Weird pin behaviour

[anweid]

Affinity Publisher 2.0.0 for Windows (and the previous versions 1.x, which I didn't bother to report) sometimes does not allow a pin to be positioned at a special location due to very weird behaviour. The attached video hopefully clarifies this:

1. At 0:00, you see that the distance between text and a pinned image is set to at least 0mm. But the image frame does not repell the text quadratically as requested, but overlaps it a bit vertically.
2. At 0:10–0:24, I push the image more to the bottom (using the scroll wheel above the edit field), and the text is always repelled the same not-quite-correct way, with a bit of vertical overlap. This is inconvenient, but not dramatic.
3. At around 0:25, I change the value several times between 13mm and 12mm, and the result is drastic: The image is not moved by just 1mm vertically, but jumps to a completely unforeseen vertical position.
4. At 0:35, I move the (wrongly positioned) image farther upwards. At 0:38, without any changes to any text flow, the vertical position of the whole text changes by some mysterious reason.

Such strange behaviour occurs quite seldom, but when it does, I cannot make it go away. Hopefully you can reconstruct this problem with the attached file.

Andreas Weidner

PinProblem.afpub

[NathanC]

Hi @anweid,

Many thanks for providing detail on your issue, i've tried to open your attached sample file so I can try and replicate your issue though unfortunately it appears that the file you've uploaded has become corrupted as i'm greeted with a 'Failed to open Document' error In V2 on both Mac and Windows which i'll log separately.

If you have a copy of the file that you're able to open on your side without any issues, could you try 'Save as' and then uploading the file again?

 

[anweid]

Hello NathanC,

the file has not become corrupted during upload, because I can re-download and open it without problems. My original file and the one downloaded from above are binary identical. If you cannot open that file at all, then all my alarm bells immediately ring excessively, because this might mean that loading and saving of files have become unreliable in the new version, which would be a total meltdown...

Anyway, find attached a new file, which consists of the above original, but 'Saved as' with a new name. Both files are not binary identical, but on my PC I can definitely open both of them, and the problem also happens with both.

Andreas Weidner

PinProblem-new.afpub

[4dimage]

@anweid

Rather weird file behaviour ?! I also neither can open your second uploaded file nor the first one.

The frightening part is: you seem to run a Publisher Version newer than 2.0.0 already?

Warning: "... The file contains features of a newer Affinity version."

Yea - maybe you already got Publisher 2.1.0 ?! 😁😔😪

 

[carl123]

(Windows 11, APub 2.0.0)

I am also getting the error message "The file includes features from a later version of Affinity" on both of the OP's uploads.

That error message has been reported several times before in this forum and I'm sure it has already been logged as a bug.

What is interesting, in this case, is that the OP can open his/her files without getting that error message 

@anweid Out of interest, do you still have V1 installed on your PC or did you delete it when you installed V2?

[NathanC]

 

11 hours ago, anweid said:

the file has not become corrupted during upload, because I can re-download and open it without problems. My original file and the one downloaded from above are binary identical. If you cannot open that file at all, then all my alarm bells immediately ring excessively, because this might mean that loading and saving of files have become unreliable in the new version, which would be a total meltdown...

Anyway, find attached a new file, which consists of the above original, but 'Saved as' with a new name. Both files are not binary identical, but on my PC I can definitely open both of them, and the problem also happens with both.

 

Along with 4dimage and carl, i'm also unable to open your second attachment and I receive the same error message. When you installed Publisher did you do so by following the standard .MSIX install process or have you potentially done the install by unzipping the .MSIX package files? Unzipping the files can cause a number of problems. It may be worth going through a re-install of Publisher v2 again.

[anweid]

The problematic document was created the following way:

1. I started to write it some years ago with Publisher version 1.x. The original is around 50 pages long and contains lots of pictures and pins, using several purchased fonts.
2. I downloaded Publisher 2 from the Affinity website and just double-clicked the MSIX file, which installed the app (I think no install options were asked). I don't know what a 'standard MSIX install process' is, because prior to the Affinities, I never had MSIX packages before.
3. I now have version 1 and version 2 on my PC, both of them running in parallel (apparently) without problems.
4. The original 50-page file opened in Publisher 2 without problems, but the 'pin bug', as already experienced with version 1.x, still persisted with version 2, so I thought I should report it finally.
5. Since the original document was too complex to upload, I took Publisher 2 to throw away all pictures, all pins except the problematic one, nearly all text styles, changed the font to Times New Roman and uploaded it as above.

I will try to recreate a new document out of the old one a second time in the next days, and try to create a new Affinity test installation on a different PC...

Andreas Weidner

[NathanC]

5 minutes ago, anweid said:

1. I started to write it some years ago with Publisher version 1.x. The original is around 50 pages long and contains lots of pictures and pins, using several purchased fonts.
2. I downloaded Publisher 2 from the Affinity website and just double-clicked the MSIX file, which installed the app (I think no install options were asked). I don't know what a 'standard MSIX install process' is, because prior to the Affinities, I never had MSIX packages before.
3. I now have version 1 and version 2 on my PC, both of them running in parallel (apparently) without problems.
4. The original 50-page file opened in Publisher 2 without problems, but the 'pin bug', as already experienced with version 1.x, still persisted with version 2, so I thought I should report it finally.
5. Since the original document was too complex to upload, I took Publisher 2 to throw away all pictures, all pins except the problematic one, nearly all text styles, changed the font to Times New Roman and uploaded it as above.

I will try to recreate a new document out of the old one a second time in the next days, and try to create a new Affinity test installation on a different PC...

Thanks for confirming, when I mentioned the 'Standard install process' for the MSIX installer, I meant double clicking the installer file which you've evidently done. It would be interesting to see if you were to create a new blank pub document in V2 and go to Document > Add Pages from File and add in your pin bug document if we can open that file. If not, a new document which demonstrates the issue would also be great. 🙂

[anweid]

After several weeks, I can now add some additional information. The document uploaded in my original post from November 13th is the root of at least three apparently unrelated bugs in Publisher 2:

1. The already known problem that the document cannot be read by anybody but myself using the PC on which it was originally created (the mysterious message 'the file includes features from a later version of Affinity'). This bug is apparently fixed in Publisher 2.04 – at least I can now open the document on a different machine. Fine.
2. The bug with the weird pin behaviour still appears with version 2.04 exactly as described above. Unfortunately, probably nobody else will be able to reproduce it, because I can only see it with the PC on which the original document was written (again). The pin bug cannot be seen on a second test installation, because of another  bug no. 3:
3. The original document posted by me contains an embedded picture. Downloading this document from the original post above onto the PC on which I originally created it correctly shows the picture (the original picture still resides on my hard disk), and also properly shows its state as 'embedded'. When downloading to a different machine, Publisher complains about the missing picture (it's true that the original picture is missing, but the picture was embedded), shows its state as 'linked' (which is wrong) and does not display anything (which is a pity). So either Publisher 2.0 didn't properly embed the picture, or Publisher 2.04 doesn't properly use the embedded picture if the original picture is missing.

Therefore, in order to be able to reproduce the original bug 2, it might be necessary to first get rid of bug 3, so that the document can be correctly opened on a different machine than my own one. Let's hope for the best...

Andreas Weidner

[MikeTO]

3 hours ago, anweid said:

After several weeks, I can now add some additional information. The document uploaded in my original post from November 13th is the root of at least three apparently unrelated bugs in Publisher 2:

1. The already known problem that the document cannot be read by anybody but myself using the PC on which it was originally created (the mysterious message 'the file includes features from a later version of Affinity'). This bug is apparently fixed in Publisher 2.04 – at least I can now open the document on a different machine. Fine.
2. The bug with the weird pin behaviour still appears with version 2.04 exactly as described above. Unfortunately, probably nobody else will be able to reproduce it, because I can only see it with the PC on which the original document was written (again). The pin bug cannot be seen on a second test installation, because of another  bug no. 3:
3. The original document posted by me contains an embedded picture. Downloading this document from the original post above onto the PC on which I originally created it correctly shows the picture (the original picture still resides on my hard disk), and also properly shows its state as 'embedded'. When downloading to a different machine, Publisher complains about the missing picture (it's true that the original picture is missing, but the picture was embedded), shows its state as 'linked' (which is wrong) and does not display anything (which is a pity). So either Publisher 2.0 didn't properly embed the picture, or Publisher 2.04 doesn't properly use the embedded picture if the original picture is missing.

Therefore, in order to be able to reproduce the original bug 2, it might be necessary to first get rid of bug 3, so that the document can be correctly opened on a different machine than my own one. Let's hope for the best...

Andreas Weidner

Hi, I can see your pin behaviour issue (#2) without, um, issues. It appears to be a bug with using pinned, wrapped objects in text frames that have Vertical Position set to Centre Align. Here's a test document and screen recording.

I can't comment on #3 since the missing resource is shown as linked in the Resource Manager for me.

Jumping.afpub

 

 

[anweid]

7 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Hi, I can see your pin behaviour issue (#2) without, um, issues. It appears to be a bug with using pinned, wrapped objects in text frames that have Vertical Position set to Centre Align. Here's a test document and screen recording.

Aaah – wonderful! I wondered why bug #2 only appeared in that frame - the vertical centering is the problem! Since this problem appears to be reproducable, the developers will be able to debug it more easily. Thanks.

After debugging that, bug #3 remains: Why does everybody see the image resource as 'linked' (and without image) when the original document tells me it is 'embedded'? Just for fun, I downloaded the above original file again, opened it in Publisher 2.04, and the image appeared, including the 'embedded' info (see screenshot, with the German word 'eingebettet' meaning 'embedded').

Andreas Weidner

[Pyanepsion]

Here is what I found:

Problem:

Pinned block jumps abnormally to the top when moved with the mouse on the same line as or above the pin.

Environment:

File opened in version 2.0.4.1701 and 2.0.3.1670 on Windows 11, the attachment is a linked PDF file (missing). The behaviour is identical (here) with a JPEG image.

Observations:

The PDF block contains a child rectangle. Is it a remnant of an older version?

The block is positioned correctly when moved with the keyboard, but jumps to the top when clicked again with the mouse.

Significance:

This problem can affect the quality of use of the file and can be frustrating for users.

[MikeTO]

5 hours ago, anweid said:

After debugging that, bug #3 remains: Why does everybody see the image resource as 'linked' (and without image) when the original document tells me it is 'embedded'? Just for fun, I downloaded the above original file again, opened it in Publisher 2.04, and the image appeared, including the 'embedded' info (see screenshot, with the German word 'eingebettet' meaning 'embedded').

I tried embedding a PDF, both as interpret and passthrough, and then making the PDF unavailable. I couldn't get Publisher to show linked for embedded. I believe you, I just can't duplicate it.

Try clicking the image in Resource Manager, make it linked and then make it embedded again. Save under a new name and close. Make the document unavailable and try reopening it - what does the image say in the Resource Manager now?

Cheers

[Affinity Info Bot]

An issue raised in this thread ("Pinned wrapped objects with Vertical Position set to Centre Align leads to unpredictable results") has now been reported to the developers by the testing team (Ref: AFB-7485). Thank you very much for reporting this issue to us.