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Work-around for Text frame resize on inset change?


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Four text frames with an inset applied (see attached).

All of them are set to show overflow.

All with a fill (Edited to highlight this important thing to understand here as it's the reason for wanting this).

Changing left/right/top inset amount, squashes the text to accommodate it.

Bottom margin inset changes = nothing. (Edit, I meant inset. Edited in response to correction below).

Can I avoid having to select each one individually, and double-clicking the centre node at the bottom, before moving on to repeat it on the next one?

Questions:

  • Am I missing a setting somewhere? (Convinced I've searched before, but worth asking)
  • Is there some way to do this that's not obvious?
  • Is there a work around?

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BTW: I get this is because Serif have dropped a big-big one here, by not having Automatic Resize for text frames (see second image attached). They've assumed no one ever needs to give a text frame a fill while keeping the number of objects on the page low.

 

Screen Shot 2022-06-11 at 13.48.18.png

text_frame_options_Autosize.png.img.png
(Edit: Don't worry that this is a Windows dialogue screenshot evidencing the 'auto-sizing' I'm referring to. I grabbed it off the internet because it's more up to date than my mac version of Indesign.)

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Words are crude implements, difficult to get perfect, easy to get tied in knots with, and often - usually - misunderstood, which is why 'tolarence' is the best word of all.

The word "professional" fits us all - amateur, semi-pro, beginner, advanced, middle, beyond it all, and on....., because professionals are tolerant.

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43 minutes ago, ProDesigner said:

Can I avoid having to select each one individually, and double-clicking the centre node at the bottom, before moving on to repeat it on the next one?

Yes. Select the wanted text frames –> activate in the Context Toolbar the button "Transform Objects Separately" –> click on the text frame with displayed handles the bottom handle –> all selected text frame will change their height individually and corresponding to their contents.

553411634_textframesTransformObjectsSeparately.thumb.jpg.b2e991f92f82b043fbc86f9c11714de0.jpg

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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49 minutes ago, ProDesigner said:

Bottom margin changes = nothing.

Can I avoid having to select each one individually, and double-clicking the centre node at the bottom, before moving on to repeat it on the next one?

First, that's not a bottom margin, but a bottom inset. There isn't much distinction here, but as margin is used for something else, I like to use the correct terminology to avoid confusion.

No, you will have to select and handle each individually, as the insets have an effect only when you have enough text for them to apply. So, for example, the right inset won't have an effect unless you have enough text to fill at least one line, or you have a Justification setting like Justify All that will spread the text, etc. The bottom inset won't have an effect unless you have enough text to reach that point in the frame.

There is no function to automatically shrink or expand the frame so it always fits all the text, nor to automatically shrink or enlarge the text so it fills the frame.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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3 minutes ago, thomaso said:

all selected text frame will change their height individually and corresponding to their contents.

Really? Thanks; didn't realize that would work.

Edit: Actually, that doesn't work for me. Double-clicking the bottom center node does nothing when I have multiple frames selected.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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6 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Double-clicking the bottom center node does nothing when I have multiple frames selected.

Do your text frames have space within their frames below their texts? (my screenshot was done after double-clicking this handle)

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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Just now, thomaso said:

Do your text frames have space within their frames below their texts?

Yes. And if I select one of them individually, and double-click its center-bottom node, it resizes to remove that space. But if I select two or more, even with Transform Objects Individually set, nothing happens when I double-click that node. Not even with the frame I click on.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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33 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

First, that's not a bottom margin, but a bottom inset. There isn't much distinction here, but as margin is used for something else, I like to use the correct terminology to avoid confusion.

Thanks @walt.farrell. Yeah, I meant and understood it to be inset, but typed margin automatically.

Quote

No, you will have to select and handle each individually, as the insets have an effect only when you have enough text for them to apply.

I expected this answer, thanks.

------------------------------------------------

Another 'no can do' with this software.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Words are crude implements, difficult to get perfect, easy to get tied in knots with, and often - usually - misunderstood, which is why 'tolarence' is the best word of all.

The word "professional" fits us all - amateur, semi-pro, beginner, advanced, middle, beyond it all, and on....., because professionals are tolerant.

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18 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Yes. And if I select one of them individually, and double-click its center-bottom node, it resizes to remove that space. But if I select two or more, even with Transform Objects Individually set, nothing happens when I double-click that node. Not even with the frame I click on.

A Windows thing, issue, bug?

 

 

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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33 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Yes. And if I select one of them individually, and double-click its center-bottom node, it resizes to remove that space. But if I select two or more, even with Transform Objects Individually set, nothing happens when I double-click that node. Not even with the frame I click on.

I tried double-clicking the central node of the selected objects.

It resized all the text frames from their top to a huge height. I couldn't see what the logic was at all. It ended up off the page and didn't match either the height of the page or the height between the page margins.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Words are crude implements, difficult to get perfect, easy to get tied in knots with, and often - usually - misunderstood, which is why 'tolarence' is the best word of all.

The word "professional" fits us all - amateur, semi-pro, beginner, advanced, middle, beyond it all, and on....., because professionals are tolerant.

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9 minutes ago, thomaso said:

A Windows thing, issue, bug?

Could be, given that it's working for you on Mac.

Or possibly something i'm doing wrong. I'll play some more, and report it if I can't get it to work. Thanks!

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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19 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Could be, given that it's working for you on Mac.

Or possibly something i'm doing wrong. I'll play some more, and report it if I can't get it to work. Thanks!

It worked for me, but not in an expected way - see my post above yours (Mac).

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Words are crude implements, difficult to get perfect, easy to get tied in knots with, and often - usually - misunderstood, which is why 'tolarence' is the best word of all.

The word "professional" fits us all - amateur, semi-pro, beginner, advanced, middle, beyond it all, and on....., because professionals are tolerant.

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My 2 ¢ here. I see similar questions about the resizing of text frames and wonder why people want them to line up with the bottom line of the text. I just ignore the space at the bottom. It isn't as though there is a computational or financial cost to having a text frame with white space at the bottom. The problem with the right side not lining up with the text on the right is the same thing in my opinion. 

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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8 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

My 2 ¢ here. I see similar questions about the resizing of text frames and wonder why people want them to line up with the bottom line of the text. I just ignore the space at the bottom. It isn't as though there is a computational or financial cost to having a text frame with white space at the bottom. The problem with the right side not lining up with the text on the right is the same thing in my opinion. 

The important thing here is the text frame has a fill.

So consistent space at the bottom becomes visually important.

When you've got boxes with different amounts of text in them (whether they're aligned top, or distributed around a spread/document), the missing auto size feature becomes really important. See my initial screen capture. Serif have failed to understand this too @Old Bruce

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Words are crude implements, difficult to get perfect, easy to get tied in knots with, and often - usually - misunderstood, which is why 'tolarence' is the best word of all.

The word "professional" fits us all - amateur, semi-pro, beginner, advanced, middle, beyond it all, and on....., because professionals are tolerant.

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45 minutes ago, ProDesigner said:

It resized all the text frames from their top to a huge height. I couldn't see what the logic was at all. It ended up off the page and didn't match either the height of the page or the height between the page margins.

If I do this without having "Transform Objects Separately" active then I get weird frame heights, too. But their heights can vary, as if coincidentally, and increase or shrink, for instance I do it more then once to some frames (each two lines of text) and with moving them around, respectively changing their distance to each other, between this clicks.

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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Another 2¢ from me. I would do the coloured background with a Paragraph Style using the decorations section. These are two frames exactly the same height. 

804161631_ScreenShot2022-06-11at8_38_52AM.png.f05a7c7836274bec02eb2ccd59c9694f.png

and here is the file showing columns on pages two and three.  coloured background.afpub

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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@thomaso

20 minutes ago, thomaso said:

If I do this without having "Transform Objects Separately" active then I get weird frame heights, too.

Hum, my publisher is 1.9.0, when I look in apps it's now 1.10.5!!!

Hadn't realised I let it get so behind! Been too busy elsewhere.

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@Old Bruce

Yeah, that's a work-around. So the motto is: never use the fill feature on a text frame 😁?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Words are crude implements, difficult to get perfect, easy to get tied in knots with, and often - usually - misunderstood, which is why 'tolarence' is the best word of all.

The word "professional" fits us all - amateur, semi-pro, beginner, advanced, middle, beyond it all, and on....., because professionals are tolerant.

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1 minute ago, ProDesigner said:

... So the motto is: never use the fill feature on a text frame 😁?

That feature has its uses but I like to find alternates, sometimes the alternate is better for some jobs and much worse for others. There is no one size fits all solution in my book.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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16 minutes ago, ProDesigner said:

Yeah, that's a work-around. So the motto is: never use the fill feature on a text frame 😁?

I tend to avoid using the Text Frame Fill because of these consequences and often prefer a separate object instead - just because of faster edit by dragging. It depends on the layout, respectively a possibly wanted visual relation to other objects.

With the fill as Paragraph Decoration you also can set the visual indent there – instead in the Text Frame panel. (But then, for positioning etc. the bounding box still rules, not the visual indent.) – Finally you don't need to care about text frame height at all if you have "show text flow" active.

1889931309_paragraphdecorationfillinset.thumb.jpg.de1e47f89376ef03ed69e163bbe3eb4d.jpg

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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Thank for this @thomaso.

I don't know, I like things to behave in an obvious logical way.

"Text decoration" says decoration for text, amazingly to me, not 'fill' for an object (which is what a text frame is). Decorating text is an entirely different thing. It just doesn't make sense.

I hear what you're saying, but when I open files with multiple objects where there should be one ( 6 instead of 3 in your above example), my heart sinks. It's always a bind to edit them. And text boxes enlarged beyond the text (like the first in the row in your example) inevitably end up being selected instead of the thing you need to select. So a designer has to spend time resizing and reordering, and figuring out, rather than cracking on. Even freelancers can find the client asking for their file which then gets dumped on another designer.

End of the day, this is a work around for basic feature, and I'm abit tired of ending up explaining these things. No offence intended, You've tried to help and that's generous of you.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Words are crude implements, difficult to get perfect, easy to get tied in knots with, and often - usually - misunderstood, which is why 'tolarence' is the best word of all.

The word "professional" fits us all - amateur, semi-pro, beginner, advanced, middle, beyond it all, and on....., because professionals are tolerant.

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15 minutes ago, ProDesigner said:

"Text decoration" says decoration for text, amazingly to me, not 'fill' for an object (which is what a text frame is). Decorating text is an entirely different thing. It just doesn't make sense.

It does not say "text decoration" in the UI. It provides a way to decorate paragraphs, which should be reasonably obvious if you note that it appears in the Paragraph studio panel. So for example different paragraphs in the same text frame can have different combinations of fill & stroke decorations applied to them.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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2 hours ago, ProDesigner said:

End of the day, this is a work around for basic feature, and I'm abit tired of ending up explaining these things. No offence intended, You've tried to help and that's generous of you.

I fully agree with you about the advantage of auto-sized text frames. Accordingly I yearn for the ability to switch between art-text and frame-text in layouts where text amount develops during work, for instance in & around illustrations (info graphics) which can require frequent changes of width or height to make them ideally fit. In such situations it annoyed me in InDesign already when I needed to zoom to access a specific object. Also I learned, that it is useful to plan the workflow of a layout before just starting it. – As @Old Bruce mentioned, there is no 1 best way or workflow.

But I also notice the different features available in Affinity ... while I still have the beginnings of InDesign in my head. Also ID was far from ideal in the beginning and less convenient than it is today. I've used various scripts to improve workflow, each of which can be seen as a shortcoming of the app or a feature that allows scripting in the first place. - Actually, it makes no sense to compare the two apps, as they have both a different history and price.

So this is what we have and get now in Affinity. While we request missing features and wait for improvements and bug fixes, there are still workarounds and opportunities to try new, unfamiliar workflows ... and to give up familiar habits.

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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When is it a 'habit' and when is it not, but a good well established (because it works) way of working that's not supported.

I go back further than the beginnings of ID, unless you do mean PageMaker, so I'm fully aware of how applications progress.

My beef happens when companies claim to be doing something that they aren't, which I think is the case here. TBH, I think the truth is that they've got themselves into a programmatic hole, or several holes, as I see it. Having made some flawed fundamental decisions early, it now means they've got huge challenges delivering what they promise. I predict that Affinity 2 will have some major rewrites in it, so it'll be a long time coming. Time will tell.

There's a real danger of teaching folks bad habits through badly designed app features btw. Just like the abomination that is word has... and many will cry that it's great.

And there are increasing numbers of alternatives out there, and while I love these apps, I'm not wedded.

I swopped from Illustrator to Freehand and back again btw, so I like to think I'm adaptable. Something I discovered shortly after it was launched is an app called Procreate that I use incessently for what it's meant for (and it really does set the bar incredibly high). It's a dedicated highly focussed sketching/painting app, but It's actually a contender for replacing photoshop/photo for the less techie aspects of montaging and manipulating photos super quickly or ultra sensitively. Now how about that for an openness to workarounds!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Words are crude implements, difficult to get perfect, easy to get tied in knots with, and often - usually - misunderstood, which is why 'tolarence' is the best word of all.

The word "professional" fits us all - amateur, semi-pro, beginner, advanced, middle, beyond it all, and on....., because professionals are tolerant.

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6 minutes ago, ProDesigner said:

When is it a 'habit' and when is it not, but a good well established (because it works) way of working that's not supported.

Lots of things work differently in different apps. There are many reasons for that, some bad, some good. Sometimes, it is because the apps are not all intended for the same kind of work; sometimes because technical differences 'under the hood' make it impractical or inefficient to support things with the same tools or techniques in each of them.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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1 hour ago, ProDesigner said:

My beef happens when companies claim to be doing something that they aren't, which I think is the case here.

What feature is claimed but not working here? If you mean the auto-decrease on double-click:

Your signature says you are using mac but your initial post shows a Windows screenshot. So, if you are in Windows you could create a bug report in the Windows Bug forum. (Yes, that is not satisfying either but the only way we users have here, regardless whether Serif is aware already of an issue or planing or willing at all to fix a reported and  logged/tagged bug.)

If you are in macOS I wonder what exactly doesn't work. Did you use it with the option "Transform Objects Separately" activated? If not, the odd scaling maybe kind of 'expectable' because you click a common bounding box of 3 different objects. Also, if you work in an "old" macOS (your 17" macbook might indicate this) then the issue could be related to the macOS too in the way that some issues seem to happen on specific macOS versions only.

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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15 hours ago, thomaso said:

I wonder what exactly doesn't work

There's a long list. I was contemplating the exercise this morning. 1) I don't have the time to invest in it and 2) I cannot see it'd be taken the slightest notice of.

You're wondering because you're at feature level, and I'm speaking of philosophy level. The decisions being made as to what to develop, how to develop it, and what not to develop are shaped by a philosophy and clear sight of a target market. Both were stated by Serif when these apps were launched. Serif was very specific...  and it's now untrue, or has changed. They didn't understand the target market (though I think they thought they did) is why.

------------------------------------

The dialogue screenshot is from the web. I wanted an InDesign shot that was more up to date than the InDesign version I have, that's all. It's only there to evidence what I was referring to.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Words are crude implements, difficult to get perfect, easy to get tied in knots with, and often - usually - misunderstood, which is why 'tolarence' is the best word of all.

The word "professional" fits us all - amateur, semi-pro, beginner, advanced, middle, beyond it all, and on....., because professionals are tolerant.

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