Parenthetical name / label in text layer

[karlbu]

• I have a simple 2-page Affinity Publisher document. 
• All of the text in the document is inside of a 'Text' layer in the layers panel.
• All of the text is linked to flow through the document.
• I have renamed each text layer based on the page and column of text location in the document: e.g." page 1 column 2" etc.
  • See the screen shot.
• I am confused by the parenthetical name / label automatically inserted after my text layer names.
  • For the parenthetical name / label, Affinity Publisher automatically applied:
    • The first sub-head at the beginning of the text block: "Executive Summary"
    • Followed by the first word following the sub-head: "Continuation" ... which is truncated to "Continu"
  • Affinity Publisher has automatically appended this parenthetical name / label "Executive Summary¶Continu" to every text layer.
  • My problem is that only the first paragraph of the 2-page text contains the 'Executive Summary.'  There are many other sub-heads in the text, so parenthetically labeling every text layer as the "Executive Summary" is confusing and distracting.
• Can I change this parenthetical name / label?  If so, how do I change this?  Can't find any information anywhere about how this.

Thank you.

Karl

[Dan C]

Hi @karlbu,

5 minutes ago, karlbu said:

Can I change this parenthetical name / label?  If so, how do I change this?

I can confirm that this information is auto-filled from the text frame content and cannot be changed/hidden in the Layers Studio, without changing the content itself, my apologies.

Essentially, all text layers have this information next to the layer itself to show you the contents of the text object at a quick glance. As all of your text frames are linked, the text in each frame is the same and starts with;

7 minutes ago, karlbu said:

• The first sub-head at the beginning of the text block: "Executive Summary"
• Followed by the first word following the sub-head: "Continuation" ... which is truncated to "Continu"

hence this information is provided here.

This allows you to give a custom name to the Text Object layer, which doesn't necessarily have to match the text content, if you don't want it to, but both will be displayed.

I hope this clears things up

[karlbu]

Thank you for the quick response.  Your answer is (after several hours of research) as I suspected.

Not a game changer, however, it would be nice to custom-name a text frame as a new field in the text frame window.  My example serves as case-in-point: My lead sub-head is "Executive Summary," which is only relevant to the lead paragraph.

Thanks again,

Karl

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Dan C said:

As all of your text frames are linked, the text in each frame is the same

Aside the fact that each frame in a chain definitely does not contain the same text (which would be a copy, not a flow), the handling of APub feels buggy in another situation, too:

If I duplicate (or copy/paste) a selected frame of a chain Apub does not copy this frame as is but copies the frame with its properties + fills it with the contents of a different frame (the first of the chain).

Whereas if I select the a frame of a chain + choose Convert to Curves then exactly this frame with its properties + its contents gets curved while the text flow continues in the remaining frames of the chain.

So APub lacks in the ability to copy a text frame of a chain as is (while the interface can make me think it would) – although APub is aware of the contents of each single frame.

[Old Bruce]

22 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Whereas if I select the a frame of a chain + choose Convert to Curves then exactly this frame with its properties + its contents gets curved while the text flow continues in the remaining frames of the chain.

The Text in that frame is duplicated and a new curves object is created from that, the original text is preserved. I wonder if this is a bug. I was half expecting the curves to be pinned inline replacing the text.

As far as the parenthetical text goes, I have learned to just ignore it in most cases. It is actually only useful to me for the text frame layers made with the Art Text text tool. Also it is possible to have a named layer where the name is so long that the parenthetical text is not visible. This is true for all layer types.

Here we see the text "this name is quite long too long in fact." and then the layers panels showing that layer duplicated and names put in for two of the duplicated layers. Probably should have used something else for the text on the page....

[thomaso]

2 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

The Text in that frame is duplicated and a new curves object is created from that, the original text is preserved.

Are you sure? In which of your macOS?

To me in macOS 10.12 it works different. In this example the 2nd frame gets converted to curves …
– Before:

– After: Still 3 layers as before, text flow jumped from 2nd to 3rd frame.

[Old Bruce]

What I meant about the text being preserved was that the text flow is still preserved, the converted frame doesn't delete the text that is converted. Your second screen shot shows the text persevered in that it flows from the left overtop of the middle and into the left frame.

First frame frame break ->...-> Second frame frame break ... overflow text