Flow wrong with Footnotes

[Bit Disappointed]

14 hours ago, philipt18 said:

Another video example of the bug when moving an image and the footnote hugs the image instead of staying at the bottom of the page (and forces text to the next page).

footnote-flow-bug.mov 12.18 MB · 2 downloads  

 

If anything is a candidate for a bug fix in Publisher 2.4.0, it's that particular bug. 

[philipt18]

On 12/17/2023 at 2:35 PM, Bit Arts said:

If anything is a candidate for a bug fix in Publisher 2.4.0, it's that particular bug. 

 

From your mouth to Serif's ears...

[philipt18]

I'm attaching another video. This one is really weird. Here you can see me moving an image just within the white space, and the footnotes change position, even though the text doesn't move at all.

 

 

[Hangman]

Hi @philipt18,

Based on your last example and screen recording I can replicate the issue, which appears to be a bug...

The issue initially 'appears' to relate to both a situation where the length of the footnote encroaches on the text wrap setting for the image irrespective of whether the 'Distance from Text' value is 0pt or more and/or the proximity of the image to the footnote marker in the main text, though in practice these may turn out to be the same issue...

To test the theory, if you shorten the footnote text for both footnotes 6 and 8 so the length of the footnote sits to the left of the image including any Text Wrap, 'Distance from Text' value and then move your image, do the footnotes remain fixed to the bottom of the frame as per the screen recording or do they still jump as before...

Text Wrap - Distance from Text | Left Offest is 0pt

 

Text Wrap - Distance from Text | Left Offest is 50pt

Note how the footnotes jump up based on the length of the footnotes relative to the left edge of the image when the 'Distance from Text' is increased from 0pt to 50pt.

[philipt18]

@DanC Did you see @Hangman's debugging of the issue? I hope this helps get it fixed soon.

[philipt18]

Here's another video showing the bug showing up by moving an image a single point up or down.

 

 

[Hangman]

On 12/25/2023 at 3:19 PM, philipt18 said:

Here's another video showing the bug showing up by moving an image a single point up or down.

Hi @philipt18,

This initially seems to be triggered as soon as a footnote exceeds two lines on any one individual page but this then gets debunked if you add an additional footnote on the second page that also exceeds two lines, at least up to a point...

[philipt18]

I'm finishing my book, and was making some adjustments to the word spacing, when tons of my footnotes disappeared. I'm begging Serif, please fix this bug in 2.5. Invisible footnotes, footnotes that don't stick to the bottom of the frame, footnotes that cling to inserted images, none of this should be happening.

[philipt18]

[philipt18]

@MikeTO@Dan C@Hangman Is there a way to get the invisible footnotes to show up? I can see the footnote layers that are invisible on the page? Is there something I can do to make them visible? I'm weeks from being ready to publish my book, but obviously cannot do so with missing footnotes. Of course I'd like the other footnote problems like not sticking to the bottom of the frame to be fixed, but I can't even review the document when I can't see dozens of the footnotes. Thanks.

[MikeTO]

4 hours ago, philipt18 said:

@MikeTO@Dan C@Hangman Is there a way to get the invisible footnotes to show up? I can see the footnote layers that are invisible on the page? Is there something I can do to make them visible? I'm weeks from being ready to publish my book, but obviously cannot do so with missing footnotes. Of course I'd like the other footnote problems like not sticking to the bottom of the frame to be fixed, but I can't even review the document when I can't see dozens of the footnotes. Thanks.

It's tricky and a bit frustrating. First, I search my book before publication to look for missing notes. I do this by applying a unique text style to the note body and then using Find to find all occurrences of that style. I click through the Find results and if it shows me a frame with no text I've found an invisible note.

Once I find one, I try to force Publisher into rendering it. It's easier for my Publisher manual because I'm using sidenotes and can often force it to make the note visible by adding a bunch of paragraph breaks to the end of the note. You don't have that option with a footnote. All you can do is fiddle with your text and hope that your fiddling solves it. I suggest first playing with breaking a paragraph, adding a blank line, and seeing what might make the note visible, and then when you have that, perhaps look at a slight wording change that reaches that same goal without extra white space. I know this isn't ideal but it's the best I can suggest for footnotes.

I only use footnotes in my family history book and had only one case of it when I published the last version - it took me half an hour to make that footnote show up without making a mess of the text.

You say you have dozens of invisible notes, that seems high. Of course which ones are invisible changes as your text reflows, which is why doing a final search for them is important. 

[philipt18]

1 hour ago, MikeTO said:

You say you have dozens of invisible notes, that seems high. Of course which ones are invisible changes as your text reflows, which is why doing a final search for them is important. 

 

Another reason I'd like to see some stats on footnotes, but I'm currently estimating that I have over 1200 footnotes in the book. So if only a few dozen are invisible that's not so bad percentage-wise, but it's still impossible for me to publish the book. I was hoping maybe there was something I could do with layer visibility, but I tried that, and couldn't get it to work. It's of course quite difficult to fiddle with the footnote text without being able to see it. Hoping this bug gets fixed sooner rather than later...

 

[philipt18]

Using your trick I searched for my footnote style, and there are 1233 results, so it looks like that's how many footnotes I have.

[fmommeja]

I'm sharing here some of my (cruel) experience with Affinity Publisher 2 footnotes, hoping this will help some people here until all this junk is fixed by Affinity Dev Team :

1. Never start from an imported .idml (Adobe Portable Format) document to place (import) .docx files with footnotes.

If you have no other choice, always create new text blocks (don't use existing ones) before placing .docx files in them.

In case you still have issues, create a new text block and copy-paste your text in it.

2. Once the import done – you may have some weird issues with paragraph and character styles on the way – I would advise you to use the Revert All Footnotes to Document Settings Note panel menu command to reapply all your footnotes settings.

Be brave ! 

[philipt18]

This might be the first time I've seen this, but it could be because it's the last page in a chapter, and I don't always have images on the last page, and now the text couldn't flow to the next page. Here you can see that with the image added the footnotes have moved up to the image, and the text has been pushed to the bottom of the page. Without the image, the footnotes show up normally at the bottom of the frame.

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, philipt18 said:

This might be the first time I've seen this, but it could be because it's the last page in a chapter, and I don't always have images on the last page, and now the text couldn't flow to the next page. Here you can see that with the image added the footnotes have moved up to the image, and the text has been pushed to the bottom of the page. Without the image, the footnotes show up normally at the bottom of the frame.

Is the image inline or floating with text wrap?

How are the notes positioned, Below Text, Bottom of Column, Bottom of Frame, or Below Frame? Could you share a screenshot of all of the note settings?

[philipt18]

6 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Is the image inline or floating with text wrap?

How are the notes positioned, Below Text, Bottom of Column, Bottom of Frame, or Below Frame? Could you share a screenshot of all of the note settings?

 

Floating, Bottom of Frame. I fixed it by moving some stuff around, but I believe I had to shorten some of the footnotes. It's very frustrating in the final weeks of putting together this book to have to deal with these issues. I really wish Serif would make AF-279 a priority. From what I can tell it's their oldest bug left to be fixed.

[philipt18]

In less than two weeks we can celebrate AF-279's first birthday. 🥳 🎉 🍾

[MikeTO]

If it's floating, where is the pin? It's not visible in your screenshot. Could you post another screenshot with the image selected so we can see the line to the pin?

It would be great if you could share that page as a test document. I tried to reproduce it but I can't figure out the combination that would result in this. It's got to be there but it has eluded me.

[philipt18]

You're right, it's not floating. I've never used the pinning panel. I just assumed since it wasn't inline, it was considered floating. I can try to set up sample document when I have time, but if it was so easy to reproduce, I would think Serif would have fixed in the past year.