Affinity Publisher V2 - Doubling MASTERPAGES when SYNCING chapters in a BOOK

[Marcocampo]

Hi Team, we're working on a book with many pages and are currently figuring out how that works with publisher.
So we discovered one nasty bug.

When syncing Masterpages between chapters in a book, the sourcefile is fine, but the other chapter file now has more masterpages (with the same names), the app just adds those changed masterpages from the sourcefile (see screenshots)

Means, then you have more masterpages in a chapter (I think the new added masterpages have a different prefix but the same names), and if you made really small changes on objects or typos, you can't identify the correct page by the icons anymore. We discovered that during tests with big files, the samples I could provide have about 300 mb totaly, would you like to have and see those ? 

If yes, I would prefer to send a PM to the Affinity Team (how do I do that ?) because I wouldn't like to expose the layout in public in that forum before publishing it.

best, Marcus

[walt.farrell]

If Serif staff need to see your files, then will provide a private Dropbox link when they get to this topic, Marcus.

But in the meantime, from the Help (https://affinity.help/publisher2/en-US.lproj/pages/Advanced/syncingChapters.html) this is working as designed, I think:

Quote

• If a master page of the same name exists in both chapters, the Style Source Chapter's version is copied to the target chapter without affecting the target chapter's version or any applications of it to pages. Both versions' names are unaltered, so consider renaming either or both to help distinguish them.

 

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7 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

his is working as designed, I think:

I think so too and it makes a nice workaround to get masterpages from other files😉

[Marcocampo]

Hmnja, thanks @walt.farrell, your quote is right …

• »If a master page of the same name exists in both chapters, the Style Source Chapter's version is copied to the target chapter without affecting the target chapter's version or any applications of it to pages. Both versions' names are unaltered, so consider renaming either or both to help distinguish them.«

But I think its not like it should be (but this should be an authors decision). And if you're using one format for bodycopy over a dozen chapters in one special masterpage (in the style-source document of your book), you want to make your changes there an have them synced to the other chapters. Should be similar as the type-styles (where no styles were duplicated, but updated or copied).

At least such added masterpages should have some indicator of beeing imported.

I had also masterpages with the same name, but different content in my document after syncing. Very confusing.
Just found the smaller view option for my example … see yourself. 

best, Marcus

[MikeTO]

Hi Marco, I believe this is working as designed. But I agree with you, it doesn't work the way we'd like it to work.

For more information, please see the section "Syncing master pages" in the Publisher manual I shared in the forum. You can download it from the link in my signature.