Breaking a link between text frames, but keeping text where it is

[philipt18]

Is there a way to break the flow between two text frames, but to keep the text as is? i.e. whatever is currently in the text frames stays in the frames they are in?

[MikeTO]

Hi Philip, Affinity doesn't offer a split flow feature at this time.

[walt.farrell]

No simple way.

You might put the cursor at the beginning of the second frame (that is, after the intended break), then select everything to the end (on Windows, Ctrl+Shift+End), then Cut, then break the link, then Paste.

[philipt18]

I guess I will work my way back from the last chapter to the first, copying out one chapter at a time. It would be nice if there was a way to copy specific pages into a new document, but I guess not. Some flexibility on moving documents into the Book format would be nice.

[philipt18]

Hmmm. I copied the text from the last chapter, and pasted it into a new document. It did retain the footnotes, which is good, but the images in that chapter were not transferred. I guess there isn't a simple way to keep the images in place when moving the text over?

As a feature suggestion, I'd love to be able to select pages in the Pages dialog, right-click and select 'Create new document with selected pages' or something like that. I'd also like it to split page flow if necessary to keep the pages exactly as they are when moving them to the new document. This would preserve layout, images, and sections. If there's another way to do this now, I'd love to find out.

[MikeTO]

13 hours ago, philipt18 said:

Hmmm. I copied the text from the last chapter, and pasted it into a new document. It did retain the footnotes, which is good, but the images in that chapter were not transferred. I guess there isn't a simple way to keep the images in place when moving the text over?

As a feature suggestion, I'd love to be able to select pages in the Pages dialog, right-click and select 'Create new document with selected pages' or something like that. I'd also like it to split page flow if necessary to keep the pages exactly as they are when moving them to the new document. This would preserve layout, images, and sections. If there's another way to do this now, I'd love to find out.

The images will be copied and pasted if they are pinned but if they're just placed on the page then copying the text can't and shouldn't copy the images. You'd have to copy the images manually.

It's not advisable to place images that aren't pinned with flowed text because they won't move as you add and remove text. I say that but I do it all the time because I have images that span columns and Publisher doesn't yet offer a span columns feature, so every time I add a few paragraphs of text I have to scan the rest of that chapter to see if I need to move an image.

Back to your situation. Why are you splitting up your document into separate chapter files so you can use the Book feature? Unless you really need to use the Book feature (because your computer isn't able to handle the complexity of your book as a single document or because you want to give somebody else a chapter to edit while you're working on a different one), I recommend keeping it as a single file. Also, the Book feature isn't yet capable of handling every layout choice for facing pages documents so you might have to do manually add and remove pages that you wouldn't otherwise have to deal with.

However, I do recommend splitting up the linked text frames in your current document into separate series of linked frames. The text in a series of linked frames is referred to as a story and it sounds like you have one story for your entire book. That works well for novels and books that use a single layout master but for complex books with lots of images, that have chapters which start with unique layouts, or that use sections with different page numbering, I recommend creating one story per chapter. So the work you're doing to break the links between frames at the end of each chapter is a good idea, but just paste the text back in to the first frame after the break. Since your images aren't pinned they'll still be lined up nicely with the text you paste back in. I don't know if your book needs this approach but since you haven't pinned your images it will reduce the chance that you'll need to adjust their positions when editing text in previous chapters.

Good luck!

PS: I agree that there should be ways to split a story into two and to create documents from pages automatically. When scripting is added (Serif says it's on the way), one of us will probably write scripts to do this if the necessary commands are available.

[thomaso]

I just wanted to see what I get if I import only 2 pages of a longer text flow document into another .afpub. – I did not expect this result, it appears kind of ambiguous: the story before the imported page is not visible … but got obviously imported:

It feels like a bug to me, caused by a confusion for APub with master page objects and text flow … at least concerning the rendering + unambiguousity of existing versus hidden versus visible content.

This was with V1, I wonder whether V2 gives the same result when adding pages 2-3 of this sample document? text flow.afpub

[MikeTO]

This test doc is even more obvious. Add pages 2-3 to a blank facing-pages document to see the same thing you're reporting or add pages 2-3 to a single-side document to see the problem a bit more easily.

test.afpub

The first issue is that Publisher imports the entire story instead of breaking the story at the start of the page added to the file. I think this is understandable but it would be nice if it was changed.

Second, because the first frame on the first page added is linked from another frame, Publisher creates a frame for it but it's invisible. It's on the left side of the page 1 spread when added to a facing-pages document but it's actually a right master frame because that's what it was in the original file. If you add the pages to a single-sided document the frame will be on page 1 when you're on page 2 but it's not really on page 1 - it's not there when you view page 1. This invisible frame is part of the first page you add but it's off page.

For the user this is a tough situation because if you break the text flow to the invisible frame the story will be only that invisible frame. To fix it you have to click in the frame on the first page you added, arrow up to the hidden frame, and edit detached. Then you can drag the page onto the first page you added and work with it there.

IMO this is a variation of the issue Publisher has with master spreads. If you create a facing pages master with linked left and right frames, the first spread, which will just be page 1, a right page, will have a hidden left frame which you can see by expanding Master A - Right in the Layers panel of this test document. This doesn't cause any serious issues but it's a bit confusing for those who notice it.

spread master.afpub

Maybe someday if support for multi-page spreads is added then these issues could be cleared up because the model would have to change anyway.

[philipt18]

Part of the reason I'm looking to move to the Book format is I want the footnotes to automatically re-number for each chapter. There's no way to do this in a single document, especially since I use Sections within each Chapter. Therefore it seems to me the only way to automatically renumber footnotes for each chapter is to move to the Book format, and renumber per Document. Actually, I'm not even sure that would work. Are Chapter documents considered documents in that context? Of course I could manually re-number the footnotes for each chapter, but I have 50+ chapters and would rather it do so automatically so I don't have to worry if I make changes.

[walt.farrell]

11 hours ago, philipt18 said:

Part of the reason I'm looking to move to the Book format is I want the footnotes to automatically re-number for each chapter. There's no way to do this in a single document, especially since I use Sections within each Chapter. Therefore it seems to me the only way to automatically renumber footnotes for each chapter is to move to the Book format, and renumber per Document. Actually, I'm not even sure that would work. Are Chapter documents considered documents in that context? Of course I could manually re-number the footnotes for each chapter, but I have 50+ chapters and would rather it do so automatically so I don't have to worry if I make changes.

I can't check Windows right now, but these are the choices on iPad: 

It specifically allows a per Book setting. Also, without using Books, it offers a per Story setting, which could let you keep everything in one file if you unlink the text frames, having one Story per chapter.

Edit: The options on Windows are the same as on iPad.

Edited June 18, 2023 by walt.farrell
Added some information

[MikeTO]

To renumber footnotes for each chapter in a document, just make each chapter a single story (linked series of frames) as Walt showed in the screenshot. Don't link the frames from one chapter to the next.

[philipt18]

2 hours ago, MikeTO said:

To renumber footnotes for each chapter in a document, just make each chapter a single story (linked series of frames) as Walt showed in the screenshot. Don't link the frames from one chapter to the next.

 

Which brings me back to the beginning, since some of my chapters are linked. I figured out that shouldn't be the case later in the book, but I need to split those frames between chapters if I want to make it work with Stories. By the way, where do I specify the beginning and end of Stories?

[walt.farrell]

9 minutes ago, philipt18 said:

By the way, where do I specify the beginning and end of Stories?

The beginning of a Story is a Text Frame that is not linked from another frame. The end is one that is not linked to another frame.

[thomaso]

On 6/17/2023 at 7:08 PM, MikeTO said:

IMO this is a variation of the issue Publisher has with master spreads. If you create a facing pages master with linked left and right frames, the first spread, which will just be page 1, a right page, will have a hidden left frame which you can see by expanding Master A - Right in the Layers panel of this test document. This doesn't cause any serious issues but it's a bit confusing for those who notice it.

Additionally to your hints about invisible but existing master page objects (that we indeed know already from 'normal' master pages / not "added from file"):

Since in my screenscast above page 1 seems to be involved in the text flow after "add pages from file" but set to invisible I wanted to see what happens if I apply the master page also to page 1. I was expecting the invisible frame would become visible since the according master now got set to be visible.

Again it results in a master spread (not page only) although the master layer is named as "… – Right", whereas both story text frames show a tooltip "Unlinked Attributes: Text" while the invisible (left page) text frame layer shows a dashed orange marker and the frame on the right page does not. That might mean APub knows two different stages of invisible layers: one that appears in the layers panel and can get selected and another that is neither visible in the layout nor the panel although it appearently exists.

When I save this document + close + reopen then the text flow is modified: The recently invisible text from page 1 now got moved to page 2 … etc.

I don't have V2 to open your test files but you might want to test this in V2 … and possibly create a bug report for V2. At least the text flow should never change after reopening a saved document. I remember various forum reports about this occurrence of modified text flow after reopening a document, I never have been able to reproduce this until now (while the reports did not refer to "add pages from file").

On 6/17/2023 at 7:08 PM, MikeTO said:

Maybe someday if support for multi-page spreads is added then these issues could be cleared up because the model would have to change anyway.

Hardly. There was an official Serif (developer/moderator) forums response after V2 got published that there are NO plans to implement the feature to create spreads with more than two pages. On the other hand there was a developer post several months before V2 that Global Layers would become implemented … which did not happen for V2, possibly because of this and similar layer issues that might increase with Global Layers.