Overflow of the text frame

[Pyanepsion]

v. 2.0.4.1701

Hello everyone,

Text frame overflow can cause serious problems when correcting a work. However, some situations have been omitted.

Characters such as the end of a paragraph or the end of a section are not detected, making it difficult to detect the original location of the overflow. Imagine a book with several linked pages, each containing a frame of overflowing text. You would have to go through all the pages to locate the initial error, a tedious and time-consuming task. It is therefore crucial to take into account the text frame overflow to avoid such complications.

To reproduce the text frame overflow malfunction, follow these steps:

1. Create a document containing two or more text frames
2. Add a paragraph or a section of text at the end of one of the frames (here, yellow)
3. Add two line breaks after the added text
4. Delete the added text
5. Shorten the text frame so that it no longer contains two empty line breaks and end section.
6. Link the shortened frame to another text frame (here, grey)
7. Check that the linked frame is now overflowing
8. Check that this can cause correction problems in a book if it is not detected at its origin (line break and end of section).

These steps will allow you to reproduce the text frame overflow malfunction, which can cause difficulties when correcting a work, especially in detecting the initial location of the overflow.

[MikeTO]

I don't think this is a bug but perhaps a feature request. I believe the Preflight check for overflowing text is working as designed, although the Help page appears to describe an older version since it's missing some options. Perhaps if somebody from Serif reads this the information below could be shared with the writers.

Publisher displays

to indicate that there is no overflowing text

to indicate that there is hidden overflowing text

to indicate that there is visible overflowing text which occurs when Hide Overflow is off in the Text Frame panel

to indicate that there is hidden overflowing white space (paragraph returns, line breaks)

to indicate that there is visible overflowing white space which occurs when Hide Overflow is off in the Text Frame panel

I think the issue you're reporting is that overflowing white space such as a paragraph return or line break, which displays as blue icons, does not trigger a Preflight warning or error. I think this is as designed because Preflight is intended to save you from printing errors and overflowing white space won't cause a printing error. I think most users wouldn't want a Preflight error for a few blank lines at the end of a story because it won't affect printing.

I understand that it is an issue if you want to link the frames and weren't aware that the author had left a lot of white space at the end. However, you could find the blank lines through this other Preflight check:

You could also find them with Find & Replace. In reality, you'd have to deal with this anyway - we can't expect to link two frames and not have to check that it's correct. Some stories might end with a trailing paragraph return and some might not so we have to check every time you link two stories.

There is a feature enhancement Serif could consider. Preflight could have two levels of "Overflowing Text" in Preflight, one for overflowing characters (red icons) and one for overflowing white space (blue icons). By default, overflowing characters could be set to Error and overflowing white space could be set to Disabled which you could then change to Warning or Error as desired.

Cheers

[Pyanepsion]

There is no doubt that this was not the result of a bug, but rather a confusion on my part. I was misled by the use of the colour blue, which is generally considered in our cultures to be a simple indicator rather than a warning.

It then appears that ‘Hidden overflowing white space (paragraph returns, line breaks)’ and ‘visible overflowing white space which occurs when Hide Overflow is off in the Text Frame panel’ could indeed be considerably improved by using colours more in line with standard colour codes. By changing the blue colour, we could avoid such misunderstandings in the future and significantly improve the user experience.

[Pauls]

makes sense to add this to preflight I've raised an issue for it