Crashes in Publisher 2 related to Table of Contents

[Wilx]

Greetings:

First as a disclaimer, let me state that I am very supportive of your business.  I've been buying your products (even some I've not needed) to support your competition with Adobe.  I want to see you succeed.

With that said, Publisher 2's functionality surrounding Books (I feature I requested and was very excited to see) was not ready to be released.  It is the most unstable software I've used since Windows 3.1.  I've chased down some bugs and hope this will help you fix your product.

My Hardware & Project:  Affinity Publisher v2.0.0;  macOS Ventura 13.1; Mac mini M1, 2000.  I am working with a Publisher book that has 16 chapter-files.  The book is just under 100 pages in trade (6" x9") format and is rich in illustrations and tables.  It includes a Table of Contents and will contain an Index when that functionality becomes workable.

Terminology:  "Crash" means that a program unexpectedly closes.  "Hang" means that a program becomes unresponsive, cannot self-terminate, and must be terminated by the operating system (i.e. "Force Quit").  By profession, I am a software engineer.

I'm attaching several videos that were recorded in chronological order.  This behavior is repeatable.

Affinity-01 -- I open the book-file.  I open the chapter-file that contains the Table of Contents.  I close the chapter file that contains the Table of Contents.  The program hangs.

Affinity-02 -- I open the book-file.  I update the numbering in all chapter-files of the book.  I open the chapter-file that contains the Table of Contents.  The program crashes.

Affinity-03 -- I do not open the book-file.  I open the chapter-file that contains the Table of Contents.  The program crashes.

Affinity-04 -- I open the book-file.  I open the chapter-file that contains the Table of Contents.  This demonstrates that the file can be opened from within the book (but not from without the book) without it crashing.  I then update the Table of Contents.  I'm then able to save and close the chapter-file without the program hanging.

Summary:  I believe instability in the Book features of Publisher 2 are strongly related to the handling of the Table of Contents.  When I work on chapter-files with the book-file closed, I do not experience these problems.  With the book-file open, I experience frequent problems with the chapter-files.

Additional Observations:  II'm transitioning this product from InDesign with new files.  While I'm copying elements from IDML files, the work started with a new Affinity Pub 2 template.  I got as far as brining in all the material, formatting it, and building the table of contents.  I am unable to build the Index.  After creating the index markers of three of the chapter-files, I attempted to create the index.  Not only did this result in crashes as I attempted to build the index multiple times, but the index markers from those three saved chapter-files have been removed.  I'm concerned that the file structure's integrity may have been damaged as Publisher tried to build the index.

As you work this problem, I'd appreciate being kept updated.  Again, I wish your company continued success.

Best Regards,
Mark

[Pauls]

Has the 2.0.3 update resolved your issues ?  we have made some fixes in this area

[Wilx]

I missed the updates.  I'll do the update and report back.

 

[Wilx]

I upgraded to Affinity Publisher 2.0.3 (thanks for making me aware of that, @Pauls).  I've run several tests.  I do not see a noticeable improvement in the stability.  The index functionality remains unusable.  Here are some screen captures.

Affinity-IndexCrash-1 -- I open the book-file, update the numbering in the chapter-files, open the chapter-file where the index will be saved, then attempt to create the index. The program crashes.

Affinity-IndexCrash-2 -- I open the book-file, update the numbering in the chapter-files, then open the chapter-file where the Table of Contents is saved.  The program crashes.

Affinity-IndexCrash-3 -- I open the book-file, I do not update the numbering in the chapter-files, then open the chapter-file where the Table of Contents is saved.  The file opens on a master page.  I change to the first page in the document.  After that, I'm unable to change to a different spread (specifically the one with the Table of Contents).  I then attempt to close the chapter-file, and the program hangs.

Affinity-IndexCrash-4 -- I open the book-file, I update the numbering in the chapter-files, then open the chapter-file where the Table of Contents is saved.  I change to a different spread.  The program crashes.

Affinity-IndexCrash-5 -- I do not open the book-file.  I open the chapter-file where the Table of Contents is saved.  I delete the Table of Contents, then save, and close the chapter-file.  I then open the book-file.  I do not update the numbering in the chapter-files.  I open the chapter-file where the Table of Contents is saved.  I insert a new Table of Contents.  No entries appear.  I then update the numbering in the chapter-files.  I then return the Table of Contents.  When I click the button to update the Table of Contents, the program crashes.

I'm trying to find a work-around to get the Table of Contents and Index inserted into my publication.  I've not yet found a method that works.  Indeed, I seem to be moving backward.  Under v2.0.0, I was able to get the ToC working, but not the index.  Now I don't appear to be able to do either.  It's late.  I'll work on it more tomorrow.

I hope the videos I've supplied will help you find and smash these bugs.

Thanks,
Mark

[Pauls]

In that case could you package up the project and upload it here please so we can investigate the issues

[Wilx]

I'd be glad to help out.  However, these are not test files.  These files are a business product that includes my company's intellectual property as well as intellectual properties that we've licensed.

I need your assurance that:

• my data will be protected;
• that my data will only be used by Affinity for the sole purpose of improving your product, and that these files will be deleted from your servers after you're done using them (or 3 months, whichever is shorter);
• that my data will only be used by Affinity direct employees located in the UK or the USA;
• that my data will not be transmitted to contractors or other personnel in any other legal jurisdiction.  China, India, and Ukraine, for example, are countries that often contract programming services, yet these countries do not provide adequate protection of intellectual property (see https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/2019_Special_301_Report.pdf).

As soon as I've received these assurances, I'll package up my data and get it sent to you.

Thanks,
Mark

[natecombsmedia]

I do not believe the instability is related to a ToC, unfortunately (but I am not a software engineer). I love the idea of this feature and its user-friendly goal, but I do not have ToCs for most books I lay out since the authors are writing novels. I get crashing and hanging simply based on trying to load a chapter to the books panel and save the book.

Now, I do have a few ideas as to where my situation may be related or separate.

Related: I use Master pages to fill in page numbers and some other formatting. The page numbers do auto update based on the order of the chapters (super cool), and chapters seem to save fine. It is literally just my book file. However, numbering is technically involved, so perhaps it is related to the numbering and updates itself.

Separate: For my first try at separating out chapters like this, I loaded a previous book from the same universe (ie, all formatting identical, was a V1 file); deleted it down to the title pages (saved as one doc), Ch 1 (saved as another doc), and end pages (saved as third doc); and then built the following chapters by saving over the Ch 1 file. So all chapters have the same origin file. Perhaps the book setting doesn't like that.

I am in the latest version but am having a Windows issue right now where my new (5 months old) computer suddenly believes it isn't compatible with Windows 11...which it came on and was built professionally by Eniac at Newegg so that I could avoid such an issue (I assumed the weird and random Windows issues I always get came from me building my own computers). I do remember in a very specific update from around 2 months ago, I experienced a similar bug whenever I tried to use the Section Manager window (instant crash).

Today, it seems like it is no longer crashing, but just that the save feature is completely dead in the books tab. I have also had the issue with DaVinci Resolve where the save feature would completely die if certain FX were used (guessing you are all familiar with it since it's the best and you have to make all your videos somehow). The program was completely fine, but the second I applied a speed up or slow down, saving did nothing. Then, if I tried to close the program, it would ask me if I would like to save...which still did nothing, then the program would hang, and finally, it would crash or be manually shut down. This is exactly what Affinity Publisher 2 is doing regarding Books.

[Wilx]

@natecombsmediaI appreciate your input on this thread.  I'm seeing repeated crashes and hangs to the point where I can no longer work on my document.  I can say for certain the instability is directly related to book creation and my sense is that it is tied to Table of Contents and Index creation, as there is a strong correlation between these features and the program crashes and hangs.  @Pauls never responded to my message.  I must assume that Affinity cannot protect my company's intellectual property so I will not be sending them my data files.

It has been a long time since I posted on this thread, as I was hoping the next update would fix this bug.  I updated to Affinity Publisher 2 version 2.0.4.  According to the updater, this is the most recent version as of today.  This did nothing to fix the instability.  I'm seeing fewer hangs, but crashes are frequent and dramatic.  The program is stable when working with individual chapter files, but nothing about book files is stable.

Affinity Publisher 2 has brought our production to a complete standstill.  All 16 chapter files are laid out, proofed, and have passed our quality checks -- except for the Table of Contents and the Index.  I'm going to give Serif another week to directly address this issue or we'll be moving back to Adobe InDesign (as much as it pains me), and I will make this reversion back to InDesign as public as I possibly can.

Affinity Publisher 2 is the most unstable commercial software I've encountered since the early 1990s.  I'll continue to recommend Photo 2 and Designer 2 as solid alternatives to Photoshop and Illustrator, but Publisher 2 is rubbish.

Mark

 

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, Wilx said:

@natecombsmediaI appreciate your input on this thread.  I'm seeing repeated crashes and hangs to the point where I can no longer work on my document.  I can say for certain the instability is directly related to book creation and my sense is that it is tied to Table of Contents and Index creation, as there is a strong correlation between these features and the program crashes and hangs.  @Pauls never responded to my message.  I must assume that Affinity cannot protect my company's intellectual property so I will not be sending them my data files.

It has been a long time since I posted on this thread, as I was hoping the next update would fix this bug.  I updated to Affinity Publisher 2 version 2.0.4.  According to the updater, this is the most recent version as of today.  This did nothing to fix the instability.  I'm seeing fewer hangs, but crashes are frequent and dramatic.  The program is stable when working with individual chapter files, but nothing about book files is stable.

Affinity Publisher 2 has brought our production to a complete standstill.  All 16 chapter files are laid out, proofed, and have passed our quality checks -- except for the Table of Contents and the Index.  I'm going to give Serif another week to directly address this issue or we'll be moving back to Adobe InDesign (as much as it pains me), and I will make this reversion back to InDesign as public as I possibly can.

Affinity Publisher 2 is the most unstable commercial software I've encountered since the early 1990s.  I'll continue to recommend Photo 2 and Designer 2 as solid alternatives to Photoshop and Illustrator, but Publisher 2 is rubbish.

Mark

There are major improvements in stability for Books in the 2.1 beta so please give that a try.

[Wilx]

@MikeTO  I'd love to give the beta a try.  Almost anything is less painful than going back to InDesign  Where can I download the beta?  I've searched the Affinity website.  The only downloads I can find are for my licenses and for released production copies of the suite.

Thanks for the heads-up on this.

Mark

[walt.farrell]

6 minutes ago, Wilx said:

Where can I download the beta?

 

[Wilx]

For those following this thread, you can join the Affinity Beta Software Program that @walt.farrellmentions by going to this link:

https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/affinity-beta-program/

I'm going to try out Affinity Publisher 2.1.0 for macOS and will report back here on how it goes -- probably by Saturday evening (U.S. Mountain time).

Mark

[Wilx]

@walt.farrell, @MikeTO, @Pauls, @natecombsmedia:

I'm not sure who is in which time zone on the good Earth, so I'll provide an incremental report now.

I really appreciate your efforts to help, but progress is very slow and is presently uncertain.  I ran the same operations on Affinity Publisher 2 Beta v2.1.0.1706 as I did on Affinity Publisher 2 v2.0.4.  The behavior was the same.  Specifically, in the Beta, I tried opening my book.  Any time I performed any operations to build the index or export the file to PDF, the program would have a hard crash.  I tried creating a new book file, and adding my chapters to it.  I could add the first chapter, but the program would crash when I added the second chapter.

The first chapter (which is just the title page and foreword) does not have any index markers in it.  It only had index topics, which I think it inherited from the book file.  The second chapter has both the index topics as well as index markers.  This made me think the problem was related to the index markers but not to index topics.

I deleted all the index markers (none in the first chapter, a couple dozen in the second).  The behavior was the same, and Publisher crashed.

I then deleted all the index markers from both chapters (again, these seemed to be inherited from the book file).  When I deleted them from each chapter file, I received a warning message that doing so would break the association with the book file.  I was pleased that I could break this association and did so.

After deleting the index topics and the index markers from the first two chapter files, I was able to build a new book file.  It did not crash.  That was progress.  Tomorrow, I'll go through all my chapter files, delete all the index topics and the index markers (which will break the association to the old book file).  I'll then try building a new book, without any indices.  From there I'll try building the ToC and will then trying build a very, very small index.

I'll update next I work on this.

Mark

[MikeTO]

19 minutes ago, Wilx said:

@walt.farrell, @MikeTO, @Pauls, @natecombsmedia:

I'm not sure who is in which time zone on the good Earth, so I'll provide an incremental report now.

I really appreciate your efforts to help, but progress is very slow and is presently uncertain.  I ran the same operations on Affinity Publisher 2 Beta v2.1.0.1706 as I did on Affinity Publisher 2 v2.0.4.  The behavior was the same.  Specifically, in the Beta, I tried opening my book.  Any time I performed any operations to build the index or export the file to PDF, the program would have a hard crash.  I tried creating a new book file, and adding my chapters to it.  I could add the first chapter, but the program would crash when I added the second chapter.

The first chapter (which is just the title page and foreword) does not have any index markers in it.  It only had index topics, which I think it inherited from the book file.  The second chapter has both the index topics as well as index markers.  This made me think the problem was related to the index markers but not to index topics.

I deleted all the index markers (none in the first chapter, a couple dozen in the second).  The behavior was the same, and Publisher crashed.

I then deleted all the index markers from both chapters (again, these seemed to be inherited from the book file).  When I deleted them from each chapter file, I received a warning message that doing so would break the association with the book file.  I was pleased that I could break this association and did so.

After deleting the index topics and the index markers from the first two chapter files, I was able to build a new book file.  It did not crash.  That was progress.  Tomorrow, I'll go through all my chapter files, delete all the index topics and the index markers (which will break the association to the old book file).  I'll then try building a new book, without any indices.  From there I'll try building the ToC and will then trying build a very, very small index.

Hi, I'm not surprised the 2.0 book file didn't work but I am surprised that adding the second chapter to a new book file in 2.1 beta crashed.

[Wilx]

@MikeTO, @walt.farrell, @Pauls, @natecombsmedia

I've just finished testing Affinity Publisher 2 Beta (v2.1.0.1706), and I was unable to get the book Table of Contents.  After the Table of Contents failed, I did not continue in my plan to test a book Index.

Here's what I did:  I went through every chapter file (16 total) and deleted all Index Topics and all Index Marks.  This had the added effect of breaking the chapter file's link to the book file (which I what I wanted).  I also discovered that through synchronizing, multiple copies of my master page templates existed in each chapter file (as many as 5 copies in one chapter).  I deleted all the extra copies of the master pages, so that only one copy of each master page existed.  I then deleted the book file.

I then created a new book file and added all 16 chapter to it.  With this new book file, I was able to export a PDF copy of the book (with no Table of Contents nor Index).

Next, In the first chapter file, I went to my Table of Contents section.  I created a new Table of Contents.  This worked well, and the only ToC entry in that chapter file appeared.  Unfortunately, when I switched from a "Document" ToC to a "Book" ToC, the program crashed.  I tested the same process 5 times with the same results happening each time.  I captured this on video, which I've attached.

Mark

[MikeTO]

That's obviously a bad bug butwhat happens if you were to set the TOC scope to Book before inserting the TOC?

What if you open all the chapter files at the same time and then try to insert the TOC?

Cheers

[natecombsmedia]

Yeah, that really stinks, but I can't speak for the Mac version as I rarely use my laptop anymore. I think you answered my questions above, but you tried everything with new files, correct? I was curious if my issues came due to my 2.0 projects being several layers of books deep from a single origin V1 file in the same series from last year. Rather than saving all my presets or even copying elements over to a new document, I simply save new books in a series over older ones. I wonder if starting from scratch would help anything for me.

My other question...did you not ever use V1? If so, do you still have the V1 file you could just finalize instead?

Finally, I think you got the same results, but I was able to get a book (without a ToC) to eventually export. I often get crashing after my second chapter is added to the book. However, I am able to save right after adding it, so when I reopen, it is there. Then things seem fine.

When I made it to the export stage, some books were fine. My latest one, though, gave me a new insight. It seems Affinity 2.0 is still a slow thinker, like its whole left panel was built on and for an older OS. Exporting PDF will give me a wheel of death and spin and freeze and "not respond," but if I wait long enough for the preview to generate (like 3-4 minutes), everything goes back to normal and exports just fine.

_____

Side note, I am having a weird error where some PDFs display as single pages and some as a single page and then all two page spreads after. Can't tell where it is going wonky. Seems Google Drive may have something to do with it as files that start out fine might be the same file that appears wrong in gmail. Amazon needs single pages from Affinity to work properly.

[Pauls]

@WilxSorry for missing your post - our data retention policy doesn't meet your listed requirements. However I have recreated a crash in TOC and have logged an issue about it. I can recreate a crash switching between document and book scope

[RBH]

Using Chapters for a 250 page book.

Absolutely identical problems. 

Have moved everything to one document/file as Book function so unstable.

Great concept but not usable.

Only other problem I noticed if I apply a master to individual chapters then when moving from the Chapter list to pages the master pages always comes up then I need to click a page to start editing a page. Should be able to go straight to the pages rather than the master pages.

 

[DIYReisen]

Unfortunately, I have exactly the same problems as described above. My book has a TOC and each chapter has a separate TOC. Everything was working fine until I copied and added a chapter. Since then you can't do anything as soon as a chapter has been saved, after that the application hangs and the book can no longer be saved or to be worked with.

If I delete the global TOC, then the Publisher works again. But that can't be the solution, because I need a table of contents!

Edited March 5, 2023 by DIYReisen

[MikeTO]

3 hours ago, DIYReisen said:

Unfortunately, I have exactly the same problems as described above. My book has a TOC and each chapter has a separate TOC. Everything was working fine until I copied and added a chapter. Since then you can't do anything as soon as a chapter has been saved, after that the application hangs and the book can no longer be saved or to be worked with.

If I delete the global TOC, then the Publisher works again. But that can't be the solution, because I need a table of contents!

Hi, try working with a copy in the 2.1 beta in which there are major fixes for books. Note that if you save it from 2.1 beta you won't be able to re-open it in 2.0.4 so a backup of the Book and the Chapter files is critical.

Good luck!

[Wilx]

Just a quick update, as I little available time at the moment.

The latest beta version of Publisher has resolved most issues with the table of contents.  I’m seeing odd behavior when changing the formatting of ToC entries, and I’m seeing odd behavior when adding a second ToC in the same section (first ToC is sections, second ToC is tables).

Unfortunately, when I attempt to add a new index, the program hangs (previously it would crash).  Maybe this is an improvement?

I will make videos of these failures hopefully by early next week.

Mark

[Dave Dennis]

I'm finding this thread in Feb 2024, v2.3.1 and the book functionality is still buggy. It crashes the app when trying to add or edit a TOC for multi-chapter book.

Does the TOC work properly in a single document file? (i.e. entire book in one document)

[MikeTO]

2 hours ago, Dave Dennis said:

I'm finding this thread in Feb 2024, v2.3.1 and the book functionality is still buggy. It crashes the app when trying to add or edit a TOC for multi-chapter book.

Does the TOC work properly in a single document file? (i.e. entire book in one document)

Yes, the TOC works without crashing in a single document, this issue is presumably related to the Books feature.

Here's another thread on the same issue.