Font size randomly (?) changed after adding new pages to long multi-column spread

[SC2020]

This is not a new bug; I have experienced it in stable versions but thought I would see whether it had been addressed in beta.

After adding new pages in the middle of a long multi-column document (and appropriately linking the frames so that the text flows), the font on the newly added pages changed (bizarrely) from 10 point to 5.5 point. When I select the text and try to change it all back to 10 point, some of it gets changed to 18.3 point. Simply put, inserting (adding) new pages somehow seems to introduce a bug that affects one's ability to control (or rely on specified) font size. Font size seems to be almost random (sometime smaller, sometimes larger) around the insertion point of the new page. I have attached a few screenshots. I cannot share the entire file publicly, but would be happy to send it to the developers.

Please let me know if you require any further information. I am not exactly sure what the bug is or how to trigger it (other than as outlined above), but I often experience it in a number of long, multi-lingual and multi-column texts. The font used throughout the document was 10 point; I use the same size font to align texts in different columns. 

Any help would be appreciated.

Sincerely,

SC

Affinity Publisher, MacOS 12.6.8, MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018).

 

 

[MikeTO]

Hi, I believe you'll find that the text frame on the page before the added page has content scaling set to something other than 100%. This can happen when you accidentally drag the wrong handle at the bottom right corner. The outer handle scales the frame and its content while the inner one scales just the frame.

Select all the text in that frame and choose Edit > Defaults > Revert. It will no longer be the size you want but it will now be 100%. Choose an appropriate size and then you can link that frame to the next one without issues.

[SC2020]

Hi MikeTO,

Thank you for your helpful post.

I don't think I have accidentally dragged the wrong handle, but I will be sure to be careful in the future.

I tried to "fix" the "broken" file that I have by following your instructions. Perhaps these need to be followed before adding pages, but I thought they might work in any case. Edit > Defaults > Revert changed the font and other settings in selected text (seemingly to Arial Regular 12pt which does not display the Chinese), but does not seem to fix the problem (when I select Hiragino Mincho ProN 10pt, the font is changed back only to 5.5pt). Please see attached screenshots.

Sincerely,

SC

[Hangman]

Hi @SC2020,

At any point during the process, has the Publisher document dpi been changed, e.g., if the source long-form document were originally 165 dpi prior to new pages being inserted and the document was closed then reopened and then the document dpi changed from 165 dpi to 300 dpi, when inserting new pages and re-linking the text, 10 pt text will now appear at 5.5 pt on the newly inserted pages.

Likewise, selecting the text and choosing Edit > Defaults > Revert will change the original 10 pt text to 18.3 pt.

Just a thought as this is a known bug.

[SC2020]

Hi Hangman,

Thank you for your suggestion. The document dpi has never been changed (to my knowledge, and I have no need to change dpi).

Sincerely,

SC

 

[Hangman]

Hi @SC2020,

I figured that was likely the case but thought it worth a mention just in case...

I appreciate the document in question isn't one you can post on the public forum but just wondering if you're able to upload a much shorter version of the file, (even if that means changing the text to something random), which demonstrates the issue so we can see if we can figure out the cause.

No problem if not, you can equally just request a private Dropbox link to upload your file/s to so the devs can take a look...

Out of interest, what is the document dpi, is it set to 300 dpi?

[SC2020]

Hi Hangman,

Thank you again for your helpful post.

The dpi is set to 300.

I have been trying to reproduce the issue in a smaller file that I could share, but no luck. I am not sure if there is some invisible gremlin hiding in the file from a previous incarnation in InDesign … . 

I would be happy to share the file privately with the devs, but I have no idea how to request a private Dropbox link other than to note the issue here. Thank you again.

Sincerely,

SC

[Hangman]

Hi @SC2020,

Your note here is sufficient for someone in the moderation team to provide a private Dropbox link, hopefully, they will add one for you tomorrow...

In the meantime, as a quick test, if you open one of the InDesign files in Publisher and change the Document dpi to 165 dpi, save the Publisher file, close it then re-open it and then try inserting your new pages and relinking the text, do you still see the same issue with changing font sizes on the newly inserted pages?

[SC2020]

Hi Hangman,

Thank you again. I opened a random InDesign file in Publisher and changed the Document dpi to 165, as you suggested. The issue (or a similar/related issue) persists: now what was 10pt appears as 4.4pt in the inserted page. When I change the font to 10pt, some text stays at 10pt but some (that close to the new page's insertion point) jumps to 22.9. Screenshot and a short sample file attached.

There is also, I believe, an import issue in Publisher with InDesign files. The original file was aligned so that the beginning of each paragraph in each column (different languages) were perfectly aligned. For some reason, the import throws the alignment off a line or two, meaning a huge amount of work to realign columns (esp. with some of my texts which are over 1000 pages).

Thanks again for your suggestions.

Sincerely,

SC

 

Test.afpub

[Hangman]

Hi @SC2020,

Thanks for the update, undoubtedly a silly question but I assume the source InDesign file is 300 dpi as well and Publisher isn’t just assuming it’s 300 dpi?

I’ll take a look at your test file and see if I can see anything obvious regarding the misalignment…

[SC2020]

Hi Hangman,

Thanks again, Unfortunately, I no longer have access to InDesign to check, but dpi is not anything I ever change. I switched from inDesign to QuarkXpress initially, and then to Affinity Publisher. Some files are created new in Publisher, some are imports. 

Quark had similar problems with the alignment. I recall being told to change the leading from Auto to 12 pt in paragraph style for body text as a work around until it was (or would be) addressed in a new release.

Thanks again,

SC

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[MikeTO]

I took a peek and it's definitely an issue where one of the text frames has content scaling applied to it. People do this all the time, the bottom right "extra" size handle is the culprit. Unfortunately, Publisher doesn't offer an option to reset the content scaling factor for a text frame.

You could fix this by reverting the frame to the defaults but as you've said your defaults aren't what you want these frames to be. You could change your defaults, revert the frames, and then reset your defaults, but that's more trouble than it's worth. If it were me, I would simply delete the text frames from pages 6-8 and then draw new ones and re-link them.

[SC2020]

Hi MikeTO,

Thanks for taking a peek.

Since you previously warned me to avoid the bottom right "extra" handle, I thought I had assiduously avoided using it before making my previous post (to be honest, I don't think I have ever used it). As an experiment and to double check, I added another page after page 2 and drew new text frames (as I have always done). But this time I did not move or resize the text frames and thus am 100% sure that I did not touch or go near the the bottom right "extra" handle. I do not doubt that scaling is somehow turned on, but I am quite sure it is not turned on in my case as you suggest. I have attached a screenshot showing the newly inserted text frames with font 10pt on p. 2 but now 4.4pt on p. 3. 

I also tried deleting the text frames and drawing new ones and relinking them, as you suggested, but this still results in some text at 10pt and some at 4.4pt even though the original file was all 10pt. It seems to me that deleting text frames and then drawing new ones is not dissimilar to adding new pages and then drawing new text frames. But in both cases, I am still stuck with a font size that does not behave as expected. 

Is there a place where one can view the content scaling factor for a text frame, even if one cannot reset it?

With regard to frame defaults, by this do you mean the defaults of the text (i.e., font size, spacing, etc.), or is there a separate text "frame" default?

I have attached a screenshot of the newly inserted p. 3 and the bottom of p. 2.

Thanks again for your help.

Sincerely,

SC

[Hangman]

1 hour ago, SC2020 said:

Thanks again, Unfortunately, I no longer have access to InDesign to check, but dpi is not anything I ever change.

Not that it sounds relevant here but It is possible to unpack the IDML files using a suitable unarchiver which then allows you to read the XML data for the file and see the dpi of the source file but as you say, I can't imagine the dpi has ever been anything other than 300 dpi.

[SC2020]

Hi Hangman,

Thank you for the suggestion. I was thinking that I could also start an InDesign free trial, but I don't think it is worth the effort.

Best,

SC

[SC2020]

1 hour ago, MikeTO said:

People do this all the time, the bottom right "extra" size handle is the culprit.

Hi MikeTO,

I took another look at the differences in font size that result from using the regular handle and the extra size handle. Using the extra handle, as you say, text is scaled. But the resultant font size depends on where one stops using the extra handle; a wider frame gives me a larger font size (say 8.8pt), a narrower frame gives me a smaller font size (say 1.7pt). Using the regular handle, as I have been doing, on the other hand, my 10pt font always changes to 4.4pt in the newly added page, regardless of the size/width of the text frame. These seem like two different issues.

Best,

SC 

[Hangman]

Hi @SC2020,

As a possible workaround to the original text scaling issue try the following...

1. Open your IDML file in Publisher
2. Change the document resolution from 300 dpi to 72 dpi
3. Insert your new pages and add any required text boxes
4. Relink your existing text to the new text boxes
5. Once all text had been re-linked change the document resolution back to 300 dpi
6. Save the document

This seems to work which to me suggests a possible internal scaling issue when opening IDML files in Publisher...

[Hangman]

18 hours ago, MikeTO said:

I took a peek and it's definitely an issue where one of the text frames has content scaling applied to it

Hi @MikeTO,

I believe the issue is slightly different here...

Basically, it would appear that Publisher is misinterpreting all IDML files as 72 dpi regardless of the actual resolution specified in the IDML file. So even though on opening a 300 dpi IDML file Publisher shows the document dpi correctly at 300 dpi, internally it seems it is being treated as 72 dpi, so I think the scaling issue we're seeing is internal rather than a physical one created by changing the size of text frames.

Steps To Verify

1. If you open any 300 dpi IDML file in Publisher, insert new pages, add text frames to the new pages and relink existing text in the document to the newly created text frames the text is scaled to 24% of its original point size, i.e., 72/300 * 100 = 24%
    
2. If you open any 300 dpi IDML file in Publisher, change the document resolution to 72 dpi and then insert new pages, add text frames to the new pages and relink existing text in the document to the newly created text frames the text is correctly scaled at 100%, i.e., with the same point size as the original text.

 

Until the bug is fixed, the workaround for the issue is to follow the process in step 2 above and then change the document resolution back to 300 dpi. This is already logged as a bug under AFB-7732 and AFB-7733.

 

[SC2020]

Hi Hangman,

Thank you so much for your detailed replies and masterful sleuthing.

I will follow your instructions in step 2 as a workaround. Hopefully a fix will be forthcoming. Thanks again.

Sincerely,

SC

[Hangman]

Hi @SC2020,

No problem at all, I hope this at least provides a workaround for your first issue...

With regards to your second issue, do you happen to have the source IDML file that you've used to create the 'Test.afpub' file so we can investigate further to try and figure out what might be going on?

[SC2020]

Hi Hangman,

I have attached the source IDML file for "Test.afpub." Thank you so much.

Best,

SC 

Test.idml

[Gabe]

We are aware of this IDML import issue. 

[SC2020]

1 hour ago, Gabe said:

We are aware of this IDML import issue. 

Thanks for confirming!

SC

[rjav]

Thanks Hangman

My original problem was with a file imported from InDesign but I did have it occur again on a fresh Publisher document -- fortunately the reformatting made it go away again

[Jill Wolcott]

I appreciate all the back and forth on this.  I have the same issue and spend so much time resizing text it is frustrating.  I do use IDML originated files, but have the problem regardless.