Flow wrong with Footnotes

[philipt18]

I have some strange formatting issues with Footnotes. I have text where the only Flow setting is 'Prevent widowed last lines' but on one page there is a big blank space at the bottom of the page, about 8 lines worth of space. The line that is at the top of the next page has two footnotes, each a single line of text. There's no reason there shouldn't be more lines on the first page, and those footnotes also on that page. The next footnote isn't for another 10 lines or so. In theory there should be about 5 more lines on the first page, and the two footnotes underneath them. There doesn't seem to be any explanation for such a large gap on the page.

[MikeTO]

Could you share screenshots of the Paragraph > Flow Options settings for both the paragraph style of the body text and the paragraph style of the footnote text?

Thanks

[philipt18]

[philipt18]

Footnote inherits from Body, and only makes the font size smaller.

[MikeTO]

Thanks, I tried to duplicate this issue but wasn't successful. I think you may need to share a document that shows the problem. If you can't share it publicly then please wait for Serif to reply - they may provide a private URL to upload the document if they need to see it.

Good luck

[Dan C]

Hi @philipt18,

Thanks for your report!

As above, I too have been unable to replicate this issue in a new document - can you please attach a copy of your .afpub file that shows this issue to the below link for me?

https://www.dropbox.com/request/IuSrDndtGjjRfVLjxGNn

Once uploaded, please reply here to let me know. Many thanks in advance

[philipt18]

My layout changed but I found another instance of a strange layout, where the footnotes on the page are not at the bottom of the frame like they should be. Not sure its exactly the same issue, but it might be. Here you can see the left page has extra space at the bottom of the page, while the right page correctly has the footnotes at the bottom.

[philipt18]

I uploaded it, but I think it's too small. Is there a way to export a file with everything (images, fonts) embedded?

[Brian_J]

2 hours ago, philipt18 said:

Is there a way to export a file with everything (images, fonts) embedded?

Saving the files with the Save As Package command will create a folder that includes linked images and fonts.

https://affinity.help/publisher2/en-US.lproj/pages/Publishing/aboutPackaging.html

Alternatively, you can save a copy of the file to share and change all the linked images to embedded in the Resource Manager, and change the font to Arial.

[Dan C]

Thanks for providing this for me!

It appears as though the 'Prevent widowed last lines' Paragraph option is causing this in your file, disabling the option for these paragraphs seems to stop this from happening in my test.

I'm not 100% certain if this exact behaviour is expected however, as it does seem as though the paragraph and footnotes could be better split, without widowing the last line and therefore I will log this with our development team for further consideration.

I hope this helps

[philipt18]

Thank you.

[philipt18]

Ran into another anomaly. On one page I add a second footnote, and the first one disappears, and the second one doesn't show up at all. If I add a third footnote, the two new ones show up again. I assume the first one disappears because it is being pushed off to the next page. That's not a problem. The problem is the second footnote, that when it's added it shows a text field below the page number which makes no sense, and it doesn't show the second footnote at all. Definitely buggy.

[MikeTO]

42 minutes ago, philipt18 said:

Ran into another anomaly. On one page I add a second footnote, and the first one disappears, and the second one doesn't show up at all. If I add a third footnote, the two new ones show up again. I assume the first one disappears because it is being pushed off to the next page. That's not a problem. The problem is the second footnote, that when it's added it shows a text field below the page number which makes no sense, and it doesn't show the second footnote at all. Definitely buggy.

I think we have another thread for this issue. I recall debugging somebody's document and the footnote is there, just in the wrong place. Check the Layer panel - expand the text frame which will have child items for the footnotes. Click each footnote layer to see where it is.

This bug is fairly easy to reproduce but I can't recall if it's been properly reported. @Dan C Here's a test document and screenshot showing footnote #1 hidden behind the frame.

test.afpub

 

[philipt18]

I think I've run into the same issue that was in my original post. Here you can see a page on the left with 9 footnotes, and when I add a 10th footnote (to the selected text) the space that the 9 footnotes took up are left blank while only the one on the same line as the new one is moved to the next page. The other eight are all missing. I do indeed see them as sub-layers of the main text frame, but I don't know how to make them visible, and in any case it's a bug and it would be helpful to have it fixed. The above upload link doesn't work anymore, but if you want my file post another.

[philipt18]

Also, I wanted to point out that in the previous example, there is the added oddity that the text frame shows up in the wrong place, but then fixes itself when a third footnote is added. It's probably connected, but might be a slightly different issue.

[Dan C]

17 hours ago, MikeTO said:

I think we have another thread for this issue. I recall debugging somebody's document and the footnote is there, just in the wrong place.

Thanks Mike, I can confirm this has been logged with our team previously, however I have updated this development log with the sample document provided here and with a simpler workflow, to bring it to the teams attention once again

I believe this aforementioned bug is also causing the other oddities in your file philipt18, and therefore hopefully this is resolved by our devs shortly.

I hope this helps!

[philipt18]

Of course I'm continuing to run into these issues. For example, I'm adding an image to the middle of a page now, and a footnote is displayed under the image, instead of at the bottom of the page. The rest of the page is left blank. It's not like the other example where the blank space represents hidden comments. In this case, it's really just blank. If I move the image down a bit, things correct themselves – the footnote moves to the bottom, and a footnote that was pushed to the next page (because of the blank part of the page) is moved back to the first page. If I continue to move the image down, it actually triggers the other problem, where there is a hidden footnote, although it's still raised up below the image, leaving blank space below it. I guess these issues are all related.

I'm happy to use the beta version (I recently switched back to the main version after 2.1 finished beta testing). Is there any way to know when a bug fix will be rolled out? As you can imagine, it's a very frustrating bug. I'm happy to upload my current file if you want, since it's a very good example of multiple issues on one page, but I'd guess you have enough to work with. I'll stop posting images for this issue now.

[Dan C]

I'm certainly sorry to hear this @philipt18.

13 hours ago, philipt18 said:

Is there any way to know when a bug fix will be rolled out? As you can imagine, it's a very frustrating bug.

Unfortunately I'm unable to provide any exact timescales for when this may be resolved - however I have once again 'bumped' this issue with our team to bring it to their attention and request a resolution ASAP.

I appreciate your offer for further files but I do not believe this is required at this time. Should our developers need any further information, I will be sure to reply here.

Once the issue is resolved, you should see the 'Serif Info Bot' create an automatic post reply in this thread, confirming the Affinity app version number where the issue has been fixed.

I hope this clears things up & our apologies for any inconveniences caused due to this in the meantime.

[philipt18]

@Dan C, thanks. Just wanted to say that to me this is even worse than a crashing bug, as it's forcing me to have incorrect layouts all over the book I'm working on. When it is finally fixed I need to go back and re-check every page in the book and fix them. I am also dependent on this getting fixed, or switching applications, as it's impossible for me to publish the book with the problems this bug is causing. I'm basically continuing my work praying it will be fixed before I finish, but it will be a huge problem if I finish the 650+ pages and this is still not working.

[MattMadden]

I am in the exact same boat as @philipt18 and am equally concerned. It's now September and this bug, which still persists, is a no-go deal breaker for my 550 page publishing project with 400 footnotes, and if they don't fix it pretty soon I am facing the painful prospect of having to scrap it and start all over on an InDesign license.

[MikeTO]

@Dan C I didn't want to start a new thread for this but it's another note positioning issue. Unlike the one above, it's just temporary.

This text frame has three visible paragraphs and three notes - it's all correct. If I drag copy the frame then the blue third paragraph will be missing its second line with the note marker and the associated third footnote. Move the frame and the second line and marker appears as does the first line of the footnote. Move it again and the second line of the footnote appears. If I undo it's correct, it's just a temporary glitch.

I don't always get the same results when dragging this frame, sometimes it corrects itself in 2 moves instead of 3. The glitch can also be resolved by doing things like toggling show/hide overflow without moving the frame - there's no baseline grid at play here.

note test.afpub

 

 

 

 

[Dan C]

Thanks Mike, I agree this is seemingly related to the original report above and I'm able to replicate this here on Windows also - I'll update the development log with this now, as I cannot see any clear reason for this occurring currently

[philipt18]

I'm attaching a video which shows me repositioning an image, and the footnote immediately clings to the bottom of the image, even though the text below the image initially should be flowing around the image, and the footnote should remain at the bottom of the page.

[philipt18]

Here's another one, where it looks okay, but when I drag in an image, it messes everything up. It's similar to the above example where the footnote jumps up from the bottom even though it should stay there. In this case there is no place the image can be where the footnote displays properly. Even with the image at the top of the page, the footnote is still slightly up from the bottom of the page.

[philipt18]

I was just going back to change a footnote based on some new info I came across, and it appears to be one of the pages where all the footnotes are invisible. So I've added a video of that bug as well. I removed one sentence which made the footnotes reappear, and then in the video I paste the sentence back which makes them all disappear.