Drop caps change randomly from 2 lines to 3 lines in Publisher

[Drop Cap Guy]

Hello everyone,

FYI I am on Publisher 1.10.6 and can't upgrade due to OS limitations.

I have a strange issue with drop caps, and I'm hoping it's a known glitch with a fix.

I'm using a lot of drop caps for a book typeset in imitation of the Bible. So each page is set with text in two columns and the text has several small 'chapters', each beginning with a consecutive numeral set as a drop cap. I have the drop cap set to two lines and I use a dedicated paragraph style to apply it. 

Mostly this works fine, but there are two pages (so far) where the drop caps randomly shift to three lines high. The paragraph style is the same with two lines specified: it hasn't changed. If I go into the paragraph panel and try to alter the drop cap manually it also tells me it's set at two lines. If I change manually to one line, it goes to one line (i.e. it removes the drop cap). If I change manually to three lines, just to see what happens, it goes to five lines (!).

There's nothing distinctive about these two pages: they're part of a long, continuous text. The text as a whole is separated only by page breaks at the end of each section, but these two pages are in the middle of a section and the pages on either side are fine.

Some other things I've tried: If I remove the drop cap paragraph style from the offending paragraphs and then reapply it, I still get three lines. If I delete these paragraphs entirely, and then reinsert the text copied from my original Word doc (which doesn't include drop caps, so the problem doesn't originate there) and then reapply the paragraph style, I still get the same problem. (In addition, if I delete the text the three-line problem reapplies itself to the text that now sits on the pages where the deleted text was.) 

Any suggestions of how to fix this? They would be much appreciated.

[thomaso]

Hi @Drop Cap Guy,
Welcome to the Affinity Forums!

Not directly for Drop Caps but there are other issues reported that seem to result from invisible / special characters in text that got copied/pasted or placed from Word.

Thus, does the issue also occur if you copy/paste from Word at first into a plain text file (.txt / not .rtf, .doc, .docx) and from this into APub?

Can you upload an .afpub that contains examples (in common fonts) for the wanted + the unwanted drop cap results + a Word document that causes this issue when copied/pasted?

[Drop Cap Guy]

I imagine 'Try saving the text as .txt' is the forum equivalent of 'Have you tried turning it off and on again?' so thanks for your patience.

I did this and repasted: it initially had no effect and just replicated the same error, but then I adjusted the text frame borders out of sheer habit to avoid some odd paragraph breaks, and for some reason that shifted/fixed the drop caps too. So I don't actually know what the problem was, or what has fixed it, but since it is fixed I'll just accept that. Thanks!

[thomaso]

I don't understand what you want to say with your comparison. Apart from the fact that you seem to have decided before your report that the Word doc is not the reason …

1 hour ago, Drop Cap Guy said:

Word doc (which doesn't include drop caps, so the problem doesn't originate there)

… it still can influence a pasted result in Affinity just by invisible characters, as known from according forum threads. Also there are various reports that got solved by simply relaunching Affinity or rebooting the computer. Not to mention reports that state "I haven't done xy" which turned to "I must have done it coincidentally" etc. – So I wonder what you want to tell.

Since I am not able to cause any change in the number of drop cap lines by modifying the text frame width it maybe interesting what exactly caused the issue for you.

[Drop Cap Guy]

I mean that there are no drop caps in the Word version: I added them all in Publisher by applying a saved style.

It may well have been something to do with invisible characters. But in any case it's sorted itself out, possibly as a result of resaving in .txt format, even if that did not initially seem to solve it. So I thank you for that suggestion.

[Drop Cap Guy]

49 minutes ago, Drop Cap Guy said:

'Have you tried turning it off and on again?'

Sorry, this is a joke from the British TV show The I.T.Crowd, which is of course not universally known, so my apologies for the confusion. The guys working in tech support in the show say this to everyone who calls, and of course often it works. So I was acknowledging that resaving in .txt format was something I should already have tried before posting.

[Old Bruce]

3 minutes ago, Drop Cap Guy said:

The I.T.Crowd

Great show.

In the early days of offices becoming computerized my sister had a hand written list of "Stupid questions" the tech support people would ask her when she phoned for help. One of them was "Is it plugged in?" She learned to always check her list and actually look see if things were actually plugged in and turned on. Her list eventually got printed out for everyone in her office and she would update it as the technology improved and new "Stupid questions" were introduced. Their calls to support were few and far between, it got to the point where the only answer from tech support would be "Well I think its broken and you'll need a new one."