[Publisher Preflight] Please, don't check spelling in master pages with preflight on export if text is overwritten on page

[MmmMaarten]

To Serif:

Hi,

To my surprise when exporting pages to pdf I'm getting preflight warnings with all kinds of spelling issues. Looking where they appear they all appear in the used master page. But these warnings are redundant as all these text fields' content is overwritten in the pages themselves and the master pages only contain dummy text and/or templates, so spelling isn't important on these master pages.

So to me this check doesn't make sense while exporting the final pages.

It would be better IMO if Affinity would only check and warn about misspellings on actual used text when exporting, not text that is overwritten by the pages.

Thanks in advance!

[Old Bruce]

5 hours ago, MmmMaarten said:

these warnings are redundant as all these text fields' content is overwritten in the pages themselves and the master pages only contain dummy text and/or templates, so spelling isn't important on these master pages.

I never use dummy text in the text fields in my Master/Parent pages. They are empty. I think it is a recipe for disaster and definitely not what I would call a best practise.

[MmmMaarten]

@Old Bruce Guess we have to agree to dissagree strongly. Without text in the master page you cannot see what you're doing obviously and Lorem Ipsum exists for a clear reason. Also this is a template, so there is prewritten text that will be changed when used on a page. Which I think is a pretty normal use case. Besides all this; whether or not we're adding text to a master page or not or whatever workflow you or I like to use is beyond the point of this feedback to Serif.

Point I'm making is pretty clear I think; it doesn't make any sense to warn a user with a bunch of spelling errors when exporting if there are NO spelling errors in the export. Hard to discuss about that I'd say.

[MikeTO]

19 hours ago, MmmMaarten said:

Also this is a template, so there is prewritten text that will be changed when used on a page. Which I think is a pretty normal use case.

It is one use case, but not the only one. For example, I type my chapter names directly into master page frames and I definitely want those spell checked. I also have a master that will have two variations of an image on the left and right pages and they need 'current' and 'original' titles above them. I type that text directly into a master frame.

Serif can't turn off all spell checking on master pages just because one use case is to type placeholder text, there's no way for Affinity to know what is placeholder and what is real. Filler text is intended for assisting with the layout while avoiding spell checking - Affinity never spell checks filler text even if you've overridden the default filler text with your own through Preferences > Filler Text. You can certainly type your own placeholder text into master frames - I do it too, but you'll just have to avoid spelling errors. Or since you said you plan to replace this text you can simply ignore the preflight warning - what difference does it make if it's placeholder text that you will replace later?

The same is true for images and I don't think Serif should turn off the preflight warning for image resolution on master page images. I have several "Placed image DPI too low" warnings all because I drew picture frames on maser pages and filled them with a grey placeholder image with FPO in the middle of them. The images are stretched too large so I get preflight warnings. I just ignore those because I'll eventually replace the images with the right ones.

 

[MmmMaarten]

3 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Serif can't turn off all spell checking on master pages just because one use case is to type placeholder text

Please guys, it doesn't help anybody if you post a reaction to somebodies feedback **to Serif**. Especially if you're not even reading nor understanding the posters post. Because if you did you wouldn't twist my words and talk about things the feedback isn't even about. It's all clearly in the first post and I even repeated it in other words. This is not the question forum, nor meant to discuss about, this is the forum made for feedback **to serif**. If it would be that Serif isn't understanding the post or has questions about it I'm happy to answer or clear things up, but it's feedback **to serif** and it doesn't help if people jump in and make clear things foggy by talking about things the feedback isn't even about.

Thank you for your understanding. And hopefully Serif actually reads feedback.

[Old Bruce]

3 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Affinity never spell checks filler text

Not in my experience. I would have to have the language set to none for the text styles for filler text to be ignored by the spell checker.

[MikeTO]

On 8/11/2022 at 3:56 PM, Old Bruce said:

Not in my experience. I would have to have the language set to none for the text styles for filler text to be ignored by the spell checker.

I just tested it and for me it worked as I described. Here's a screenshot showing the four scenarios, a frame from a master layer with filler text and another with normal text, and a frame from non-master layer with filler text and another with normal text. Affinity spell checked just the normal text regardless of whether it was in a master or non-master frame.