Please Fix Anchors

[Rivetgeek]

In Affinity Publisher 1.10.5.1342

The anchors are picking up every heading and subheading, and while they are linked in each page I can't rearrange them or delete them. It would  be nice to have some configuration setting for how they should behave, and to be able to to reorganize them properly without defaulting to alphabetical order.

[RickyO]

13 hours ago, Rivetgeek said:

In Affinity Publisher 1.10.5.1342

The anchors are picking up every heading and subheading, and while they are linked in each page I can't rearrange them or delete them. It would  be nice to have some configuration setting for how they should behave, and to be able to to reorganize them properly without defaulting to alphabetical order.

Could you elaborate your thoughts as to "some configuration setting"?  It would help all of us if we had a starting point from which to work on the issue.  I think your post is very appropriate.

[Rivetgeek]

4 hours ago, RickyO said:

Could you elaborate your thoughts as to "some configuration setting"?  It would help all of us if we had a starting point from which to work on the issue.  I think your post is very appropriate.

I figured it out, kind of.

The anchors are displayed alphabetically. Regardless of whether you're looking at all spreads or a single page. There's no visual indication of whether an anchor is a heading or subheading. When you move anchors, you can nest them under an anchor but they remain alphabetical. I'm haven't tested yet to see if they stay that way in the PDF. But some headings may span multiple pages, and looking at all spreads when dragging anchors it doesn't scroll. So if I want an anchor that starts with Z to be under an anchor that starts with A, that is on another page, it's really tedious. And if I don't want subheadings to be anchors,I don't seem to be able to delete them.

For configuration, I mean options to set the depth level of anchors.

It would also be nice to see them displayed the way that they actually will appear in the PDF. I've also noticed that if I move an anchor, it expands all anchors. Having it not do that would be nice, as well as the ability to right click and expand or collapse all anchors.

[walt.farrell]

On 5/27/2022 at 8:31 PM, Rivetgeek said:

The anchors are picking up every heading and subheading,

I'm not sure what you mean. Here, for example, I've used Heading 1 and Heading 2, and there are no Anchors at all:

Can you provide some screenshots to illustrate your problem, and a small sample .afpub document that we can experiment with?

 

[Rivetgeek]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

I'm not sure what you mean. Here, for example, I've used Heading 1 and Heading 2, and there are no Anchors at all:

Can you provide some screenshots to illustrate your problem, and a small sample .afpub document that we can experiment with?

 

Go to View>Studio>Table off Contents and check "Include as PDF bookmarks". You likely will have to generate a table of contents. When you do that make sure it is set to headings only. The anchors will include headings and subheadings.

[walt.farrell]

21 hours ago, Rivetgeek said:

When you do that make sure it is set to headings only.

There is no "headings only" setting, so I'm not sure what you mean there.

21 hours ago, Rivetgeek said:

The anchors will include headings and subheadings.

Yes, the bookmarks will include all the items you've checked for that TOC.

Here's a sample .afpub file, and the generated PDF. Everything looks to be in the proper order, to me, with the Heading 2 entries appropriately indented beneath the Heading 1 they belong with.

bookmark-test.pdfbookmark-test.afpub

Can you provide a sample .afpub file and exported PDF that demonstrates your problem? That might help me understand what you're seeing, and why it's different than what I see.

[Rivetgeek]

When I get a chance to put together a sample, I will but this is what I'm seeing. ToC is set to Page Title only. The anchors show the page titles, heading, and subheading. My expectation is that they would show only the page titles. I cannot delete any of the anchors. Note that the nesting is my doing, because I want bookmarks in my PDF but without the ability to only have the page titles appear as anchors or delete unwanted anchors I kind of don't have a choice but to work with what I'm presented. And, like I said, since the anchors within a level of nesting may be spread across pages, and in the spreads view they are alphabetical, it is PITA to have to drag an anchor that starts with "Z" all the way up to a parent that starts with "A" since the scroll bar in the anchors pane doesn't autoscroll. At least the bookmarks in the PDF are in the correct order even when they're not nested, but without nesting it's just a huge list.

So...I just want more flexibility in editing anchors. Be able to define how "deep" I want the anchors to go. Be able to define nesting (Affinity knows what order the anchors are in, so it should be able to auto-nest all subheadings that are between two headings). A better UI for rearranging anchors.

It may not be a "functional" issue but it is a CX issue. Bad CX means it takes a lot longer to "fix" than it should.

[walt.farrell]

19 minutes ago, Rivetgeek said:

When I get a chance to put together a sample, I will but this is what I'm seeing.

Thanks. I will need your sample before I can say more.