Bug: Resizing document with Master Pages from A5 to A4 causes paragraph border lines to scale very wrongly

[Truthseeker10]

Hello!

I'm using Affinity Publisher 1.10.4 on a Mac running macOS 12.2 (Monterey). AP's hardware acceleration is turned on.

I've been creating a book with pages sized to A5 (which AP believes to measure 148mm x 210mm) and which I now need to resize up to A4 pages so I can generate a different PDF for a larger print copy for an ageing relative.

I use two sets of Master Pages, each set being for facing pages. One Master Page or the other is applied to every page in the book. In particular, Master Page A is applied to every page after the introductory pages, to provide running titles and page numbers throughout the book.

To do this I have two text frames on Master Page A: one for the odd (right) pages and one for the even (left).

The text in these two frames has a Decorative paragraph attribute applied to it to add a horizontal rule the width of the page's column, of thickness 0.8pt.

After I resize the Master Pages from A5 up to A4 with scaling applied, the thickness of the horizontal rule goes insane! I was expecting the thickness either to be left at 0.8pt (if left unscaled), or increased to 0.8 x 297/210 = 1.13pt (if scaled in line with the overall document).

Instead it increases in thickness to 3009451852967572480pt! 😳 
(Yes really: that number is copied from the border thickness in the Paragraph attributes' Decorative settings.)
This results in huge black boxes being applied over the content of pages throughout the book.

I've tried replicating this in a new document and it also occurs there. However, in my first tests the border thickness does not increase so drastically, but still increases more than it should. Instead how bad it is appears to relate to the number of pages in the document — my test document has only 10 pages, whilst the book has 248. See below to confirm this…

Sample Document and Steps to Reproduce the Bug

I'm attaching my newly created test document: Test Sample 1.afpub. In it you will find one set of Master Pages with some text for the odd and even pages, each with a 0.8pt border applied below its paragraph. There are ten regular pages in the document, each with the Master Page applied. The first page has some dummy content: some text, along with a picture to illustrate a different issue that occurs.

To reproduce the problem:

1. Open the test document in Affinity Publisher.
2. Select the Move Tool and go to the Master Page by double clicking it in the list of pages on the left.
3. Click outside the master pages so you see the Document Setup and Spread Setup buttons at the top.
4. Click the Spread Setup button.
5. In the dialog box that appears, select the Dimensions tab.
6. Select the All Spreads radio button at the top of the dialog box to apply what follows to all Master Pages (probably not necessary here, but is in my book document).
7. Change the Page Preset size from A5 to A4.
8. Click the Scaling tab.
9. Choose the Rescale option.
10. Click OK and, when prompted whether to also apply the rescaling to the target pages, choose Yes.

I would expect the thickness of the border below the paragraph in the header area of the Master Pages to either email at 0.8pt (if left unscaled), or to be adjusted to approximately 1.1 (if their thickness is scaled in line with the adjustment in page size).

Instead the thickness of the border is increased to 9.2pt — you can check this by selecting one of the header paragraphs on the Master Page, going to the Paragraphs panel and looking at the Decorations section. The stroke thickness for the border below the paragraph has been set to 9.2pt.

Now Blow Your Mind…

1. Revert to my original test document.
2. Add 100 pages after its final page, applying the Master Page to them as you do so.
3. Repeat the above test.

This time the border thickness is set to 334341210.3pt instead of 9.2pt! 😳

I'm also attaching a screenshot of the result of this test, showing the border thickness that's been calculated and set for this 110 page version of the test document in the Paragraphs panel on the right.

So the thickness of the border you get is related to the number of pages in the document you are rescaling(!).

In passing… Non-Proportional Scaling Problems

After you have done either test, go to the Preflight check panel.

There'll you'll now find a warning that non-proportional scaling has been applied to the image — you'll probably see something like 19.0% x 18.9% which isn't really visible to the human eye, but is to the Preflight Checker. (Sigh! 🙄)

I think this may be because A4 is exactly 210mm x 297mm, and A5 is 148.5mm x 210mm.
However AP, like printing companies, uses 148mm x 210mm as the dimensions of A5 — a very slightly different aspect ratio.
This means that when scaling from one to the other you end up with AP applying non-proportional scaling, and thus triggering the wrath of the Preflight checker.

I wish this could be fixed too, but don't see how it can without causing problems for people preparing work to go to printing companies, who want A5 dimensions of 148mm x 210mm. Sadly, that deviation from A5's actual measurements means you can't apply proportional scaling without risks, I guess?

But maybe the wonderful AP team can figure out a way to Magically Make Image Scaling Work Properly too, to pacify the Preflight checker?! 😇

Cheers,
Mike B-)

Test Case 1.afpub

[Wosven]

6 minutes ago, Truthseeker10 said:

I use two sets of Master Pages, each set being for facing pages. One Master Page or the other is applied to every page in the book. In particular, Master Page A is applied to every page after the introductory pages, to provide running titles and page numbers throughout the book.

Aside from the real problem, why not using Acrobat reader to print to fit A4, or to 200%?

 

 

23 minutes ago, Truthseeker10 said:

ample Document and Steps to Reproduce the Bug

I'm attaching my newly created test document: Test Sample 1.afpub.

Same results/problems on Windows.

[Truthseeker10]

8 minutes ago, Wosven said:

Aside from the real problem, why not using Acrobat reader to print to fit A4, or to 200%?

Same results/problems on Windows.

Hi, Wosven! Thanks ever so for confirming the results/problems exist on Windows as well; that's reassured me I've described it in sufficiently painful detail for the Affinity Team to reproduce the problem too! 😂

I try not to use Acrobat Reader as in the past it's annoyingly tried to take over handling various documents and viewer processes. But using the Mac's own Preview application to do the enlargement was going to be my fallback position if I'd not found a workaround. (Although the enlargement would have been approximately 100 x 297/210 = 141% rather than 200% to go from A5 to A4 — it's double the area, not double both linear dimensions.)

However, Preview has its own way of being annoying: sometimes putting extra margin space around the thing you're printing. I think it's trying to be helpful and avoid non-printing margins. I also need to have an exact amount of bleed around the edges of the standard A4 content size, otherwise the printing company's validator software will get cross when I upload it. 🙄

As APub has already downsampled the images I've embedded in the book, I'd also prefer not to then upscale them and lose quality, but instead re-export the PDF direct from APub so they're downsampled correctly for the A4 job. (Yes, I know: I'm too much of a perfectionist, perhaps! 😄)

To work around the border scaling problem I can do the enlargement and ignore the massive borders, but then select the heading paragraphs on the Master Pages and replace the wildly wrong border thickness with a correctly scaled value — 0.8pt x 297mm/210mm = 1.13pt. This fixes the problem, but sometimes doesn't cause the other pages to refresh in APub and show properly until you save and re-open the document.

Hmm… Maybe I should have mentioned that refresh/redraw being omitted as a possible bug too! 🤔

[PixelEngineer]

Interesting. I was also able to recreate this issue. Very interesting how to decoration rule got thicker (probably due to its properties.) You may have also noticed that under Scale > "Objects will: rescale" option  there is resampling going on in the process. Seems to me the rule is acting more like a graphic instead of a font and that this is why this is happening.  I'll leave that for the developers to explain if that is the case.

Preflight worked fine just gave warning on photo scaling along with non 1:1 ratio sizing between page sizes:
Preflight was only pointing at the photo with the car in it. As far as preflight goes, it was just flagging the photo with the car warning that ever so slightly that there was a change in ratio of the graphic because the page you were scaling to was not an actual 1:1 ratio.

If you look in the preflight options for that setting, it will instruct you to hold the shift key down while clicking on the border resulting the  photo going back to its proper proportion. I was able to get rid of that warning after doing so. That was an easy fix once I read the instructions and knew what to do.

So basically I believe we are looking at was a rule with graphic like properties getting stretched like a photo, but I would leave that up the developers to explain this in greater detail. It would be nice if that part did not happen. 

As far as a solution for the time being of your original intent for your aging relative being able to see a document more clearly, You may want to consider getting them a PDF reader that has text reflow capabilities so that they can make the fonts as large as they want. That is if you intended to have the aging relative read from a PDF. Also its best to set your layout before importing your content since the styles would not be scaling with the document.

It would however, be nice if the rule did not stretch that way upon scaling to non 1:1 ratio document changes. Good find.

[Truthseeker10]

Thanks, PixelEngineer!

Thank you for the tip about Shaft-Clicking the border of an image to restore its aspect ratio; I hadn't found that. I might well do that, although it's a bit of a pain as there are 93 images scattered through the 248 page book. But once it's done it's done.

I did think about some form of technology to help the ageing relative read from a PDF, or even trying to copy the content into something that will generate an ebook. Sadly, she's at an age where technology totally defeats her and we need a physical print book. Thankfully I can scale-up the book from Affinity Publisher and use that to prepare an A4-sized book at the print-on-demand company we use; it's fine to order even just a single copy!

[Truthseeker10]

I'm sad to see that this bug hasn't been addressed in the newly released Affinity Publisher 1.10.5

I thought this was the proper, official way of reporting bugs to Affinity? (I know it's worked before, but no-one from there has even acknowledged it here so far.) Is there a better way to report bugs as I'd like to get this one corrected to save my sanity!

Cheers,
Mike B-)

[Dan C]

Hi @Truthseeker10,

Thanks for your report and my sincerest apologies for the delayed response here - I'm not 100% certain why this wasn't picked up by our team here, so I've asked my manager to investigate this internally.

In the meantime, I can replicate this issue here using your document and steps provided (many thanks for the in-depth due diligence!) and therefore I've logged this with our developers now.

I hope this helps

[Truthseeker10]

Thank you, Dan! 👍

It's good to know this is the right place to send in bug reports. I've got another one lurking re tabs with custom leader characters but want to do a bit more checking before I report it.

[Affinity Info Bot]

The issue "Resampling/resizing text decorations on a master page increases the width of the decoration, relative to the number of pages" (REF: AFB-5642) has been fixed by the developers in internal build "2.1.0.1732".
This fix should soon be available as a customer beta and is planned for inclusion in the next customer release.
Customer beta builds are announced here and you can participate by following these instructions.
If you still experience this problem once you are using that build version (or later) please reply to this thread including @Serif Info Bot to notify us.