APub. Workflow improvements

[GeirSol]

Hi! When working a long time for larger projects with Publisher it becomes obvious that there's a number of workflow enhancements wanted. From the top of my head:

1. Updated resources for multiple documents/windows.
   When resources are updated a nice prompt is displayed top-right, times the documents affected.
   But, when fixing one, the second goes away. This is unwanted.
2. It's hard to maintain link between spread/page and displayed thumb in the page-panel.
3. Last chosen character-style is selected for new entry. Unwanted.
4. The ability to save one project while starting on another (two tabs)
5. Easier section management
6. Prompt when pasting from other project what to do with styles (now styles often becomes duplicated for me)

I'll keep adding as I go.
I'm sure there I things I'm not aware of, please enlighten me

Thanks!

[Martin Tolley]

GeirSol.  I so agree with your point 3 - "Last chosen character-style is selected for new entry. Unwanted." One of my main projects is setting a local community newsletter, and there are always a variety of stories and items which need differing frames, headings, column numbers etc. I really HATE "the next" frame, text style, being the same as the previous one... In Indesign I have a default text frame which is always the same. APub could at least offer the option of maintaining a defined default

[thomaso]

@GeirSol, it is not useful to list several issues in one same thread if they refer to different subjects. The thread will become confusing quite easily. (and partially quoted text snippets don't maintain their numbering if that was not typed manually.)

Instead it is more helpful for the forum and for Serif developers if you use the Feature Request forum for desired improvements, one for each subject. (developers hardly scan in this "Questions" or "How to" forum for possible feature requests). Also note, very often a feature request thread exists already which enables you to add your vote at its end. This way it is more obvious for all readers to notice the level of interest in the community.

45 minutes ago, GeirSol said:

Updated resources for multiple documents/windows.
When resources are updated a nice prompt is displayed top-right, times the documents affected.
But, when fixing one, the second goes away. This is unwanted.

These little prompts are requested already to stay there for longer in V1.

Apart from their display time, they are not the only interface items for that information: The "Resource Manager" offers all information like "missing" or "modified" permanently if it is opened.

Note, there is an app Preference (-> "General") that causes modified resources being updated automatically without an additional need to "fix" them:

51 minutes ago, GeirSol said:

It's hard to maintain link between spread/page and displayed thumb in the page-panel.

I am not sure what you mean. Maybe this: activate the "Scroll with view" option in the burger menu of the Pages panel.

1 hour ago, GeirSol said:

Last chosen character-style is selected for new entry. Unwanted.

This was discussed a few times as a feature request for V1. As workaround you can press the "Revert defaults" button in the Toolbar before or after creating the new text frame. Unless you altered it this will cause "[No Style]" being set for the new text frame.

1 hour ago, GeirSol said:

Prompt when pasting from other project what to do with styles (now styles often becomes duplicated for me)

Can you upload a screencast that demonstrates the style duplication? – I can not reproduce it in V1. Here, when a text frame gets copy/pasted between documents which have saved styles in common then the pasted object will not cause a duplicate of the existing style but just keeps/gets the same style applied.

Note, if styles in different documents have same names in common but different style definitions or if they have different names but identical properties defined then it is expected, useful and required to get a new style entry when pasting one frame to another document because it allows the user to handle the existing differences separately and avoids to overwrite a style either in panel or in a text frame incidentally.

[GeirSol]

3 hours ago, thomaso said:

@GeirSol, it is not useful to list several issues in one same thread if they refer to different subjects. The thread will become confusing quite easily. (and partially quoted text snippets don't maintain their numbering if that was not typed manually.)

Instead it is more helpful for the forum and for Serif developers if you use the Feature Request forum for desired improvements, one for each subject. (developers hardly scan in this "Questions" or "How to" forum for possible feature requests). Also note, very often a feature request thread exists already which enables you to add your vote at its end. This way it is more obvious for all readers to notice the level of interest in the community.

Thanks! I'll keep that in min for later.

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These little prompts are requested already to stay there for longer in V1.

Apart from their display time, they are not the only interface items for that information: The "Resource Manager" offers all information like "missing" or "modified" permanently if it is opened.

I know. But the prompts takes me instantly to the right place. Preferred.

Quote

Note, there is an app Preference (-> "General") that causes modified resources being updated automatically without an additional need to "fix" them:

Thanks! Very helpful option.

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I am not sure what you mean. Maybe this: activate the "Scroll with view" option in the burger menu of the Pages panel.

Indeed. This is checked. Maybe I just believed this to be a problem by mistake. Or the scroll didn't work right. I'll check

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This was discussed a few times as a feature request for V1. As workaround you can press the "Revert defaults" button in the Toolbar before or after creating the new text frame. Unless you altered it this will cause "[No Style]" being set for the new text frame.

The problem is more when you don't know what's causing it. Like it was for me some 10hours.
But, good to know. Thanks!

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Can you upload a screencast that demonstrates the style duplication? – I can not reproduce it in V1. Here, when a text frame gets copy/pasted between documents which have saved styles in common then the pasted object will not cause a duplicate of the existing style but just keeps/gets the same style applied.

Note, if styles in different documents have same names in common but different style definitions or if they have different names but identical properties defined then it is expected, useful and required to get a new style entry when pasting one frame to another document because it allows the user to handle the existing differences separately and avoids to overwrite a style either in panel or in a text frame incidentally.

Yes, I have 4 documents that are supposed to have the same styles.
A prompt with
1) use style with same name
2) import new style
3) Paste without style

would be ideal. With option to hide the prompt

[thomaso]

 

27 minutes ago, GeirSol said:

I know. But the prompts takes me instantly to the right place. Preferred.

They take you to the Resource Manager, too, where you can sort by "Status" and thus get all "modified" items listed together for easy access and overview. If wanted you can select several "modified" items and press "Update" for all of them.

Your "preferred" way would require you to switch back and forth between the manager window and the next prompt for each one in a series of prompts. Personally I would not want to interact with or need to close every single prompt manually.

By the way, you also can use the "Preflight Panel" to trigger its warnings at any time: It enables you to create a custom preset for linked status only which lists all according items and offers a "Fix" button for "modified" entries that fixes without opening the Resource Manger.

In case you create a new feature request topic for these prompts you also might want to consider an additional, new "Message Panel". It could store all those disappearing interaction-prompts for later access (in a current session only or maybe even after reopening) until the user deletes them or they have a specific 'life time' exceeded.

1 hour ago, GeirSol said:

The problem is more when you don't know what's causing it.

Causing what 'it' ? – Note, not only text styles but also for other objects a recently set style gets auto-used for further object creation. This is meant to be a feature for those who create more than one object with a certain style (e.g. brush strokes). If you need for a new object a different style than the one used before, then you can prefer to get it created with any 'neutral' default but this doesn't save you a step or the need to define / assign the new, different desired style parameters.

1 hour ago, GeirSol said:

I have 4 documents that are supposed to have the same styles.
A prompt with
1) use style with same name
2) import new style
3) Paste without style

Why via an extra prompt? – Since V1 you can import text styles of other Affinity documents which offers you a text style comparison + options to handle them: Ignore, Rename, Replace ...

 

... and you can paste a copied text into another text frame without pasting the copied style. – Or you can copy/paste the style only between objects.

If you want to copy/paste a bunch of objects then you might alternatively use the feature "Add Pages From File…". This workflow auto-opens the "Import Text Styles" dialog before adding content.

[GeirSol]

15 hours ago, thomaso said:

 

They take you to the Resource Manager, too, where you can sort by "Status" and thus get all "modified" items listed together for easy access and overview. If wanted you can select several "modified" items and press "Update" for all of them.

Your "preferred" way would require you to switch back and forth between the manager window and the next prompt for each one in a series of prompts. Personally I would not want to interact with or need to close every single prompt manually.

Thanks! Your talking about two linked documents in one project. I talk about two linked documents in different projects (two tabs).
But nice tip

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By the way, you also can use the "Preflight Panel" to trigger its warnings at any time: It enables you to create a custom preset for linked status only which lists all according items and offers a "Fix" button for "modified" entries that fixes without opening the Resource Manger.

That's a handy tip. Thanks!

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Causing what 'it' ?

New text entry get character-style from previous entry.

Quote

... and you can paste a copied text into another text frame without pasting the copied style. – Or you can copy/paste the style only between objects.

Yes, you're correct. Thanks for reminding me
My problem is more that I need the option for external style-sheet, that can be used in many projects.
Like now my style-sheets are a mess, and I really don't know how to do it better.

[thomaso]

2 hours ago, GeirSol said:

Your talking about two linked documents in one project. I talk about two linked documents in different projects (two tabs).

How doe this matter? – The prompts pop up separately for each layout document (project/tab), as the Resource Manager lists the resources for each document separately. There are neither common prompts nor a common Resource Manger or Preflight for more than one layout document.

2 hours ago, GeirSol said:

New text entry get character-style from previous entry.

This happens when you previously selected a text style or changed a style attribute of existing text. It does not happen if you edit text content of existing text frames, regardless of their styles. One way to workaround this feature is to press the "Revert defaults" button right after selecting a Text Tool, then a new frame will get created with the two styles "[No Style]" whose definitions are saved in the "Defaults".

2 hours ago, GeirSol said:

My problem is more that I need the option for external style-sheet, that can be used in many projects.

To create a set of styles for common use in multiple projects you can choose the option "Import Styles" and its option to compare and handle conflicting styles. Another possible option to synchronize text styles between documents exists in APub's "Book" feature, while using this might also complicate your goal to create a style sheet.

To avoid confusion it also may help to choose the option "Delete Unused Styles", ideally before you start to create a style sheet. If no text has been styled yet this will result in a nearly empty Text Styles panel (the two "[No Style]" excepted).

You also can delete all styles from the panel. There are two possible ways which cause different results:

1. Deleting a single style from the panel via the style's burger menu will remove the style + assign "[No Style]" to all text that has it applied while style attributes that were not set within the saved style are maintained. To maintain the entire design you would choose the "Detach" option before the "Delete" option. – Note, if the option "Delete style" got selected without "Detach" before, Affinity lacks in a pop-up dialog to choose a different style, it just deletes the style from the panel and all affected text frames.

2. The panel menu option "Detach and Delete All Styles" does two tasks in one step and for all style entries of the menu, thus the Sytles Panel gets emptied while the visual appearance of existing text will be maintained. Those could be used then to save their current design as new styles in the panel again.

[GeirSol]

3 hours ago, thomaso said:

How doe this matter? – The prompts pop up separately for each layout document (project/tab), as the Resource Manager lists the resources for each document separately. There are neither common prompts nor a common Resource Manger or Preflight for more than one layout document.

 

Thanks! You'e very detailed and helpful

Prompts: Yes, they pop up separately. But, clicking on one makes the other go away.
Not a big thing. Just a minor hazel.

Thanks for the delete/detach styles explanation!