Numbered lists misbehave with (different) masterpages applied to left and right pages

[Intuos5]

When I create a document with a Chapter and a Text masterpage spread and apply them separately on the left and right page of a document spread, the numbered lists start misbehaving. Notice that when I use a numbered list, the number starts at 2 instead of 1.
This happens in Publisher 2.2.0, Windows 10.19045.

 

There also aren't any overrides for the list start:

Steps to reproduce issue #1
1. Create a new document and add two new masterpage layouts with facing pages
2. For the Chapter masterpage, add a title text frame and a body text frame
3. For the Text masterpage, add a body text frame
4. Create additional pages, if they aren't there already
5. Apply the Chapter masterpage to the left hand side of the first full spread (page nr 2)
6. Apply the Text masterpage to the right hand side of the first full spread (page nr 3)
7. Create a chapter paragraph style with a numbered list set to global like this:



8. Type in the Chapter text box and enable numbered lists in the toolbar for automatic numbering
* Notice how the list starts at 2.

 

Issue #2
If I add the chapter page to the 4th page and the text page to the 5th, the numbering is also off:

 

 

Steps to reproduce
9. Continuing on from issue #1
10. Apply the Chapter masterpage to page 4
11. Apply the Text masterpage to page 5
12. Enable numbered lists and type in the Chapter text box with the numbered chapter style.
* Notice how the numbering starts at 4.0 instead of 2.0. (or 3.0 when considering the initial numbering started at 2.0 for the previous spread).

File for issue #1

Chapter numbering starts at 2.afpub

File for issue #2

Chapter numberin starts at 4.0.afpub

See forum thread for discussion:

 

[Old Bruce]

I think the problem with the "wrong" numbering is partly due to the text caret in the Master Pages haveing been assigned the Chapter Paragraph Style. If you change it to [No Style] then part of it goes away. Then there is the Starting from in the actual definition. If you change that to 0 (zero) more problem goes away.

[Intuos5]

11 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

I think the problem with the "wrong" numbering is partly due to the text caret in the Master Pages haveing been assigned the Chapter Paragraph Style. If you change it to [No Style] then part of it goes away. Then there is the Starting from in the actual definition. If you change that to 0 (zero) more problem goes away.

That's not it, it's part of the issue. But if none of the text frames have any numbered list in them for the chapter, then they shouldn't be counted for numbering. That's just a faulty design, because then you cannot fill text frames of your masterpage to give an indication of the layout. Nor can you leave text frames empty, you'll always have to detach and remove them from a document page to prevent counting, which, in case you have to re-add the frame by re-applying the master page potentially gets you into migration issues.

Anyways, @Old Bruce this is with your suggestions, there's no start numbering applied, frames are reset and the title paragraph style is not in use.

 

 

When I apply the masters on a page by page basis, the numbering is messed up.

 

If instead, I apply the Text master first to the spread and add the Title master afterwards, the result is different (which it shouldn't).

 

 

 

[Intuos5]

10 minutes ago, Intuos5 said:

That's not it, it's part of the issue. But if none of the text frames have any numbered list in them for the chapter, then they shouldn't be counted for numbering. That's just a faulty design, because then you cannot fill text frames of your masterpage to give an indication of the layout. Nor can you leave text frames empty, you'll always have to detach and remove them from a document page to prevent counting, which, in case you have to re-add the frame by re-applying the master page potentially gets you into migration issues.

And once the pages are finally correct, if I want to make adjustments by re-applying the same (or in this case an adjusted) master, the migration issues are glaringly obvious. There's no way to apply any master to the spread again without messing up the numbering.

 

 

Considering I type my text in Publisher, because I have to account for image spaces and the overall page layout — and that I need to add cross-references manually for my sources to get correct sidenotes — this means that when I want to make any adjustments, I have to start from scratch. So then, the way the masterpages work if they are applied to a single page of a spread completely negates the purpose of masterpages in the first place.

Could someone from the staff please comment on this? I can't expect to get my work done this way, knowing that it'll most likely get messed up.

[Intuos5]

In V1 the behaviour was much more consistent, so this is definitely a regression.

 

Though as @Old Bruce pointed out, in V1 you couldn't add the numbered list's paragraph style to the master page directly. Though you can add the numbered list later and it'll work fine. So that's another regression.

 

 

Only thing that didn't work in V1 either is if you had the same master applied to both sides of a document spread independently, as opposed to the entire spread. That's what you'll see at the end of the vid.

 

 

[Oufti]

1 hour ago, Intuos5 said:

So then, the way the masterpages work if they are applied to a single page of a spread completely negates the purpose of masterpages in the first place.

You should definitely create multiple double-page Master pages for different combinations (e.g. TitleL and TitleR, TextL and TitleR,…) and apply them to spreads, not single pages.

When you apply double master pages to single pages, many difficulties arise. One of the most important is that you have frames from both master pages that are superposed.

[Intuos5]

12 minutes ago, Oufti said:

You should definitely create multiple double-page Master pages for different combinations (e.g. TitleL and TitleR, TextL and TitleR,…) and apply them to spreads, not single pages.

When you apply double master pages to single pages, many difficulties arise. One of the most important is that you have frames from both master pages that are superposed.

Yes, that's what I'll think I'll be doing too. But in my case, that'll be a lot of masterpages, since I have so many combinations. Still faster than detaching and manual editing though.

[Oufti]

4 minutes ago, Intuos5 said:

But in my case, that'll be a lot of masterpages, since I have so many combinations. Still faster than detaching and manual editing though.

That's also what I think.

Since a master page can contain others, you could: 

• Create one main master page with only empty frames in it (so you can modify their dimensions in one central point) 
• Copy this main master into other master pages, keeping each time only the frames needed on left and right side (for example, no footer on left of a new chapter spread) 
• Fill these with headers, folios, …

Note: I prefer not to modify text format in master pages, but preferably by editing style definitions, because these changes in the master pages are only applied when reapplying master pages to pages, which is sometimes inconvenient. 

[Intuos5]

10 minutes ago, Oufti said:

That's also what I think.

Since a master page can contain others, you could: 

• Create one main master page with only empty frames in it (so you can modify their dimensions in one central point) 
• Copy this main master into other master pages, keeping each time only the frames needed on left and right side (for example, no footer on left of a new chapter spread) 
• Fill these with headers, folios, …

Note: I prefer not to modify text format in master pages, but preferably by editing style definitions, because these changes in the master pages are only applied when reapplying master pages to pages, which is sometimes inconvenient. 

What I'll probably end up doing is:
1. Create facing masters with Chapter - Chapter, Text - Text
2. Create combined masters in which I have Chapter - Text, Text - Chapter
For these combined masters, I detach the double frames from 1. so the end result is clean (and numbering is in order), yet controlled by the simple masters.

[Oufti]

Here is how I did (simplified…)

 Demo multiple linked master pages.afpub

Feel free to download and look inside, notably how layers are arranged.

[Intuos5]

One thing to notice that I failed to realize earlier is that the layer order does influence the numbering. The layer that is on top has the higher number.

E: What I do know now is that the order of applying masterpages affects the layer order and therefore affects numbered lists.

[Callum]

Hi Intuos5,

I believe this is an issue that has been logged before from what I can see this is currently with our developers for further investigation I'll update this thread once I have further info.

Thanks
C

[walt.farrell]

21 hours ago, Intuos5 said:

the layer order does influence the numbering. The layer that is on top has the higher number.

Right, just as with other situations in Affinity, such as the "page" order when exporting Artboards to PDF format in Designer, and TOC entries.

The layer closer to the bottom of the layer stack is presumed to have been created first, just as though you were painting on a canvas with a paint brush. Layers closer to the canvas (bottom of the stack) were painted first.

[Intuos5]

2 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Right, just as with other situations in Affinity, such as the "page" order when exporting Artboards to PDF format in Designer, and TOC entries.

The layer closer to the bottom of the layer stack is presumed to have been created first, just as though you were painting on a canvas with a paint brush. Layers closer to the canvas (bottom of the stack) were painted first.

Exactly, which is why cut-pasting usually resolves these errors. But when object creastion order is changed by tools/ features applying masters, it gets confusing.