Text is not filling frame

[Eric Stoltz]

Any idea why the text is flowing to the next frame but leaving such a large space (indicated by two red boxes)? How do I compact the flowing text to eliminate these gaps? (Third large gap is purposeful to start new page!) I'm on Mac OS and did not insert any page or column breaks.

 

Edited January 15, 2023 by Eric Stoltz

[Old Bruce]

Off the top of my head Turn on Text > Show Special Characters. Could be a frame or column break in there. You may need to set an offset in the Text Frame in order to see these if they are present.

Place the text caret in the paragraph and look for Space After and or Space Before.

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

Typically, this might be because:

• There's a Page Break or Frame Break character there in the text. Text > Show Special Characters might help you see that.
  or
• You're using the paragraph Flow options Keep With or Keep Together set in your Paragraph Text Styles or via the Paragraph panel. But without a sample .afpub document it would be difficult to say any more about that.

[Eric Stoltz]

I checked special characters and no breaks. I tried playing with Keep With and Keep Together but that just created big gaps in other places. I've attached the file. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Ancestors.afpub

[MikeTO]

Hi Eric. Edit the Normal style and change Paragraph > Flow Options > Keep With Next from 1 line to 0 lines. That should solve the problem.

Cheers

[walt.farrell]

8 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Edit the Normal style and change Paragraph > Flow Options > Keep With Next from 1 line to 0 lines. That should solve the problem.

I played with that on individual paragraphs, and it made no difference. But I didn't try changing the style itself, so perhaps I just didn't go far enough in my individual adjustments. Thanks.

The Flow options can have wide-ranging effects, beyond where one thinks they might have an effect.

[MikeTO]

49 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I played with that on individual paragraphs, and it made no difference. But I didn't try changing the style itself, so perhaps I just didn't go far enough in my individual adjustments. Thanks.

The Flow options can have wide-ranging effects, beyond where one thinks they might have an effect.

I changed it on the paragraph including footnote 26 and the following paragraph and all of the first paragraph was now on the page that has the big blank in it, along with footnotes 24-26. But while that solved the problem, it wasn't the right solution.

The clue was that footnotes 24-26 all moved together. So instead of changing Paragraph > Flow Options > Keep With Next from 1 line to 0 lines for the Normal paragraph style, it should be changed for the Footnote Adapted style. The footnotes were being glue together in a clump.

[Eric Stoltz]

Thanks so much @MikeTO that did it! Awesome! I also see that the footnote style was somehow applied to the body, so that was an additional issue.

Last question: anyone have any idea why the second footnote separator on the first page is so different (longer, wider) than the footnote separator on all the other pages?

[Old Bruce]

12 minutes ago, Eric Stoltz said:

Last question: anyone have any idea why the second footnote separator on the first page is so different (longer, wider) than the footnote separator on all the other pages?

Conventional perhaps. Just guessing that there might be a setting for line length for a Continued footnote.

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, Eric Stoltz said:

Last question: anyone have any idea why the second footnote separator on the first page is so different (longer, wider) than the footnote separator on all the other pages?

I think you've discovered a new bug. Here's a test document for Serif to demonstrate it. In this example, the document-wide setting for notes is the chunky dashed red rule. When Note 1 is split between the left and middle frames (type one more word at the end of that long first note), it is continued with a full-width solid black rule. As far as I can tell, there is no way to make that rule the same as the document-wide setting and Publisher should be continuing the note with the same rule settings.

Note Rule.afpub

Before the note is split

After the note is split

Edited January 16, 2023 by MikeTO
Corrected and added test doc

[Eric Stoltz]

Thanks! Glad to learn I am not going insane!

[Dan C]

18 hours ago, MikeTO said:

I think you've discovered a new bug. Here's a test document for Serif to demonstrate it. In this example, the document-wide setting for notes is the chunky dashed red rule.

Thanks for the file provided MikeTO, I've opened this document here and I can replicate the same behaviour when adding a new word to the end of the first note - however it doesn't appear as though you've edited the document-wide setting, for me this shows as a Custom setting for these 2 notes only, hence when the third is added the document default is used:

 

Note you need to set the Document-wide options with no text frames/notes selected, as if you already have an active selection then you are only editing the local, custom rule.

Can you please confirm the steps you took to create this file, assuming this shows as a document-wide option for you?

[Old Bruce]

Try a change in the Continued Rule settings.

[Eric Stoltz]

@Old Bruce Thanks so much! That solved it.

[MikeTO]

6 hours ago, Dan C said:

Thanks for the file provided MikeTO, I've opened this document here and I can replicate the same behaviour when adding a new word to the end of the first note - however it doesn't appear as though you've edited the document-wide setting....

Can you please confirm the steps you took to create this file, assuming this shows as a document-wide option for you?

Sorry, I made this test document a dozen times and forgot that in this version. However, it didn't make a difference. But...

4 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

Try a change in the Continued Rule settings.

Bruce had the answer - I'd never noticed that there was a separate Continued Note rule setting.

I'm not a fan of this UI approach because the Rule Before control is not being used to select a formatting option but what the following controls apply to, as a way to reduce the size of the panel. I think most people would want the same rule formatting for both rules in the case of a split note and this UI design will require them to set the formatting twice. It's like an eCommerce checkout flow that forces you to enter the same address twice for billing and shipping. It might have been better to use a checkbox such as "Use same formatting for continued split note" and when unchecked a second set of formatting controls would appear.

I also noticed a tiny bug, probably macOS specific - the bottom third of the Stroke Style colour well isn't clickable.

Cheers

[Dan C]

Thanks for verifying that for me Mike, I certainly understand and I can see how this dialog could be improved - I'll be sure to log this as an improvement with our devs now

19 hours ago, MikeTO said:

I also noticed a tiny bug, probably macOS specific - the bottom third of the Stroke Style colour well isn't clickable.

I can confirm this has been recently logged as a bug, I'll be sure to 'bump' this with your report also!