Publisher 2. Bookmarks in the anchor panel should not be displayed in alphabetical order

[bbrother]

Bookmarks in the anchor/bookmark panel should be displayed in the same order as they will be generated in the pdf document.

[Dan C]

Hi @bbrother,

I have spoken with our team regarding this and we believe the current behaviour within the Affinity Anchor Studio is correct.

PDF Bookmarks are generated from an Anchor, but not all anchors have to be PDF Bookmarks (as noted by the dimmed page ribbon icon in the Anchors Panel). In the below image. I have Frame 1, 2 and 3's 'Word 3' set to not to be a PDF Bookmark -

If that panel was to be sorted in PDF Bookmark order, then Anchors that are not Bookmarks would not have a correct order within this Studio and therefore this is sorted alphabetically.

I hope this clears things up

[GarryP]

If ‘PDF bookmark order’ is not going to be something which will be implemented, for the reason given above, how about having the option to see them in ‘document order’, and by that I mean in the same order as they are marked in the document?

That, at least, would give us a better idea of where they are placed in the document in relation to each other, which is especially useful in a long document and when the same term has been given an anchor on different pages – it would lessen the problem of the user having to navigate to them one-by-one to find the one they need – see attached video (imagine navigating your way around that document with only an alphabetical list).

[Dan C]

4 minutes ago, GarryP said:

how about having the option to see them in ‘document order’, and by that I mean in the same order as they are marked in the document?

This is certainly a possibility and I'll move the thread to the Feedback section to have this option be considered.

Such an order was discussed in the aforementioned internal conversation however the main concern regarding this would be the potential performance penalty as the Anchors list would then always have to track the position of objects in the Layers Panel/per Page and adjust accordingly, which in complex documents may become an issue - though perhaps not completely insurmountable

[bbrother]

@Dan C Could you explain a few things because I didn't understand.

My main goals when it comes to pdf bookmarks are:

1. Generate nested pdf bookmarks from multi level TOC when needed.
2. I would like to be able to manually create bookmarks and freely change the order in which they will be generated in a pdf document.
3. Manage the above things in a panel that gives me a visual reference to the bookmarks structure.

Now the questions i have.

1. Does APublisher generate nested bookmarks if the table of contents consists of multiple levels?
2. The anchor panel does not display the bookmarks in the order they will be generated in the pdf document because it would cause performance problems that are difficult to solve. Instead, it sorts them alphabetically using the label?
3. When manualy creating anchors and mark it as pdf bookmark to export in what order APublisher will generate them in the pdf.
   In the alphabetical order just like the panel displays them or in the order i manualy create them?

 

Quote

If that panel was to be sorted in PDF Bookmark order, then Anchors that are not Bookmarks would not have a correct order within this Studio and therefore this is sorted alphabetically.

A solution would be to treat all anchors as bookmarks and display them in PDF bookmark order, but when it comes to generating a PDF document, skip the ones not marked for export with a ribbon icon.

 

Quote

Anchors list would then always have to track the position of objects in the Layers Panel/per Page and adjust accordingly, which in complex documents may become an issue

Solution would be implementing a refresh icon / button to update the order of anchors like in the TOC panel.

 

Quote

Such an order was discussed in the aforementioned internal conversation however the main concern regarding this would be the potential performance penalty as the Anchors list would then always have to track the position of objects in the Layers Panel/per Page and adjust accordingly, which in complex documents may become an issue - though perhaps not completely insurmountable

The fact that solving the performance problem would be complicated should not be an excuse, and that's how it sounded.

 

[Dan C]

23 hours ago, bbrother said:

• Does APublisher generate nested bookmarks if the table of contents consists of multiple levels?

Unfortunately I'm not 100% certain what you mean by this - Affinity will export any Anchors present in your document as a Bookmark provided the relevant option is enabled.

Have you created a TOC with 'multiple levels', and if so do you see entries for the expected Bookmarks in the Anchors Studio?

On 8/9/2023 at 4:13 PM, bbrother said:

• The anchor panel does not display the bookmarks in the order they will be generated in the pdf document because it would cause performance problems that are difficult to solve. Instead, it sorts them alphabetically using the label?

That's correct currently, as not all Anchors are necessarily Bookmarks, however this is now logged as an improvement request with our developers to be considered for a future update.

On 8/9/2023 at 4:13 PM, bbrother said:

• When manualy creating anchors and mark it as pdf bookmark to export in what order APublisher will generate them in the pdf.
  In the alphabetical order just like the panel displays them or in the order i manualy create them?

When exporting Bookmarks, these will appear in the document order in the PDF file - so neither the alphabetical order or the order they were created in your file, but instead the logical document order. This can be calculated at export without issue, however constantly calculating this whilst editing a long file would cause performance penalties within the app.

On 8/9/2023 at 4:13 PM, bbrother said:

The fact that solving the performance problem would be complicated should not be an excuse, and that's how it sounded.

My apologies if this sounded like an excuse, I was simply forwarding the information provided to me by the team internally - unfortunately I'm not a developer for the Affinity apps so I can't really comment on the in-depth workings of the app or the computational power required to calculate this throughout the document - however your above suggestions certainly seem like good options and as mentioned this is now logged with our team to be considered for a future update

[bbrother]

Thanks for clarifying some things Dan.

By nested bookmarks  i understand parent bookmarks and children bookmarks inside parent that will reflect the TOC outline structure (indent level).

Something like below

 

 

[Dan C]

No problem at all!

From your screenshot it looks as though you have achieved the layout you are hoping to use with Anchors and your TOC - or have I misunderstood the question?

[fde101]

I believe that is because the OP carefully chose a set of "dummy" topics which are alphabetized in order to demonstrate the concept.

That is something unlikely to occur in a real-world scenario.

[bbrother]

On 8/11/2023 at 2:18 PM, Dan C said:

No problem at all!

From your screenshot it looks as though you have achieved the layout you are hoping to use with Anchors and your TOC - or have I misunderstood the question?

This is just a simple example @Dan C with intentionally crafted alphabetic headers to explain what i mean by "generating nested bookmarks from TOC". 
In a large document with real headers it would be much harder to manually nesting the bookmarks while preserve the TOC indent structure and document order because they would be scattered in the panel.

This should be done automatically by Publisher.

 

On 8/11/2023 at 5:06 PM, fde101 said:

I believe that is because the OP carefully chose a set of "dummy" topics which are alphabetized in order to demonstrate the concept.

 

Exactly @fde101

In a real-world scenario, this would be a very tedious process. Looking for bookmarks in the panel and arranging according to the TOC and order in the document.

[Oufti]

9 hours ago, bbrother said:

In a large document with real headers it would be much harder to manually nesting the bookmarks while preserve the TOC indent structure and document order because they would be scattered in the panel.

This should be done automatically by Publisher.

A TOC is in itself a navigation panel (ctrl-click > Go to the hyperlink target).

Instead of trying to recreate it in the Anchor panel, why not generate (or copy) a TOC for your navigational needs, and place it outside your page on the canvas, so it won't print… 

[Oufti]

On 8/9/2023 at 5:13 PM, bbrother said:

Does APublisher generate nested [PDF] bookmarks if the table of contents consists of multiple levels?

I have never found how it could be possible. 

[bbrother]

16 hours ago, Oufti said:

I have never found how it could be possible.

It could be implemented using indents levels that you can set up for paragraph styles used to build TOC. Based on this level and position in document you could generate nested bookmarks. That's how its resolved in Indesign.

[Oufti]

Thank you. So you agree it's not possible now.

I like your suggestion to add this to a future version.  

[bbrother]

10 hours ago, Oufti said:

Thank you. So you agree it's not possible now.

Yes it's not posible in Publisher. I did a post about adding that functionality so you can vote about adding it.

Also @Dan C could you tell more about the "indent level" option in TOC panel. What is this option for. How it is used by APublisher?

[Dan C]

On 8/12/2023 at 6:02 PM, bbrother said:

This is just a simple example @Dan C with intentionally crafted alphabetic headers to explain what i mean by "generating nested bookmarks from TOC". 
In a large document with real headers it would be much harder to manually nesting the bookmarks while preserve the TOC indent structure and document order because they would be scattered in the panel.

This should be done automatically by Publisher.

Thanks for confirming that for me, if I've understood correctly it sounds like this is what the Indent Level option should achieve in Publisher, however this specific option appears to be broken currently.

3 hours ago, bbrother said:

Also @Dan C could you tell more about the "indent level" option in TOC panel. What is this option for. How it is used by APublisher?

When increasing the Indent Level per Text Style used, the following should occur:

• Any TOC entries using this Text Style should be visually indented within the TOC - this feature is currently broken and I have logged this as a bug with our team.
• Any Anchors created from these TOC topics will be nested within Parent topics, for the styles using a lower Indent value.

For example, using the document layout you provided, I created the following TOC using 'Drop Cap' style for the Chapters and 'Initial Words' style for the Subchapters. In the TOC Studio I then set 'Initial Words' to be Indent Level 1, with 'Drop Caps' remaining at the default 0.

As can be seen, the Subchapter topics in the TOC aren't visually indented, which is the aforementioned bug (though you can edit the 'Initial Words TOC' Text Style to include this Indent if required.

Equally, the Anchors Studio now shows that the Subchapter topics are indented within the Parent Chapter topics - 

Does this allow you to achieve what you are hoping?

[Oufti]

24 minutes ago, Dan C said:

When increasing the Indent Level per Text Style used, the following should occur:

• Any TOC entries using this Text Style should be visually indented within the TOC - this feature is currently broken and I have logged this as a bug with our team.
• Any Anchors created from these TOC topics will be nested within Parent topics, for the styles using a lower Indent value.

Thank you. The second point is what I missed, and because the first had no apparent effect, this function remained obscure for me and I overlooked it. 

[bbrother]

1 hour ago, Dan C said:

Does this allow you to achieve what you are hoping?

This is one of several reasons why I asked for a refund regarding the V2. 
And now it turns out that this functionality (creating nested bookmarks, nesting in parent topics using TOC indent level) is there but is broken.

Developers should start fix more bugs Dan.

It would be worth updating the help files about the TOC panel functions.

[Dan C]

I'm sorry to hear this - as I've mentioned this is logged with our development team to be resolved ASAP.

39 minutes ago, bbrother said:

Developers should start fix more bugs Dan.

The latest major update (v2.1) had over 300 bug fixes included across all apps/platforms - 

And we're currently working on update v2.2, where each post below lists the bug fixes for that build - 

Though I certainly appreciate that this can be frustrating when specific issues affecting your workflow still exist.

44 minutes ago, bbrother said:

It would be worth updating the help files about the TOC panel functions.

I agree that this could be made clearer in the TOC helpfiles and I'll be requesting a recheck to be done with our documentation team in order to improve the clarity / information provided here

[bbrother]

4 hours ago, Dan C said:

The latest major update (v2.1) had over 300 bug fixes included across all apps/platforms -

Many of them are regressions that break something that previously worked, and bugs in new features. Many bugs from V1 remain untouched in V2.

Dan, I have last question. Can a user who has already used the 30-day trial period use it again after a minor update like 2.2 or 2.3?
I'm asking because I would like to try again the trial in the future to see if the fixes and changes will meet my expectations.

[Dan C]

21 hours ago, bbrother said:

Can a user who has already used the 30-day trial period use it again after a minor update like 2.2 or 2.3?
I'm asking because I would like to try again the trial in the future to see if the fixes and changes will meet my expectations.

I can confirm that the trial doesn't necessarily reset per minor update version (ie 2.2, 2.3) and instead is reset manually on a version by version basis - as decided by our team internally.

Usually this means that for multiple updates (for example, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2) the trial will not be reset, then our team may decide that, for example, 2.3 has enough new features  implemented that we wish to reset the trial period for all users, such that they can try these new features.

Unfortunately this means I can't provide an exact answer for this currently, and instead I'd recommend emailing our team (affinitysupport@serif.com) once a new update has been released that you are interested in testing, to see if the trial has been reset.

I hope this clears things up!

[MikeTO]

One tiny change that would make the Anchors panel easier to use for me would be to add Collapse Nested Anchors and Expand Nested Anchors commands to the panel menu. Currently, if you collapse all the nested anchors so you can see them at a glance more easily, they all expand back out on the next change.