APub: Text-styles broken on font-change

[GeirSol]

Hi!

I was trying out different fonts for my project,
and I was installing and deleting fonts as I went along.
This caused problems. Deleted styles got set as inline-syles missing for each paragraph,
so I would manually need to go over my 16pages document to sort out all errors.

Are there any global actions to fix this?

What is recommended workflow?

[thomaso]

What do you mean with "inline-styles"? – I don't know of any way in Affinity to define, create or use "inline-styles" which in my understanding would mean that certain style info gets literally written within the text of the text frames. Accordingly I don't understand what was happening to your document.

If it is "just" about missing fonts you should be able to fix this with the Font Manager, respectively the style definitions, while in case of styles which depend on each other it makes sense to adjust them in their hierarchy from top to bottom to avoid unnecessary changes.

If installing & deleting fonts caused a confused font data base of your system or of APub then you might reset them.

[GeirSol]

26 minutes ago, thomaso said:

What do you mean with "inline-styles"? –

I mean local formatting is created when there was none.

It's not really about missing fonts. When I change font in the text-styles there is no change as Publisher has made local formatting for missing fonts (that I has deleted for changing to another font).

I have the habit of restarting Publisher after install/uninstall of fonts.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, GeirSol said:

It's not really about missing fonts. When I change font in the text-styles there is no change as Publisher has made local formatting for missing fonts (that I has deleted for changing to another font).

I think I still don't really understand your workflow, e.g. What did you delete: font, style, …?

• If I delete a font then this becomes missing for Affinity. (but you say "It's not really about missing fonts".)

• If I delete a style then text which has the style assigned turns to its parent style (which is at least [No style] with its definition).

Can you reproduce the issue with any document?
Can you upload a document with common fonts (e.g. system fonts) and the info what gets deleted to cause local formatting?

Nevertheless, you can get rid of local formatting via the Text Styles panel > "Reset Formatting" (T-icon top right) or the main menu's "Reapply" options.
Also you can use the "Find & Replace" panel with its Format option (cog menu) to replace a specific style definition only, respectively to assign styles / style attributes – regardless of text contents.

[GeirSol]

To reproduce.

1. Have a document with a couple of assigned styles (including font)
2. Install new font
3. Restart Publisher
4. Assign new font to one style
5. Close Publisher
6. Uninstall font
7. Reopen document in Publisher

Publisher has now assigned local formatting for the style in question.

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

Nevertheless, you can get rid of local formatting via the Text Styles panel > "Reset Formatting" (T-icon top right) or the main menu's "Reapply" options.

Also you can use the "Find & Replace" panel with its Format option (cog menu) to replace a specific style definition only, respectively to assign styles / style attributes – regardless of text contents.

Thanks! The second one looks promising. The first I knew, but is one-by-one

[Lee_T]

Hi GeirSol

This is normal, you've essentially destroyed the style by removing one of it's key components.

Lee

[GeirSol]

2 hours ago, LeeThorpe said:

Hi GeirSol

This is normal, you've essentially destroyed the style by removing one of it's key components.

Lee

Ok, this behavior was very counterproductive to me.

So, what is recommended workflow in my case?

[walt.farrell]

7 hours ago, GeirSol said:

So, what is recommended workflow in my case?

Don't delete fonts that you need?

[GeirSol]

11 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Don't delete fonts that you need?

The point is: This is fonts I don't need.

I don't want to try 30 fonts and leave all of them on my system.

So, deleting them as I go is the desired workflow, but if that doesn't go well with Publisher I can make a list on my desktop and take it when I've found the fonts I need.

[Lee_T]

57 minutes ago, GeirSol said:

The point is: This is fonts I don't need.

I don't want to try 30 fonts and leave all of them on my system.

So, deleting them as I go is the desired workflow, but if that doesn't go well with Publisher I can make a list on my desktop and take it when I've found the fonts I need.

change the font back to arial before deleting the font.

Lee

[Winsome]

23 hours ago, LeeThorpe said:

Hi GeirSol

This is normal, you've essentially destroyed the style by removing one of it's key components.

Lee

"Essentially destroyed" - what nonsense is that?

@GeirSol

You can see that the font is missing by the question mark before the font name and by the + after the style name, since Publisher has substituted the font temporarily (and thus the text style is actually changed from the original, but only temporarily).

You can get an overview in the font manager:

By selection locate you can find an affected paragraph and identify an affected text style.

The good news is that Publisher has NOT left the affected sections where this text style is used as local formatting.

You need to find the studio panel called text styles and scroll down to the affected text style. You may have been confused by the fact that Publisher has also marked no style at the top of that panel:

Select a font that is installed and all is well.

Have I understood everything correctly about your situation? Did what I wrote make sense? Apologies if I misread anything.

[GeirSol]

30 minutes ago, Winsome said:

You can get an overview in the font manager

Thank you!  That was really helpful. The locate button made me find an empty frame causing missing warning.

There is one issue that still remains. Publisher do set local formatting,
and just changing font in text-styles does not fix this. I need to clear all paragraphs for local formatting one by one.

[thomaso]

7 minutes ago, GeirSol said:

There is one issue that still remains. Publisher do set local formatting,
and just changing font in text-styles does not fix this. I need to clear all paragraphs for local formatting one by one.

You don't need to change formatting one by one. Have you tried the workflow I mentioned above, in particular to delete a style from the Text Styles panel BEFORE you delete its applied font file. By deleting the style I get the text auto-set to its parent style (if it used one) or to the apps default for [No Style], which is Arial unless you changed that.

[GeirSol]

17 minutes ago, thomaso said:

You don't need to change formatting one by one. Have you tried the workflow I mentioned above, in particular to delete a style from the Text Styles panel BEFORE you delete its applied font file. By deleting the style I get the text auto-set to its parent style (if it used one) or to the apps default for [No Style], which is Arial unless you changed that.

Thanks! But I do not want to delete the style -just change the font.
Or maybe I don't understand you correctly?

[thomaso]

1 minute ago, GeirSol said:

I do not want to delete the style -just change the font.

Seems I was misunderstanding you. Then change the style before you delete the font.

On 8/14/2022 at 1:23 PM, GeirSol said:

I have the habit of restarting Publisher after install/uninstall of fonts.

Not sure if this is required, or if it would be more useful to close APub before changing installed fonts. – Though I did not experience issues yet without closing APub, possibly because I use an extra font manager software which let me activate/deactivate fonts while APub is opened without issues. If you use the default font manager of your system you could give it a try at least to see how this works without closing APub.

[Winsome]

In any scenario, you should be able to delete a font without the program making permanent changes where styles with that font are applied!

This is equivalent to opening the document on a machine without that font, and a DTP program or word processor must be able to open and save a document in that scenario without making permanent changes. If automatic substitution occurs, it must be temporary only, and permanent changes must be made only after user interaction and user acceptance.

If Publisher can't handle a font being missing, then it's back to the drawing board before version 2.

But I think we need an example document. I certainly can't recreate what you experience with more simple test documents.

[GeirSol]

5 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Seems I was misunderstanding you. Then change the style before you delete the font.

Not sure if this is required, or if it would be more useful to close APub before changing installed fonts. – Though I did not experience issues yet without closing APub, possibly because I use an extra font manager software which let me activate/deactivate fonts while APub is opened without issues. If you use the default font manager of your system you could give it a try at least to see how this works without closing APub.

I'll try that. Thanks!

[GeirSol]

9 minutes ago, Winsome said:

But I think we need an example document. I certainly can't recreate what you experience with more simple test documents.

Here's a sample-file

2 styles, installed new font, selected it for style 2, closed Publisher, uninstalled font

Now there are local formatting on all Style 2-paragrahps.

test.afpub

[Winsome]

Ah, in my test document I mistakenly used character styles instead of paragraph styles. D'oh.

I see what you mean. Nothing happens when I update the style (font-familiy).

If you select a style 2 formatted paragraph and then select Apply style 2 and clear paragraph styles, then that paragraph formats correctly. I can't find anywhere in the style in question (style 2) where I can remove this character formatting, so it must indeed be an erroneous local formatting. So maybe the font substitution messes with the character information:

In that case I would think it is a bug in Publisher.

[Winsome]

I still can't reproduce it, though, with a very simple scenario identical to yours. I see no remnants of the uninstalled font in style studio.
Windows 11 Professional, by the way.

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, GeirSol said:

The point is: This is fonts I don't need.

I don't want to try 30 fonts and leave all of them on my system.

So, deleting them as I go is the desired workflow, but if that doesn't go well with Publisher I can make a list on my desktop and take it when I've found the fonts I need.

Then don't put them into text styles? Or update the text styles to use a font that you have left installed.

[thomaso]

9 minutes ago, Winsome said:

I see what you mean. Nothing happens when I update the style (font-familiy).

Different to me (macOS): If I open the document I see local formatting applied, too, and Lucida as substitution font.

But if I update / reapply the style to selected text then the local formatting (+) disappears and a different substitution font gets used for the missing font.

@GeirSol, personally I would delete this style and recreate it, (instead of trying to detect the reason) because I don't get this issue / can't reproduce it in any other document with your workflow of deactivating a font while the document is opened. This makes me assume it is a confused / corrupted style definition or document.

This makes me wonder
… do you get the issue in every document?
… do you still get the issue if you do not delete the font while the document is open?

[GeirSol]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Then don't put them into text styles? Or update the text styles to use a font that you have left installed.

#1 Have to use text-styles. The idea is to see the changes in a complex larger layout.

#2 Yes, that's a usable workaround.

[GeirSol]

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

This makes me wonder
… do you get the issue in every document?
… do you still get the issue if you do not delete the font while the document is open?

#1 In every document I've tried this

#2 Eh, no, then the font is there. No issue. But, from habit I only do uninstall when affected program is closed.

[thomaso]

3 hours ago, GeirSol said:

But, from habit I only do uninstall when affected program is closed.

Okay. It sounded different in an earlier post which made me think you first uninstall a font and after that you close (restart) APub:

On 8/14/2022 at 1:23 PM, GeirSol said:

I have the habit of restarting Publisher after install/uninstall of fonts.

The fact that you experience the issue with every document is strange because @Winsome (Windows 11) and me (macOS 10.14 + Suitcase Font manager) can't reproduce the issue.

Does the issue occur with every font you had tried + deleted, – or with some only?

What system runs on your computer? And how are fonts managed? You always said you "delete" fonts, does it mean there no option to deactivate / disable fonts but they need to get trashed instead to become uninstalled?

If you indeed just trash them from their location after installing and trying them: have you tried if the issue occurs if you reboot the computer after trashing a font and before re-opening APub?