Publisher V2, I hate you. I truly hate you.

[mangauniversity]

I get this popup no matter what I do. Sometimes I'm trying to edit text. Other times apply a style. Or move an illustration. It doesn't matter what I'm doing, Publisher V2 just loves to crash. Even when I create a fresh new file, within 10 minutes that file will crash and be corrupted.

 

[Raf23]

Sadly, I have the same problem. I'm using an M1 Mac mini and I've turned off Metal rendering and acceleration and reduced render quality as far as I can. I was accessing the files and resources on an external hard drive which resulted in many crashes and corrupted files. Since moving everything to the local drive the number of crashes have dropped significantly, but the program still crashes occasionally. It is just very unreliable at the moment. There are many occasions when the program just hangs with the spinning beach ball and I have to force quit the program.

[mangauniversity]

6 minutes ago, Raf23 said:

Sadly, I have the same problem. I'm using an M1 Mac mini and I've turned off Metal rendering and acceleration and reduced render quality as far as I can. I was accessing the files and resources on an external hard drive which resulted in many crashes and corrupted files. Since moving everything to the local drive the number of crashes have dropped significantly, but the program still crashes occasionally. It is just very unreliable at the moment. There are many occasions when the program just hangs with the spinning beach ball and I have to force quit the program.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm on an M1 Air, and had considered turning off Metal Acceleration in Publisher's preferences but hadn't done so yet. I'll give that a shot. As for linked files, everything is stored on my Mac.

It's really disappointing, given how great Publisher V1 is. Hopefully a significant patch/upgrade is in the works and coming real soon.

 

[Raf23]

It really is disappointing. I forgot to mention that I also turned down Ram Usage Limit to 4GB from 8GB (my Mac has 8GB) in the hope that the program will be more stable.

 

Good luck!

[mangauniversity]

33 minutes ago, Raf23 said:

It really is disappointing. I forgot to mention that I also turned down Ram Usage Limit to 4GB from 8GB (my Mac has 8GB) in the hope that the program will be more stable.

 

Good luck!

Thanks. You too. 

[jmwellborn]

@mangauniversity and @Raf23  You could try going to your Apple System Preferences> DIsplays> and turn off Automatically Adjust Brightness.   This definitely helps with lagging and spinning beachballs.  It might also help with your crashes.  James Ritson has a lengthy forum post about this.  Sorry I can’t find it at the moment.  I will try, and then add it to this post when I locate it.  Located.

 

 

[debraspicher]

If you would like to to help/encourage development to fix the issue, you can enable this in preferences... I think it is off by default...

[Raf23]

14 hours ago, jmwellborn said:

@mangauniversity and @Raf23  You could try going to your Apple System Preferences> DIsplays> and turn off Automatically Adjust Brightness.   This definitely helps with lagging and spinning beachballs.  It might also help with your crashes.  James Ritson has a lengthy forum post about this.  Sorry I can’t find it at the moment.  I will try, and then add it to this post when I locate it.  Located.

 

Thank you for sharing this tip. 

[Raf23]

14 hours ago, debraspicher said:

If you would like to to help/encourage development to fix the issue, you can enable this in preferences... I think it is off by default...

Thanks! I would be more than happy to help find bugs, but I can't find those two checkboxes to upload crash reports. I've attached a screenshot.

[mangauniversity]

1 hour ago, Raf23 said:

@mangauniversity and @Raf23  You could try going to your Apple System Preferences> DIsplays> and turn off Automatically Adjust Brightness.   This definitely helps with lagging and spinning beachballs.  It might also help with your crashes.  James Ritson has a lengthy forum post about this.  Sorry I can’t find it at the moment.  I will try, and then add it to this post when I locate it.  Located.

Even thought that video deals with Affinity Photo specifically, and he never mentions Publisher, it still could prove useful. Thanks.

In the video he says the "developers are aware of (the issue) and "it will be fixed." That was six months ago. Apparently fixing the issue before releasing V2 wasn't a priority. 🙁

 

[R C-R]

10 hours ago, Raf23 said:

Thanks! I would be more than happy to help find bugs, but I can't find those two checkboxes to upload crash reports. I've attached a screenshot.

That's because they are not in the Mac versions because for that OS it is a system level feature.

So to enable it in the macOS, go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy tab, & select Analytics & Improvements in the column on the left. There you will find checkboxes for this. Note that you must unlock the preference to make changes. 

[Medical Officer Bones]

On 12/2/2022 at 1:22 AM, Raf23 said:

It really is disappointing. I forgot to mention that I also turned down Ram Usage Limit to 4GB from 8GB (my Mac has 8GB) in the hope that the program will be more stable.

8gb for graphics work? That memory may also contribute to an unstable behaviour.

At work we have a bunch of top-of-the-line 32GB Mac Studios. I thought to try them with Blender and a (granted) fairly heavy scene that works at the limit of 32GB. Turned out to be a total crash fest, and after experiencing at least 10 crashes within 30 minutes I gave up. (I did test with a small scene, and there were no issues with that) Still, I was rather disappointed, in particular after reading how the quick storage system should be able to mitigate somewhat for the lack of physical memory. But as always: reality is sobering and curbs enthusiasm 🙂

It doesn't help either that M1/M2 ARMs share video memory with RAM. I've read quite a few threads on other forums of designers complaining that their 16GB model experienced performance issues with larger design projects.

Nowadays I'd say 16GB is the absolute minimum for graphics work either PC or Mac. No matter if those new Macs have fast SSDs as a backup.

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[Medical Officer Bones]

@lacerto Exactly the magic word: "work loads". Which is why 16GB is a good base standard for any design work, because it allows for a certain flexibility in your workflow that 8GB restricts too much.

Then again, I may not count as an average designer: I need all of the 128GB RAM in my system for my work (which includes 3d work).

We can agree that any creative who purchases a new machine (mac or pc) is better served with 16GB.

[debraspicher]

14 hours ago, Raf23 said:

Thanks! I would be more than happy to help find bugs, but I can't find those two checkboxes to upload crash reports. I've attached a screenshot.

Interesting!

[R C-R]

2 minutes ago, debraspicher said:

Interesting!

It's just a difference between Macs & Windows for how to send crash reports. On Macs it is a system-wide setting in System Preferences, like I explained above.

[mangauniversity]

My MacBook Air M1 has 16 gigabytes of RAM, and has no issue running the first version of Publisher.

V2, on the other hand, is a Crash-a-Thon.

[Raf23]

On 12/3/2022 at 6:01 PM, R C-R said:

That's because they are not in the Mac versions because for that OS it is a system level feature.

So to enable it in the macOS, go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy tab, & select Analytics & Improvements in the column on the left. There you will find checkboxes for this. Note that you must unlock the preference to make changes. 

Many thanks. I'm happy to contribute to bug fixes.

[Raf23]

My Mac mini M1 with 8Gb is a workhorse: over the last year with version 1 of affinity products I've produced hundreds of pages of text, graphics and photos for technical literature without the machine skipping a heart beat. I can even create short 1080p videos which is quite remarkable for a base-level machine.

[big smile]

About sharing crash reports on MacOs: If you go to system preferences to enable it, then do you have to select any options in Publisher? Just double-checking, to make sure I have done it right. As I get a lot of crashing, and I am not even using an M1 Mac! (My crashing also sometimes corrupts files!)

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, big smile said:

About sharing crash reports on MacOs: If you go to system preferences to enable it, then do you have to select any options in Publisher?

No, not on Macs.

[Raf23]

1 hour ago, big smile said:

About sharing crash reports on MacOs: If you go to system preferences to enable it, then do you have to select any options in Publisher? Just double-checking, to make sure I have done it right. As I get a lot of crashing, and I am not even using an M1 Mac! (My crashing also sometimes corrupts files!)

As I understand it Apple controls crash reporting, so there are no options within affinity products to send reports directly to affinity. Every time the programs crash I always send a crash report to Apple, I hope Apple shares this information.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Raf23 said:

As I understand it Apple controls crash reporting, so there are no options within affinity products to send reports directly to affinity. Every time the programs crash I always send a crash report to Apple, I hope Apple shares this information.

Apple should if you also enable the following option in the Analytics & Improvement > Privacy section of System Preferences > Security & Privacy:

Of course, it is up to Apple to do this in a timely manner ...

[Raf23]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

Apple should if you also enable the following option in the Analytics & Improvement > Privacy section of System Preferences > Security & Privacy:

Of course, it is up to Apple to do this in a timely manner ...

As per recommendation earlier in this thread I checked my privacy settings and I had enabled share with app developers. Every little helps to help developers.