this thread, so we can update here when it's been resolved  

I beg you on my knees with tears in my eyes to watch the video and note that I created the textframe without ever letting go of the mouse button. Therefore if scaling occured (and no one ever said that it didn't, in fact I said it was scaling for no reason in the initial post), it did so as the default textframe creation behaviour. And it only did it for one part of the text frame and not another part. That is weird. 

[RM f/g]

What worked for me before was replacing all imported  MS Word paragraph styles with styles defined in Publisher. Maybe worth to give a try.

[Old Bruce]

All I can do is ask you to do an experiment. Make a new Publisher document. Place three text frames on a page and link them, use the scale handle to resize the one in the middle. Fill the frames with placeholder text. Or any text. Does this not appear to be the problem you have? 

[Patrick Connor]

21 minutes ago, Koshpeli said:

I created the textframe without ever letting go of the mouse button.

All frames created in the document are created at the document resolution with 1:1 scaling. The video does not show where the top text frame came from. My guess was that the top existing text frame was not created in this document OR the text inside that frame was pasted from another document. If the pasted frame (or just pasted text) came from an Affinity document with a different native DPI (72 for example in Document Setup) then my suggestion is the cause, because the text in the top frame is showing as the desired size but has a hidden scale that when you link into the new frame (without that hidden scale) shows the scale difference. So I suspect one document somewhere in the creation of your 400 page document was not at 300DPI. 

So to summarize, the text in the first/top frame in your video has a (hidden) scale that looks and reports as the expected size in this document but when you link it to a New/default 300dpi unscaled frame (below it) displays this "behind the scene" bug and it's true size.

It is a problem that is not your fault and I realise that it must be frustrating trying to remove the hidden scale on the affected frames when there is no UI to set/reset it.

[Koshpeli]

50 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

So to summarize, the text in the first/top frame in your video has a (hidden) scale that looks and reports as the expected size in this document but when you link it to a New/default 300dpi unscaled frame (below it) displays this "behind the scene" bug and it's true size.

It is a problem that is not your fault and I realise that it must be frustrating trying to remove the hidden scale on the affected frames when there is no UI to set/reset it.

It came from the original document. I created those text frames the same way. I'm sorry I didn't video record myself doing so as I thought just saying that's what happened would suffice. Thank you for saying it's not my fault. The program shouldn't be creating scaled text frames by default. I'm glad the problem is finally acknowledged. that's all I wanted!

 

 

[Koshpeli]

48 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

All I can do is ask you to do an experiment. Make a new Publisher document. Place three text frames on a page and link them, use the scale handle to resize the one in the middle. Fill the frames with placeholder text. Or any text. Does this not appear to be the problem you have? 

 

Screen Recording 2021-12-14 at 7.49.48 AM.mov 1.35 MB · 0 downloads

This will prove nothing: I have a rattling noise in my car. You say it must be because there's a stone in the wheel. I say the wheel has no stone in it. You say "Put a stone in the wheel. That will create a rattling noise. Therefore, there is a stone in the wheel now. 

My house catches fire. You say I lit my house on fire. I swear I didn't. You say but if you DID light your house on fire, your house would be on fire just like it is now.

[Koshpeli]

52 minutes ago, RM f/g said:

What worked for me before was replacing all imported  MS Word paragraph styles with styles defined in Publisher. Maybe worth to give a try.

This is excellent practice! This has nothing to do with my problem as the document has no styles and I cut and pasted from the same file. I try to import text from MS word that has NO style actually but sometimes I do keep H1 and H2 in (and obviously normal). I actually delete all of Publisher's defined styles, create my own in Publisher and replace the MS Word styles personally so I don't get confused. All for using Publisher-defined or created styles! 

[Bryce]

I am having a similar problem see here:

This is specifically happening from a document that has been imported and using an IDML text frame and the new one specifically being AFPUB frame. If I remove the text out of the IDML frame from the beginning and put it in an Publisher frame (no IDML's in the chain) it's fine. if I duplicate the IDML frame, clear the contents and then link to it, the text is fine. It seems to me that if there is an IDML frame ANYWHERE in the chain, previous or future, it could cause this. Doesn't always happen though.