Automatic numbering of figures / tables and cross referencing in Publisher

[Andrea Borsic]

Hey Guys,

You are doing an amazing job in offering an alternative to what (possibly was) the substantial monopoly of Adobe. I have licenses for Photo, Designer and Publisher version 1 and 2, and I use them professionally to develop literature and brochures for my startup in the medical devices field.

While the applications are snappy, the GUI well organized, and a pleasure to use, I cannot consider using Publisher for serious projects. In my work I need to produce documents and reports with 20 to 50 figures; manually numbering them and hard-coding the reference number in the text would be a folly, if one single figure is removed, it would take hours to update the document. I believe this sentiment is shared by other users. It would be really nice if this feature is given a high priority and appears in the product sometime soon.

I wish you every success in your business, we need you to succeed 🙂

Best Regards,

Andrea

 

 

[walt.farrell]

You can number figures automatically, using the Bullets and Numbering functions in the Paragraph panel or Paragraph Text Styles, in either V1 or V2. 

Cross-references have just been added in the 2.1 Beta, but I haven't played with them enough yet to know if they'll work for your purposes.

[Andrea Borsic]

Thank you for your post Walt.

I will check out the cross-referencing. Good to hear it is there. If it is not perfect now, it will work well soon I suppose.

Best,

Andrea

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, Andrea Borsic said:

I will check out the cross-referencing. Good to hear it is there. If it is not perfect now, it will work well soon I suppose.

If you want to automatically number your tables or figures and then cross reference them, you'll be able to do that with 2.1. I just tried it and it worked great except for one bug which I'll report. If you want an automatic table of figures then you'll have to use the Index feature but you can still have only one index.

[MikeTO]

Please ignore this reply - I reposted it to the 2.1 beta forum: 

 

This bug will result in some of my cross references being wrong. If the anchor for a cross reference is at the top of a frame that is linked to a frame on a previous page, the cross reference will be to the page of the previous frame and not of the frame containing the anchor. In the attached document, a frame on page 1 is linked to a frame on page 4. There is an anchor as the first character on page 4 and when it is cross referenced the field displays as page 1. The panels show that Publisher knows it's on page 4 prior to insertion but on page 1 after insertion.

cr test.afpub

  

 

Edited March 15, 2023 by MikeTO
Linked to 2.1 beta forum

[Andrea Borsic]

Hi Mike,

Thanks so much for this information !

Andrea

[MikeTO]

21 hours ago, Andrea Borsic said:

Hi Mike,

Thanks so much for this information !

Andrea

I realized later that I didn't explain the trick to doing this. Each figure's caption needs to be a text frame linked to all the other figures' caption frames. This isn't hard to do, just create all of them and then click through the document linking them together. But if you change the order of the figures then you'll have to break the links and re-link them. Likewise, adding and removing a figure will require care. But the cross references do the trick so it works fine. Cheers.

[walt.farrell]

11 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

Each figure's caption needs to be a text frame linked to all the other figures' caption frames.

What does that linking accomplish, Mike?

[MikeTO]

13 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

What does that linking accomplish, Mike?

The linking is to get automatic figure numbering which can be done with regular paragraph numbering but if you can live without that then you don't have to link the frames. Here's a quick test doc showing what I'm talking about. Note that the cross reference page numbers are incorrect because of the anchor at the top of the frame bug in beta 1713/1714.

figures.afpub

[walt.farrell]

55 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

The linking is to get automatic figure numbering which can be done with regular paragraph numbering

But you don't need linked Text Frames for that. You just check the Global option in Bullets & Numbering, and supply a Name. Then anything using that Name shares common numbering.

[MikeTO]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

But you don't need linked Text Frames for that. You just check the Global option in Bullets & Numbering, and supply a Name. Then anything using that Name shares common numbering.

Oh, I've never noticed that feature before. That is very cool.

[SonjaThompson]

I realize that Serif sometimes ditches features they don't feel are worth continuing, and migrating documents has always been troublesome that way, so I have used the glitzy features sparingly for publications, but consider this:  cross-referencing is not a glitzy feature that can be ditched -- it's an essential element of writing itself.  The biggest point of automated tools is to avoid making users go crazy with trying to keep up with changes -- like page numbers and cross-referencing to those pages whenever our documents change.

I just went through a full migration of a book to Affinity Publisher before I realized that the cross-referencing is ...(I'm rolling my eyeballs here) ... absent where I need it.  I need to cross-reference to headers within chapters, illustrations, etc. -- at a finer level than sections.  PagePlus did it, and I quote:  "PagePlus allows you to cross-reference to headings and achored text, tables, pictures, or diagrams...numbered paragraphs, footnotes/endnotes, and next/previous frames..."  At least that much needs to exist in Affinity Publisher, and I can't help but wonder what else is missing!?  Forgive me if I'm feeling beguiled -- I just suffer from "expectations."

The section manager is iffy, anyway.  It's not tied to a point in the text.  So when I add text to front matter that uses small Roman numerals and it pushes out the start of next section, the next section's Arabic page numbering starts inside the front matter instead of at Chapter 1, and when I subtract text that moves the next section back, Chapter 1 starts with a small Roman numeral.  If there are a lot of sections with different numbering schemes, the Section Manager can be a tedious chore to maintain.  Frankly, I don't like the tediousness of maintaining even a few, over and over and over again.  In fact, I'm likely to forget to do it "one last time" as I get to a hard publishing deadline, and end up looking bad.

I have to agree with Andrea Borsic at the head of this topic: "While the applications are snappy, the GUI well organized, and a pleasure to use, I cannot consider using Publisher for serious projects."  Snappy GUIs are secondary to supporting the essentials that writers require, which must be present to take a Publishing product seriously.  This is a serious problem that I hope Affinity Publisher developers will take seriously with high priority.  In the meantime, I guess it's a mere toy -- I shall endeavor to keep my expectations low, and use something else for serious work.

Edited March 22, 2023 by SonjaThompson

[MikeTO]

3 hours ago, SonjaThompson said:

The section manager is iffy, anyway.  It's not tied to a point in the text.  So when I add text to front matter that uses small Roman numerals and it pushes out the start of next section, the next section's Arabic page numbering starts inside the front matter instead of at Chapter 1, and when I subtract text that moves the next section back, Chapter 1 starts with a small Roman numeral.  If there are a lot of sections with different numbering schemes, the Section Manager can be a tedious chore to maintain.  Frankly, I don't like the tediousness of maintaining even a few, over and over and over again.

I agree that the section manager could be improved but there is a way to use it successfully for a long and complex books - simply create a separate story for each section. If you add more pages in your front matter then the starting page for section 1 will move. I have no difficulties using the section manager with this approach.

3 hours ago, SonjaThompson said:

I need to cross-reference to headers within chapters, illustrations, etc. -- at a finer level than sections.  PagePlus did it, and I quote:  "PagePlus allows you to cross-reference to headings and achored text, tables, pictures, or diagrams...numbered paragraphs, footnotes/endnotes, and next/previous frames..."  At least that much needs to exist in Affinity Publisher, and I can't help but wonder what else is missing!?  Forgive me if I'm feeling beguiled -- I just suffer from "expectations."

Publisher has long had cross references to next/previous frame. It now has cross references to anchors and text, including heading text, numbered paragraph text, table text, and footnote/endnote text. While it doesn't explicitly have cross references to pictures or diagrams, you will likely have a caption for those and the caption can be cross referenced. So everything you listed you can do with Publisher 2.1. I have just cross referenced an entire book in beta 1730 and while I have offered a lot of suggestions, the feature works very well.

Regards

[SonjaThompson]

12 hours ago, MikeTO said:

I agree that the section manager could be improved but there is a way to use it successfully for a long and complex books - simply create a separate story for each section. If you add more pages in your front matter then the starting page for section 1 will move. I have no difficulties using the section manager with this approach.

Publisher has long had cross references to next/previous frame. It now has cross references to anchors and text, including heading text, numbered paragraph text, table text, and footnote/endnote text. While it doesn't explicitly have cross references to pictures or diagrams, you will likely have a caption for those and the caption can be cross referenced. So everything you listed you can do with Publisher 2.1. I have just cross referenced an entire book in beta 1730 and while I have offered a lot of suggestions, the feature works very well.

Regards

1) Ah, well, that could solve my problem.  I'm on 2.0.4!

2) What do you mean by "separate story"?  A separate text box?  Or create a book with chapters as separate files instead of one long text?

Edited March 22, 2023 by SonjaThompson
Found solution to 1)

[walt.farrell]

19 minutes ago, SonjaThompson said:

How do I get to 2.1?

2.1 is only in beta test at the moment, and should not be used for Production. Also, files saved in 2.1 cannot be opened in 2.0.

However, to participate: 

 

[walt.farrell]

20 minutes ago, SonjaThompson said:

What do you mean by "separate story"? 

"Story" is a technical term which denotes a set of linked Text Frames. 

[SonjaThompson]

5 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

"Story" is a technical term which denotes a set of linked Text Frames. 

Sounds simple enough.  I can work with that.  Happy again!  Thanks!!!

Edited March 22, 2023 by SonjaThompson