Anchors / PDF bookmarks order is not helpful

[Raorgen]

I'm so incredibly frustrated with the anchor / pdf bookmark system. The fact that the anchor panel is alphabetical rather than by order of appearance with no option to change it is really problematic. But the worse issue is that when it exports to pdf, the order is unpredictable. It's almost in the order or appearance in the document, but I always have a few bookmarks that are listed in a random place on the list. Anyone know how to reliably set the order the bookmarks will show in the pdf?

[Raorgen]

Ok, I think I have solve my own issue. Having Show Anchors turned on helps. When creating the anchor, if I bring up the context menu by right clicking inside the text frame, the anchor gets placed in the midst of the text. In this case, its order in the pdf gets messed up. If I create the anchor by selecting the text frame and then right clicking on the corner of the frame, the anchor is not visibly indicated. In this case, the order in the pdf comes in correctly (by order of appearance in the document).

[MikeTO]

12 hours ago, Raorgen said:

If I create the anchor by selecting the text frame and then right clicking on the corner of the frame, the anchor is not visibly indicated. In this case, the order in the pdf comes in correctly (by order of appearance in the document).

When you do this you're attaching the anchor to the text frame and not to the text in the text frame which is probably not what you want. An anchor attached to the frame will not move with the text as you edit it and it flows from page to page.

You can attach an anchor to any object in Publisher but the anchor symbol is shown only for text anchors. This is a known limitation.

Tip: Right clicking to create an anchor is a bit inefficient - if you're doing this a lot you should assign a keyboard shortcut to the menu command. I use Cmd+K for Hyperlink and Shift+Cmd+K for Anchor.

[Raorgen]

5 hours ago, MikeTO said:

When you do this you're attaching the anchor to the text frame and not to the text in the text frame which is probably not what you want. An anchor attached to the frame will not move with the text as you edit it and it flows from page to page.

You can attach an anchor to any object in Publisher but the anchor symbol is shown only for text anchors. This is a known limitation.

Tip: Right clicking to create an anchor is a bit inefficient - if you're doing this a lot you should assign a keyboard shortcut to the menu command. I use Cmd+K for Hyperlink and Shift+Cmd+K for Anchor.

The fact that it doesn't move with the text isn't a problem because I'm organizing my text by frames. Regardless, until they fix this bug of the bookmarks appearing out of order, this is the only way I've found to have confidence that the bookmarks will turn out properly.

[MikeTO]

5 hours ago, Raorgen said:

The fact that it doesn't move with the text isn't a problem because I'm organizing my text by frames. Regardless, until they fix this bug of the bookmarks appearing out of order, this is the only way I've found to have confidence that the bookmarks will turn out properly.

I tried a test and couldn't get Publisher to generate PDF bookmarks out of order. If you're able to, please upload a sample of your afpub file that exhibits this issue so one of us can review it.

Cheers

[Raorgen]

On 3/1/2023 at 10:25 PM, MikeTO said:

I tried a test and couldn't get Publisher to generate PDF bookmarks out of order. If you're able to, please upload a sample of your afpub file that exhibits this issue so one of us can review it.

Cheers

I pulled out a small excerpt from one of my files. In this example, the section called "Background" comes before the one called "Wealth" but in the pdf bookmarks, it's the other way around.

test1.afpub test1.pdf

[MikeTO]

4 hours ago, Raorgen said:

I pulled out a small excerpt from one of my files. In this example, the section called "Background" comes before the one called "Wealth" but in the pdf bookmarks, it's the other way around.

There are two text frames on that page - it's better just to use one and adjust the leading for the second heading. This wouldn't have happened with a single frame but if you want to use two frames, you could fix the order by changing the layer stack. Right now Wealth is below Background in the Layers panel. Move Wealth above Background and the PDF bookmarks will be reversed. Publisher always searches layers from the bottom to top of each page so this is expected behaviour.

Cheers

[Steve Grodz]

Hello, has the issue with bookmarks been fixed yet? Am I able to rearrange bookmarks in whatever order I want, rather than they being automatically in alphabetical and not able to be rearranged? 

[MikeTO]

9 hours ago, Steve Grodz said:

Hello, has the issue with bookmarks been fixed yet? Am I able to rearrange bookmarks in whatever order I want, rather than they being automatically in alphabetical and not able to be rearranged? 

There are no changes to bookmarks. They appear in the correct order when exported to PDF but not in the panel. They cannot be sorted.

[jeremy-w]

Quote

If you're able to, please upload a sample of your afpub file that exhibits this issue so one of us can review it.

@MikeTO I am attaching a one-page document that appears to be generating the bookmarks out of order. I have all the text flowed together (AFAICT), but for some reason, the text anchor at the very head of the document is being output as the last bookmark in the PDF file. The remainder are all in order, it's just this first one that's wrong.

Title H1 Bookmark Generated at End.afpub

[MikeTO]

7 hours ago, jeremy-w said:

@MikeTO I am attaching a one-page document that appears to be generating the bookmarks out of order. I have all the text flowed together (AFAICT), but for some reason, the text anchor at the very head of the document is being output as the last bookmark in the PDF file. The remainder are all in order, it's just this first one that's wrong.

Hi Jeremy and welcome to the forums.

Publisher generates PDF bookmarks from anchors on a page based on the layer stack order, not the visual appearance of the page. If you want that last bookmark to be first, just make it the bottom layer with the Layers panel.

Cheers

[jeremy-w]

12 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Publisher generates PDF bookmarks from anchors on a page based on the layer stack order, not the visual appearance of the page.

Thanks, that fixed it! I thought text frame flow dominated, but I guess that’s just for multiple anchors within a frame. I’ll be paying more attention to layer ordering in future.

[The Grey Elf]

On 12/19/2023 at 12:14 PM, bbrother said:

Welcome on the forum @fieldworking

If I understand correctly, you mean the order of the top-level bookmarks in the anchor panel. Then you should know a few things:

• Bookmarks are ordered alphabetically by title in this panel.
• Even though the order in the anchors panel is different comparing to TOC they will be generated in correct order in the PDF.
• Durning the export they are generated in the so-called "document order" (the order in which they appear in document), reflecting the child-parent relationship, if you set the indent level in the TOC panel.

 

I hope this cleared things up a bit for you. Best regards and Merry Christmas fieldworking

 

 

On 10/8/2023 at 10:28 AM, MikeTO said:

There are no changes to bookmarks. They appear in the correct order when exported to PDF but not in the panel. They cannot be sorted.

They absolutely do NOT appear in the correct order when exported to PDF. Especially when you use the Book function. They appear within each chapter correctly, but in alphabetical order instead of chronological order. This is absolutely unacceptable when trying to bookmark a PDF for wide release. It makes the PDF bookmarks completely unusable. 

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, The Grey Elf said:

They absolutely do NOT appear in the correct order when exported to PDF. Especially when you use the Book function. They appear within each chapter correctly, but in alphabetical order instead of chronological order. This is absolutely unacceptable when trying to bookmark a PDF for wide release. It makes the PDF bookmarks completely unusable. 

Are you able to provide a sample document illustrating the problem you're experiencing?

I'm unsure what you mean by chronological order but anchors are never sorted when exported as PDF bookmarks. Is the main text on each page, including the headlines, all in the same text frame? If you're using separate text frames for headlines then you have to pay attention to the stack order - all the anchors in the bottom object on the page will be listed before the anchors in the next object in the stack order, not from the visual top of the page to the visual bottom of the page.

[The Grey Elf]

This is kind of ridiculous and should not be rocket science. No, I cannot provide a document right now as I'm working on layouts on a proprietary book for sale. In Publisher 1 when I exported a PDF, the bookmarks automatically generated from the table of contents, using the headers in the text, and were nested and ordered PROPERLY, exactly as the TOC is. 

In Affinity 2, it kicks them out within each individual chapter, then puts them in alphabetical order instead of chronological. That makes bookmarks in a PDF utterly worthless. 

So far I have seen nothing in Affinity 2 that has been an improvement, and given how much I paid for the (forced, mind you) upgrade, I'm more than a little irritated. This is what happens when software engineers try to fix what wasn't broken to begin with, just so they can upcharge loyal users. 

[MikeTO]

I thought I'd tested this and it worked fine. It certainly works fine when not using the Books feature and as far as I know, nobody else has reported this before.

But I created a test book with a couple of chapters and when I generated the TOC, it did exactly as you stated, it collapsed the anchor hierarchy and alphabetized the bookmarks in the PDF file when exporting. This is indeed a serious issue. I'll post a bug report for you.

In the meantime, I can think of only two workarounds:

1. Don't use the Books feature. Merge all the files together and it will work fine.
2. This will be tedious but put the TOC in a front matter chapter without any actual headings in the TOC, or in a separate chapter just for the TOC. Update the TOC and save everything. Then close the Book and:
   1. Add a temporary text frame in chapter 1. Insert a TOC and the anchors will be corrected. Delete the temporary text frame and save the chapter.
   2. Repeat the above step for each remaining chapter.
   3. But the next time you need to update the actual TOC, you will need to repeat all of these steps.

Good luck.

[MikeTO]

I found another workaround. The bug only occurs if the TOC isn't in the first chapter with headings included in the TOC. I assume your TOC is in a front matter document. If you merge your front matter and chapter 1 documents, it should work properly.

[MikeTO]

Bug report here: 

 

[The Grey Elf]

The book function is absolutely a nightmare. This is the first time I've tried to use this function and it messes things up all over the place. It was clearly rolled out without any sort of proper beta testing. Alas, I'm now 2/3 of the way into the book, and if I go back at this point it's a factor of redoing the layout from square one. 

Lesson learned. 

 

(Also, FWIW, I'm on Windows, not Mac. Not sure if that makes a difference). 

[MikeTO]

You can work around the issue fairly easily by moving the TOC into the first chapter with a heading as I suggested.

Or you could easily merge the chapters of your Book together as a single document, it wouldn't take more than a few minutes.

[The Grey Elf]

2 hours ago, MikeTO said:

You can work around the issue fairly easily by moving the TOC into the first chapter with a heading as I suggested.

Or you could easily merge the chapters of your Book together as a single document, it wouldn't take more than a few minutes.

Unfortunately it's not that easy. Firstly, the ToC IS in my first chapter, the introductory chapter, and DOES have a header, so that doesn't work.
 
Secondly, once you create a book, it links all the files you import into the book together, tying them all to the formatting of a single anchor chapter. They cannot then be easily disconnected without messing up the layout for every single chapter, which will then have to be redone from scratch.