Crashing on zoom tool and when adding geometry

[Ally_B]

Hey guys! I'm using Publisher 2 on a client project, as it's a low-cost method instead of the standard Adobe subscription. Plus, it spreads the word of your awesomeness! I'm using the latest download of Publisher, as I just installed it on a new laptop yesterday. On both the new graphically capable laptop (NVIDIA 3060 on a Ryzen 7 CPU) and my older Microsoft Surface Book 2, I have the same crash. When using the zoom tool (as opposed to control + scroll zoom) on and off and when adjusting graphic elements by adding geometry and then inserting text into the newly standardized element, I tend to get the "not responding" white out and have to force-quit the process and re-open the document.

I'm on a Windows 11 ASUS ROG Zepherus G15 and the latest version of Publisher 2, professional license. I cannot provide screen shots or files due to confidentiality constraints.

[Dan C]

Hi @Ally_B,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums & sorry to hear you're experiencing crashing!

10 hours ago, Ally_B said:

I have the same crash. When using the zoom tool (as opposed to control + scroll zoom) on and off

I can confirm that this is a known issue in the current version, which has been fixed in our latest beta update (2.1).

We are working to release this 2.1 update very shortly, so you are welcome to either install the beta version alongside your retail version using the information found in the below post and use a copy of your current document to avoid this in the meantime, or alternatively you can wait until this update is released where you should find the crashing is resolved.

10 hours ago, Ally_B said:

when adjusting graphic elements by adding geometry and then inserting text into the newly standardized element, I tend to get the "not responding" white out and have to force-quit the process and re-open the document.

However I have not had the above issue reported previously to my knowledge, so I'd like to request some further information here. Can you please confirm:

• Does this occur in multiple files (including a new, blank document) or in specific files only?
• Does the font in use for the text object change this behaviour, or does this happen for any font?
• How long do you wait during the 'Not-responding' period before closing the app? (of course we would not expect this to occur for basic functionality, simply I am interested to know if the app can ever recover on it's own)
• What are your settings under Edit > Preferences > Performance? (a screenshot of this dialog would be helpful)

Many thanks in advance 

[Ally_B]

Heya Dan!

The crashing does seemed to have stopped with the new build, so yay!

Re: the second issue: I have not had the white-out re-occur, so I'm hoping that was perhaps related to my former (RIP) work laptop, a Microsoft Surface Book 2. In that specific instance, I was only using two fonts in the document, and I was only working on one document that was approximately 20 pages with 30 or so images. (Less than 20MB in size.) So I did not test it on a new document. The fonts did not change behavior in any way.

As for your second two questions, that brings up the related issue I noticed: When Publisher 2 goes into "not responding" mode (lightened screen color and spinning circle of death cursor), the CPU usage continuing to fluctuate in the 10-15% range. It usually shows "not responding" in the top bar and the Task Manager, though not always. This was ongoing this past week, even on a new laptop with solid graphic design specs (Asus Zephyrus G15 with Ryzen 7 and NVIDIA 3060, 16GB RAM). While the crashing has lessened on my new laptop, it does still crash on occasion. When possible, I left it sit for up to 10 minutes, and it continued to show CPU usage but the spinning circle cursor and "not responding". I finally had to end task it, as I'm a freelancer working on site . Gotta make hay while the sun shines, as they say.

Due to the limited RAM on my laptop, I have not touched the performance options--they are sitting on the default options. I have to use Adobe products in parallel, so I try to only adjust one program if I can, so as to prevent over-taxing due to my limited knowledge of balancing resources. Adobe being a resource hog on a good day, I only adjust those programs as needed.

Of the dozen or so times it crashed this week, however, only twice did it show zero CPU usage (had a lightened screen and circle cursor). But when this happened, at no point did it show "not responding" in the top bar. I found this odd, so that's why I'm pointing it out. Perhaps someone else may report the same thing...or maybe it's something unique to my setup. I don't know.

The good news, no matter how often it did this, the crash file was always available upon startup, so I did not lose much work. Yay for that feature!!

If I can provide more info, I'm happy to. Sorry for the verbosity, but I know sometimes it's the dumb details that are useful. As I haven't had it crash nearly as often on my desktop PC, which has 32GB RAM and the PC version of the NVIDIA 3060, I suspect it's related to resources. However, I've never had a program be so inconsistent with whether it reported as not responding, which does seem like an oddity unique to Pub 2.

All my devices are running on the latest Windows 11 build (1702), with my PC running Windows 11 Pro N and my laptop running Windows 11 Home. Both have the latest Pub 2 licensed version (2.1.0).

 

[Dan C]

That's wonderful to hear - many thanks for letting me know and my apologies for the delayed response!

In regards to the crashing you're still occasionally experiencing, I'd recommend the following:

• Ensure that your Nvidia 3060 drivers are fully up-to-date, directly from Nvidias website.
• Under Edit > Settings > Performance within Affinity, ensure that the RAM usage limit is set to 16384 MB (as your laptop has 16GBs of RAM, though this should be the default value for your config)
• Under Edit > Settings > Performance within Affinity, try disabling Hardware Acceleration and restart the app as prompted.

If you continue to experience these 'hard crashes' (ie no not-responding shown) then please do let me know and we can request a few crash reports from your machine for further inspection.

I hope this helps