Publisher 2.1.1 useablilty failures

[Chris99]

When I open a document the focus point (for want of a better word) is at the end of the doc. If even goes to the end if I'm editing the doc, open another doc to copy something out of, then close that and return to the original doc. It jumps to the end! Any chance of having it remember where I am? I'm thinking this might be a new thing..?

pageUp/Down buttons do not auto repeat, so to go down 10 pages I have to press pageDown 10 separate times. I flagged this up years ago. Any chance of a fix?

Also flagged up years ago and still broken: why when I double-click a word then drag to select further whole words, does nothing get selected beyond the first word. i.e. double-click-drag doesn't work.

Images in the pages panel have a blue caste.

Thanks
Chris

Publisher 2.1.1
Windows 10 Pro 22H2

i5-9600K 16GB
GTX1660 Same with or without hardware accel

 

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, Chris99 said:

When I open a document the focus point (for want of a better word) is at the end of the doc. x

I do not see the behavior that the document always opens at the end of the document. But I'm seeing something that could be related, perhaps. What I see is seems to be the following:

1. Create a document, say with 10 pages.
2. Navigate to some page (say page 4).
3. Save the document. Close the document.
4. Re-Open the document. It will be on page 4.
5. Navigate to a different page. Say page 8.
6. Save (Edit: really, Save As with same name) and Close the document.
7. Re-Open the document. It will still be on page 4.

It appears that the first time the document is saved, the current page number is remembered. Subsequent Saves (or Save As with the same name) remember that same value. The only thing that resets that saved current page information is either:

• Save As with a new name; or
• Adding new pages (possibly also deleting pages) and then Saving (the name doesn't matter in this case); or
• Edit: I can also make content changes on other pages, which will also reset the "current page" for the Saved file.

How this might be related to what you see: If you were at the end of the document when you originally saved it, that is where it would re-Open until you Save with a new name, or add more pages.

This feels like a bug, and I do not recall seeing it reported before.

3 hours ago, Chris99 said:

If even goes to the end if I'm editing the doc, open another doc to copy something out of, then close that and return to the original doc. It jumps to the end! Any chance of having it remember where I am? I'm thinking this might be a new thing..?

Are you saying you kept the first document Open, say on page 5, opened a second document, closed the second document, and your original document was then at the end?

Or have I misunderstood you?

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Chris99 said:

Also flagged up years ago and still broken: why when I double-click a word then drag to select further whole words, does nothing get selected beyond the first word. i.e. double-click-drag doesn't work.

Double-clicking will select a word. At that point, since you have a selection, dragging will move that selected text. This is expected processing, and works that way in other applications I've tested. If you want to make a bigger selection, click (not double-click) and drag.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Chris99 said:

Images in the pages panel have a blue caste.

A screenshot illustrating that would be useful. Please also have one of the pages showing in the application window so we can see its contents, and the Layers panel visible, too.

I haven't seen this, and off-hand it sounds like possibly an issue with your Windows Display settings, but blue would be an odd color in that case. Yellow is more common for issues like that, I think.

[Chris99]

5 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I do not see the behavior that the document always opens at the end of the document.

 

Hi Walt

Thanks for engaging. Yes, I think it's possibly a new thing as I don't recall being annoyed by it before! But even if I make an edit and save on page 5, next time I open it, it opens at the end. Perhaps this week's W10 update nobbled it - the one that self-installed a zombie LinkedIn without a by-your-leave... 🤬

Quote

Are you saying you kept the first document Open, say on page 5, opened a second document, closed the second document, and your original document was then at the end?

Or have I misunderstood you?

No, you haven't misunderstood - that's what it does. It's like there's a magnet at the end of my docs.

 

Quote

Double-clicking will select a word. At that point, since you have a selection, dragging will move that selected text. This is expected processing, and works that way in other applications I've tested. If you want to make a bigger selection, click (not double-click) and drag.

You're barking up a different tree there! Try double clicking a word and dragging without releasing the second click. Try it here on this post. This is a standard Windows operation that selects whole words. Just not in Affinity Publisher.

[walt.farrell]

32 minutes ago, Chris99 said:

Yes, I think it's possibly a new thing as I don't recall being annoyed by it before! But even if I make an edit and save on page 5, next time I open it, it opens at the end.

As I said, for me it will remember the original page I was on when I first Saved, unless I change the file name or add more pages. So you could be seeing the same thing. I'll try it on 1.10 and see if it was different there.

Edit: It also remembers a new current page number if I make other changes to the file, such as editing the content of a page.

32 minutes ago, Chris99 said:

You're barking up a different tree there! Try double clicking a word and dragging without releasing the second click. Try it here on this post. This is a standard Windows operation that selects whole words. Just not in Affinity Publisher.

Thanks. You're right. I was releasing.

[walt.farrell]

21 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

31 minutes ago, Chris99 said:

Yes, I think it's possibly a new thing as I don't recall being annoyed by it before! But even if I make an edit and save on page 5, next time I open it, it opens at the end.

As I said, for me it will remember the original page I was on when I first Saved, unless I change the file name or add more pages. So you could be seeing the same thing. I'll try it on 1.10 and see if it was different there.

Further testing:

V1 and V2 work the same. And for me, if I make any changes to the file, and re-Save, the "current page" is remembered when I re-Open that new file. So, if you're actually making changes, I have no idea why you seem to be stuck at the end of the file when you re-Open it.

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

It appears that the first time the document is saved, the current page number is remembered. Subsequent Saves (or Save As with the same name) remember that same value. The only thing that resets that saved current page information is either:

• Save As with a new name; or
• Adding new pages (possibly also deleting pages) and then Saving (the name doesn't matter in this case); or
• Edit: I can also make content changes on other pages, which will also reset the "current page" for the Saved file.

Subsequent saves or Save As always saves the current page information, at least on macOS.

Although change pages does add a history item (Set current page), it does not modify the document so you have to edit something before you can re-save the document. Trying to save just plays a system beep for me which is what it's supposed to do.

Are you actually able to re-save the document after changing pages without making any edits?

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Chris99 said:

Quote

Double-clicking will select a word. At that point, since you have a selection, dragging will move that selected text. This is expected processing, and works that way in other applications I've tested. If you want to make a bigger selection, click (not double-click) and drag.

You're barking up a different tree there! Try double clicking a word and dragging without releasing the second click. Try it here on this post. This is a standard Windows operation that selects whole words. Just not in Affinity Publisher.

Relevant to this, I found the following from the 1.5 timeframe:

  

On 10/27/2016 at 6:06 AM, Dave Harris said:

In 1.5 we have improved text selection in several ways. The Text tool should now ignore the selection handles if the mouse is inside the frame, so this should be better now than it was.

 

I frequently use double-click-drag to select multiple words. That is, mouse down, mouse up, mouse down, drag to select words, mouse up. Also triple-click will select a whole paragraph, and quadruple-click will select the entire story. Double-click-drag and triple-click are pretty standard and work in most apps. I think only Affinity does quadruple-click, and it sounds horrendous, but I think it works quite well to have each extra click select more of the text.

To me, that indicates that what you want (double-click, drag to select more words) is intended to work. I'm not sure if something changed intentionally since then, or if there's an issue on Windows.

I also found a hint from another user that might help you. Double-click on the first word. Shift+Double-Click on the last word. It does require some keyboard interaction, which simply double-clicking then dragging wouldn't require, though.

I was unable to find any bugs logged about the "double-click and drag" method not working.

[walt.farrell]

18 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

Although change pages does add a history item (Set current page), it does not modify the document so you have to edit something before you can re-save the document. Trying to save just plays a system beep for me which is what it's supposed to do.

Are you actually able to re-save the document after changing pages without making any edits?

Try Save As, with the same document name, vs Save As with a different document name.

[MikeTO]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Try Save As, with the same document name, vs Save As with a different document name.

That works for me but I'm setting the page, not just scrolling. So at least on macOS, it's working as I would expect.

• Edit page 10, save, close, open - it's on page 10
• Scroll to page 20, no changes, save - system beep because there's nothing to save
• Save as, close, open - it's on page 10 because I didn't set page 20, the Pages panel still showed page 10 as selected
• Open, select page 20 in the Pages panel, save - system beep because it's smart enough to know that the "Set current page" action shouldn't mark the document as modified even though it's technically a change
• Save as, close, open - it's on page 20 - because it was on page 20 when I chose Save as

I believe this is how it should work and I like the nice touch of the document not being modified when the only action made is "Set current page". Is it working differently on Windows?

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, MikeTO said:

Save as, close, open - it's on page 10 because I didn't set page 20, the Pages panel still showed page 10 as selected

It happens for me even if I select the page, thus setting the current page. None of my description has involved simply scrolling.

[MikeTO]

4 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

It happens for me even if I select the page, thus setting the current page. None of my description has involved simply scrolling.

Then that must be a Windows specific issue.

One last question, what if you change to the new page and place the cursor in a text frame on that page? I assume that would make a difference.