Error occurring when trying to export as .pdf Affinity Publisher 2.2.0

[NAK]

Hello!

I have been using Affinity Publisher for a number of years now to create a quick reference catalog for our sales team to identify parts and assemblies when they are talking to customers on the phone.  I update it and export it as a PDF every few months for everyone to use.  I had issues a little over a year ago that was solved by your help (it was a bad hyperlink in the document) but after the most recent update (could be unrelated) I am unable to export the document again.  It gives me the attached error message.  I have tried exporting with and without hyperlinks turned on and I get the same error.  Any thoughts on what I should try? 

The file is 1,090 pages and 3.5MB.  

Thank you!

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, NAK said:

The file is 1,090 pages and 3.5MB.  

Just a wild guess from that but is it possible that the afpub document includes a lot of linked images & there is no longer enough room on the destination drive fo the PDF version?

[Oufti]

There also has been a known bug related to Euroscale ICC profile. 

 

[walt.farrell]

But if it's not either of those you could try enabling PDFLib logging: 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/177250-how-do-i-enable-pdflib-logging-for-v2-apps/

[walt.farrell]

Or you could do a kind of binary search, splitting the file in half to try to isolate where the issue is occurring.

[NAK]

RC-R,

I had 36 GB of open space on the drive, but I did some cleaning and now have 90 GB of space.  I still get the same error.  Most of the pictures are imbedded in the document.  

[NAK]

Oufti,

I do not see where I have the Euroscale ICC profile available (if I am looking in the correct spot).  I tried a few other ICC profiles and still get the same error.  

19 hours ago, Oufti said:

There also has been a known bug related to Euroscale ICC profile. 

 

 

[Hangman]

Hi @NAK,

Without seeing your file it's going to be quite difficult to diagnose, are you able to Package it up and upload it so we can take a quick look at what may be causing the issue?

[NAK]

walt.farrell,

I did try breaking the document up into different sections as this did help me last time I had this problem a year ago (I believe you suggested it) and it did help.  This time it is not helping.  I get the error message no matter which section I try exporting.  

19 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Or you could do a kind of binary search, splitting the file in half to try to isolate where the issue is occurring.

 

[Dan C]

@NAK,

The most useful file you can provide here would be the log generated with PDFLib Logging enabled, as Walt suggested above -

19 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

you could try enabling PDFLib logging: 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/177250-how-do-i-enable-pdflib-logging-for-v2-apps/

This log file will be generated, even if the app fails to export to PDF and should provide more insight into the cause of this issue.

Many thanks in advance!

[NAK]

walt.farrel and Dan C,

I tried to enable the PDFLib logging to create the PDFlib.txt  but no file was in the Temp folder after running the export.  Any idea where I failed here?

 

 

15 minutes ago, Dan C said:

@NAK,

The most useful file you can provide here would be the log generated with PDFLib Logging enabled, as Walt suggested above -

This log file will be generated, even if the app fails to export to PDF and should provide more insight into the cause of this issue.

Many thanks in advance!

 

[Dan C]

That's certainly strange, provided the logging was enabled before you tried exporting the file, this should have been generated - so I'm not entirely certain for the cause of this.

If you're unable to produce this log then we will likely need to see a copy of the Publisher document, alongside any Linked images/fonts used in the file, to see if we can replicate this behaviour here.

 Therefore can you please create a Package for your document and upload the entire Package folder to the below link for me:

https://www.dropbox.com/request/6WLn9nGXaF2xTLdRdk4B

Once uploaded, please reply here to let me know. Many thanks once again

[NAK]

Dan,

I tried rebooting and doing the logging again, no luck.  

I uploaded the package to the dropbox link.  Please let me know if you received it. 

Thank you for your assistance!

 

28 minutes ago, Dan C said:

That's certainly strange, provided the logging was enabled before you tried exporting the file, this should have been generated - so I'm not entirely certain for the cause of this.

If you're unable to produce this log then we will likely need to see a copy of the Publisher document, alongside any Linked images/fonts used in the file, to see if we can replicate this behaviour here.

 Therefore can you please create a Package for your document and upload the entire Package folder to the below link for me:

https://www.dropbox.com/request/6WLn9nGXaF2xTLdRdk4B

Once uploaded, please reply here to let me know. Many thanks once again

 

[walt.farrell]

29 minutes ago, Dan C said:

That's certainly strange, provided the logging was enabled before you tried exporting the file, this should have been generated - so I'm not entirely certain for the cause of this.

I tried enabling it the other day while testing something in V2, and also got no log file. I haven't yet gotten back to trying again.

[R C-R]

7 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I tried enabling it the other day while testing something in V2, and also got no log file. I haven't yet gotten back to trying again.

FWIW, I tried enabling enabling PDFLib logging on my Mac & I also got no log file (which I believe should have been created on my Desktop folder). I was testing with this very simple Cracked heart.afdesign file which strangely enough exports fine with all the PDF presets except for PDF (for print), PDF (for export), & PDF (flatten). All 3 of these produce an 'error occurred' message when I try to export to those presets, & the preview never appears in the Export dialog window.

I tried exporting this file from all three V2 apps with the same results: errors for just those 3 presets but no log file on the desktop (or anywhere else I can find via a Finder search on "PDFLib").

I did not do extensive testing with other files but it seems like most of my Affinity format files will export fine with any of the PDF presets, so I have no idea why this one creates errors. 

Note: According to the man page for launchctl, setenv & unsetenv are legacy subcommands, some of which may be unimplemented, but apparently both still are (no error code is generated when using either one). So the only reason I can think of for why the file isn't created is that for some reason the filename value for launchctl setenv PDFLIBLOGGING won't accept a filename path (& yes, I made sure I used my actual user name & not "yourusername").

[Oufti]

6 hours ago, R C-R said:

FWIW, I tried enabling enabling PDFLib logging on my Mac & I also got no log file (which I believe should have been created on my Desktop folder).

The same here, with Monterey 12.6.9. 

[Dan C]

Thanks all, my apologies as I've found the PDF liblogging file was outdated - due to the Affinity apps updating PDFlib (the Library used to write PDF files) in v2.2, the logging file also needed updating, hence the reason a log was not being written.

I've since updated this file in the FAQ to support the new PDFLib version, though I don't require this to be used in this case as I now have a copy of the file in question

____

In regards to the issue being reported here, it appears to be errors caused from certain BMP files in the document, though this isn't an issue I've come across previously and therefore have escalated this issue with our team internally. I'll be sure to respond here ASAP with any further information I'm provided.

Thanks for your continued patience and understanding!

[Hangman]

Hi @Dan C,

This appears to be working and while a PDFLib.log file is generated, I don't receive any error message at Step 4 (on macOS) so I'm unsure whether that is to be expected...

What should the error message say?

[Dan C]

3 minutes ago, Hangman said:

I don't receive any error message at Step 4 (on macOS) so I'm unsure whether that is to be expected...

What should the error message say?

This is expected behaviour, as the error message referred to in step 4 of the FAQ is the 'Error whilst exporting to PDF' error the app throws when a user is unable to export to PDF, for example:

On 10/11/2023 at 2:19 PM, NAK said:

If you're exporting a document that doesn't error, the PDFlog will still be generated, simply this part of step 4 can be ignored from the FAQ as the PDF export was successful on your device

[Hangman]

Ah okay, that makes more sense now, for some odd reason I was expecting to still get an error message regardless, no idea why...

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Dan C said:

I've since updated this file in the FAQ to support the new PDFLib version...

I'm confused about what file you have updated or if this is relevant to Macs because the FAQ here still seems to suggest using the same two Terminal commands as before, & that still does not create a PDFLib.log file when I tried exporting my error-producing file included in this earlier post.

Is there another FAQ file I do not know about, or is there currently no way to enable PDF logging for the V2 apps on Macs?

EDIT: I just noticed that the Cracked heart.afdesign file I mentioned above for some reason uses my iMac color profile. If I change it to something more typical like sRGB or Adobe RGB it exports without problems. So one mystry solved, but I still want to know if PDF logging still works on Macs.

[Dan C]

6 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I'm confused about what file you have updated or if this is relevant to Macs because the FAQ here still seems to suggest using the same two Terminal commands as before

The file I have updated is specifically for the Windows Registry key, I checked with our team and they confirmed the mac terminal command should not need updating for 2.2.

7 minutes ago, R C-R said:

that still does not create a PDFLib.log file when I tried exporting my error-producing file included in this earlier post.

Therefore I'm unsure why you're not seeing a log file being generated at this time, but I will be sure to check the command on macOS here to make sure this is working for me as expected.

20 hours ago, R C-R said:

I was testing with this very simple Cracked heart.afdesign file which strangely enough exports fine with all the PDF presets except for PDF (for print), PDF (for export), & PDF (flatten). All 3 of these produce an 'error occurred' message when I try to export to those presets, & the preview never appears in the Export dialog window.

The error in the file above is due to the 'iMac' Colour Profile set against the document, the presets you've mentioned are attempting to embed this profile in the PDF export and failing:

[Last exception 1910 in PDF_load_iccprofile]["Tried to allocate 0 bytes in function pdc_icmAlloc_calloc"]

Changing the Colour Profile in use for the document, or choosing not to embed this profile when exporting resolves the error with this file. I'm not 100% certain if this is due to the known issues with ICC profiles in 2.2 or if the profile in use is corrupted, meaning it simply cannot be embedded by Affinity.

I hope this clears things up

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, Dan C said:

I checked with our team and they confirmed the mac terminal command should not need updating for 2.2.

Weird. I have checked & double-checked the commands, & made absolutely sure I replaced "yourusername" with my user account's short name, but I still do not get a PDFLib.log file created on my desktop or anywhere else. Can someone on the team check & see if this works with Macs running Catalina?

 

7 minutes ago, Dan C said:

The error in the file above is due to the 'iMac' Colour Profile...

Yes, I discovered that & updated my post at about the same time you were writing your reply. But it still makes a good test case for producing an error, so I do not know why I can't generate a log file on my Mac.

[Hangman]

29 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I just noticed that the Cracked heart.afdesign file I mentioned above for some reason uses my iMac color profile. If I change it to something more typical like sRGB or Adobe RGB it exports without problems. So one mystry solved, but I still want to know if PDF logging still works on Macs.

I have no issue exported your Cracked heart.afdesign file with it's iMac profile...

10 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Weird. I have checked & double-checked the commands, & made absolutely sure I replaced "yourusername" with my user account's short name, but I still do not get a PDFLib.log file created on my desktop or anywhere else.

For me the file appears as soon as the Export Command is invoked in Affinity apps, i.e., prior to exporting the file which of course makes sense...

I've attached the PDFLib.log file generated from your Designer file, though I'm not on Catalina so maybe there is an issue there...

PDFLib.log

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Hangman said:

I have no issue exported your Cracked heart.afdesign file with it's iMac profile...

That's really weird, considering what @Dan C said about it creating an error. Did you try exporting it using the presets I mentioned, like PDF (for Print) or PDF (for Export)?

1 hour ago, Hangman said:

For me the file appears as soon as the Export Command is invoked in Affinity apps, i.e., prior to exporting the file which of course makes sense...

Does it appear on the desktop of your user account? For me, as best as I can tell it never appears anywhere on my Mac, & certainly not immediately when I invoke the File > Export command in any of my 3 V2 apps.

However, when I enable logging via the Terminal command & invoke File > Export in AD or AP V1, I do immediately get a PDFLib.log file on my desktop, & it gets appended to anytime I invoke logging, so for me it seems not to work for V2 but it does work for V1.

Poking around a bit more, I noticed that according to Get Info the V1 PDF export uses the "PDFlib+PDI 9.3.1-i (macOS (x86_64))" encoding software while the V2 export uses "PDFlib+PDI 10.0.0p1-i (macOS (x64))" .... but I have no idea if this has anything to do with it.