Publisher cross reference bug; page number not being calculated in "other chapter"

[jmliss]

I created a new book, I created 2 chapters (files) on Sonoma 14.0/Mac Studio, latest Affinity apps. Chapter one has a figure on page 1 and on page 2, I created a reference including the page number of the anchor for the figure. All good. I used same reference for chapter 2, page 1, and pointed to chapter 1 as target. All fields except page was linked.

I attached the three files, the book and the two chapters -

I'm sure this is an easy fix relative to creating the global cross reference internal table. I even tried to update cross references on the book. The fact that some object were identified, leads me to believe this was an oversight. Pls check to make sure all objects/fields, besides the page one get checked.

 

 

 

Test 2.afpub Test .afbook Test 1.afpub

[walt.farrell]

When I Opened your .afbook file, it only knew about chapter Test 1, not chapter Test 2. Also, there are no Cross-References in Test 1 according to the Cross References panel. I added chapter Test 2, and there is one Cross Reference in Test 2, as you described. I don't see the page number in it, either.

I mention this in part to make sure you included the files you intended to include.

 

[jmliss]

Walt, 

Somehow my 3 test files got corrupted. So I recreated them and saved/closed them and reopened and the problem I described persists. I am including those files (again) and some screen shots. The screen shots below, shows test 2 cross referencing into test 1 and I made two cross references to the same target with the second has : around the expected page. The page object is not somehow in the cross reference but the chapter (Test 1) and "Figure 01" is from the objects on Test 1.

I hope this help better than my first attempt, to describe the issue. Of course this is a test bench I created to reproduce a problem I see with a different book and different chapters. I thought maybe that product book, if you will had other issues, so I isolated to this test bench.

 

Thank you again for helping.

Jonathan Liss

 

Test .afbook Test 2.afpub Test 1.afpub

[MikeTO]

You've found a new bug! The PageNumber sub-field of a cross-reference doesn't work if the target is an object anchor and is in another chapter. It works if it's a text anchor and it works if the object anchor is in the same file.

I duplicated the problem with my own book and chapter files. I tried all the applicable sub-fields for a cross-reference to an object anchor such as section name and chapter number but page number is the only one that fails.

 

[jmliss]

12 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

You've found a new bug! The PageNumber sub-field of a cross-reference doesn't work if the target is an object anchor and is in another chapter. It works if it's a text anchor and it works if the object anchor is in the same file.

I duplicated the problem with my own book and chapter files. I tried all the applicable sub-fields for a cross-reference to an object anchor such as section name and chapter number but page number is the only one that fails.

 

Excellent - good that you tested the remaining fields. I did not try text anchor, but at least I may have a work around now

 

[jmliss]

2 minutes ago, jmliss said:

Excellent - good that you tested the remaining fields. I did not try text anchor, but at least I may have a work around now

 

I should also thank you for the manual. My production document is about 1000 pages over 4 chapters. Even affinity publisher can't render in one shot from the book, so I render each chapter to pdf and then combine pdf's using finder  The 1000 pages have about 900 linked pngs

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, jmliss said:

Excellent - good that you tested the remaining fields. I did not try text anchor, but at least I may have a work around now

You could either pin the figure into the text frame and add a text anchor beside the pin, or draw a text frame, insert the anchor into it and otherwise leave it blank if there's no caption, and group it with the figure. Either solution would give you a working target for the other chapter.

[jmliss]

8 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

You could either pin the figure into the text frame and add a text anchor beside the pin, or draw a text frame, insert the anchor into it and otherwise leave it blank if there's no caption, and group it with the figure. Either solution would give you a working target for the other chapter.

Understood. I just need to reference a page from a previous chapter. What I did was create a separate cross reference for the page number. Anyway, the introduction of cross referencing, combined with auto numbering lists for Figure numbering is something that was sorely missed and now makes publisher a much better tool. Next separate issue is tables, need a way to import data from a spreadsheet so that pagination works. Maybe you cover that in the manual you sent, I need to read.

Thanks again

Jonathan

[Hangman]

On 9/29/2023 at 11:12 PM, MikeTO said:

You've found a new bug! The PageNumber sub-field of a cross-reference doesn't work if the target is an object anchor and is in another chapter.

I'm also experiencing an instant crash when attempting to export to PDF if the cross-reference target is an object anchor and subsequently the cross-reference value is shown as empty in the preflight panel and I click Ignore and Continue when the preflight warning is displayed...

It would be helpful if others could also test on both Mac and Windows either with the attached file or a unique file...

Crash Reports

Affinity Publisher 2 Affinity Store-2023-10-01-103526.ipsAffinity Publisher 2 Affinity Store-2023-10-01-103304.ips

 

Test File

The Big Book.zip

[Dan C]

Hi,

Thanks for this information, i've logged this as a bug.

Lee

[Affinity Info Bot]

The issue "Crash When Exporting PDF from a book which has anchor cross references across chapters." (REF: AF-744) has been fixed by the developers in internal build "2.3.0.2106".
This fix should soon be available as a customer beta and is planned for inclusion in the next customer release.
Customer beta builds are announced here and you can participate by following these instructions.
If you still experience this problem once you are using that build version (or later) please reply to this thread including @Serif Info Bot to notify us.