Notes - crashes and hidden notes

[MikeTO]

There's an instant crash bug with some of the Notes panel menu commands such as "Update Document Settings from Selected Sidenote/Footnote/Endnote" or "Revert All Sidenotes to Document Settings". Here are a couple of crash reports.

Affinity Publisher 2 Beta-2023-07-02-184226.ips

Affinity Publisher 2 Beta-2023-07-02-193642.ips

I haven't figured out the conditions that lead to the crash yet. If I delete some pics from my document the crash won't occur which led me down the path of thinking it might have something to do with the hidden notes bug. I think the following thread is the first report of the hidden notes bug but I can't find a tagged thread so perhaps it's not been looked at yet. There's a good test doc in the linked thread. Note that when a note is hidden the layer visibility icon in the Layers panel will be off so it seems to be deliberate. For me, my sidenotes are in the right spot, just hidden, and doing something as minor as adding a paragraph return will make three of them reappear or disappear. I'm using master page text frames but the test doc in this linked thread uses a regular frame so it's not specific to masters.

 

[MikeTO]

For reference here's a tagged thread with the hidden note bug that somebody else just replied to.

 

[DWright]

We have release a new beta today and using this I have not been able to replicate the crash that you are getting, is it possible for you to update your beta and let me know if you are getting the same crash.

[MikeTO]

8 hours ago, DWright said:

We have release a new beta today and using this I have not been able to replicate the crash that you are getting, is it possible for you to update your beta and let me know if you are getting the same crash.

Here's a tiny test document that triggers the crash with today's 2.2 1881 beta. Place the cursor in the body of the first side note and choose Update Document Settings from Selected Sidenote which will result in a crash.

I stripped the document down to the minimum to crash it. There might be a clue here - it won't crash if you delete the inline shape before choosing Update Document Settings.

c6.afpub

Cheers

[MikeTO]

@DWright Just bumping this in case you were out of the office.

[uselessuser]

When I try to change the size of the line above the note Publisher crahes instantly.

Does anyone know if there is a workaround?

Venura 13.4.1
Publisher 2.1.1.

[walt.farrell]

46 minutes ago, uselessuser said:

When I try to change the size of the line above the note Publisher crahes instantly.

As far as I know there's no function to do that. How were you trying to do it?

Edit: Didn't scroll down far enough to see the setting, as showin in the screenshot just below this post. Sorry.

[uselessuser]

The first screenshot shows the setting I tried to manipulate. In the second screenshot you can see what I like to archive. The "default" line has 1pt but I like to try 0,25 pt.

[walt.farrell]

8 minutes ago, uselessuser said:

The first screenshot shows the setting I tried to manipulate. In the second screenshot you can see what I like to archive. The "default" line has 1pt but I like to try 0,25 pt.

Thanks.

Oops. I didn't scroll down far enough to see that setting. Sorry.

I don't have any trouble changing that setting, in either 2.1.1 or the 2.2.0.1903 Beta, but I'm on Windows.

There was one earlier report of the problem you're having, but it was never logged as a bug and didn't seem consistent.

Does it crash for you in other documents, or just this one?

[Oufti]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

I don't have any trouble changing that setting, in either 2.1.1 or the 2.2.0.1903 Beta, but I'm on Windows.

Neither me, with Publisher 2.1.1 and Monterey. 

[uselessuser]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

Does it crash for you in other documents, or just this one?

It seems to behave like this with this particular document.
I'll try to split it.

[MikeTO]

Hi, I'm just bumping this because I don't think this crash bug with Notes been logged yet. I uploaded a test document in this post.

 

[Hangman]

Hi @MikeTO,

The crash is caused by the pinned grey rectangle, as soon as you unpin it then choosing 'Update Document Settings' from the selected sidenote will no longer cause a crash...

It appears to be the same bug shown here affecting footnotes, which has a bug report reference of AFB-7496... hopefully the bug report can be updated to include your report and all the other reported instances...

[MikeTO]

On 8/14/2023 at 5:32 AM, Hangman said:

The crash is caused by the pinned grey rectangle, as soon as you unpin it then choosing 'Update Document Settings' from the selected sidenote will no longer cause a crash...

Agreed that it's the pinned rectangle that triggers the crash, I added that to trigger it.

[erhine]

I have been having trouble with the invisible footnotes as well, Macbook pro running Ventura 13.4.1 and AFP 2.1.1. 

Text was place from Word 365 v. 16.76. After a lot of experimentation, I think I have narrowed the problem to the notes panel, I'm still seeing some problems, but performance improved when I checked "allow split notes"

Before that, I created new master pages without text boxes and reflowed the text into new boxes not attached to the master. I also eliminated all fonts causing errors. Hope this helps!

[DWright]

Hi @erhine,

Can you please use the following Dropbox link to send me a copy of your Word DOCX file at you are copying into Publisher

https://www.dropbox.com/request/5tghJUKBqMCRignNvZHv

 

[MikeTO]

The problem with the hidden footnote/sidenote bug is that you don't know if you have a problem until you've reviewed every page, expanding every master page layer and the text frame layers on the masters, and clicking on each note layer to see if it's shown or invisible. I can provide you with a document via dropbox if you didn't get one already.

Here's a screenshot of the issue with a hidden sidenote that I found only by selecting its layer. The note is also not positioned where it should be, in this example it's about 2" above the note marker even though there are no other notes on the page.

A tip for others with hidden sidenotes but this won't help with a hidden footnote. Search your document for hidden sidenotes by using the Layers panel and expanding every text frame to check for note layers that aren't shown. If you find one, you can create a static text frame equivalent to the note so that you can print your document. But here's a trick - select the layer for the invisible note and with the Text tool, drag select from its middle to the end of the side note. That text will now be invisibly selected. Now press Right Arrow and the invisible cursor will be at the end of the note text. Press Return repeatedly to increase the height of the note. If you're lucky the sidenote will eventually become tall enough that the layout engine will decide to show it properly. The blank lines won't cause any issues unless they push other sidenotes out of position.