(AF Publisher v2 desktop Mac) "Show/Hide" menu controls... don't

[Mike Swartzbeck]

Finally trying out Publisher. Nice to see it'll import pdf's as layout files, not nice to see it can't import my Creative Suite 6 .indd InDesign files.

Even less nice to see that most of the Show/Hide toggles in the view window... well, just don't work. They just don't. I was able to turn off margins, bleed, guides, text flow — but when going to toggle them back on? "ZFG", says Publisher.

Ouch.

[Mike Swartzbeck]

27 minutes ago, Mike Swartzbeck said:

Finally trying out Publisher. Nice to see it'll import pdf's as layout files, not nice to see it can't import my Creative Suite 6 .indd InDesign files.

Even less nice to see that most of the Show/Hide toggles in the view window... well, just don't work. They just don't. I was able to turn off margins, bleed, guides, text flow — but when going to toggle them back on? "ZFG", says Publisher.

Ouch.

Excuse the self reply; a quick update: the Show/Hide menu issue re: margins, bleed, guides etc only appears to crop up when trying to work with an imported pdf. A new, fresh document doesn't have this issue.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, Mike Swartzbeck said:

not nice to see it can't import my Creative Suite 6 .indd InDesign files

The .indd files have a proprietary format that Publisher can't understand. You'll need to convert them to IDML format.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, Mike Swartzbeck said:

Excuse the self reply; a quick update: the Show/Hide menu issue re: margins, bleed, guides etc only appears to crop up when trying to work with an imported pdf. A new, fresh document doesn't have this issue.

Can you clarify what you mean by an "imported" PDF? Can you share a .afpub file where you can't turn these items on?

[MikeTO]

5 hours ago, Mike Swartzbeck said:

Even less nice to see that most of the Show/Hide toggles in the view window... well, just don't work. They just don't. I was able to turn off margins, bleed, guides, text flow — but when going to toggle them back on? "ZFG", says Publisher.

Can you clarify whether the menu command is not becoming selected when you choose it or whether it appears to have no effect?

I can't duplicate any issues with these commands with imported PDF files.

[Mike Swartzbeck]

On 5/5/2023 at 9:15 PM, MikeTO said:

Can you clarify whether the menu command is not becoming selected when you choose it or whether it appears to have no effect?

I can't duplicate any issues with these commands with imported PDF files.

The menu command seems to select normally, but appears to have no effect.

Strangely, a fresh .afpub file created for a test behaved OK. I observed this in an imported .pdf exported from Adobe InDesign CS6. Everything seemed to import OK, but when I turned off the margin guides, I couldn't get them to come back on again. The menu would show as selected, but I never could get them to show again. I think I was still able to toggle the text frames/flow outlines.

The document I imported was at least 8 years old; maybe that might have had something to do with it...? A 7 or 8 year-old InDesign CS6 print-ready PDF export? (turns out AFpublisher won't open my old .indd files, and needs them saved out in some exotic format I've never heard of. Was hoping to not have to drag the old Intel MacBook Pro out and fire up CS6)

[MikeTO]

I doubt the age of the InDesign document has anything to do with it but you might look in Document Setup > Margins to see if the margins are somehow being set to 0 when turned off.

Whenever somebody says that turning on margin guides has no effect I assume the margins are set to 0 so the guides are visible but on the page border.

Good luck

[walt.farrell]

You mentioned "importing" a PDF, @Mike Swartzbeck.

That's a bit unclear as terminology. Do you mean that you Opened it, or that you Placed it into an existing document?

If you Opened it, then it would not have Margins or Guides in the first place, and it would not matter whether you had View Guides or View Margins active, or not.