Index keeps updating with excessive spacing, not solved with styles!

[AnnPS]

My index has suddenly reformatted itself and added lines and lines of blank space between most entries. I am very familiar with styles and have used the styles Affinity established when I created the index, and it worked fine for many iterations as I added to the index entries. Now, it is completely bonkers. I have refreshed, with no change. I have edited the styles to try to force a change, nothing works.

I am at my wits end!

Hope someone can advise how to solve this problem.

I have also had the same problem with the TOC but that seems to be working for now, fingers crossed.

[MikeTO]

Hi @AnnPS and welcome to the forums. We'd probably need to see the style sheet to provide much help. Just create a new document, import the styles from your real document into it (using the Text Styles panel's menu > Import Styles command) and then upload that blank document.

Good luck

[AnnPS]

Hi and thanks Mike,

I've done that, file attached

Hope there's some easy fix I've missed!

styles.afpub

[MikeTO]

Hi Ann, I gave it a try and am not seeing any spacing issues with these styles.

But in the screenshot above it looks like your index entries are 10 pt while I'm seeing 14 pt with the styles you sent.

Is there any chance that you accidentally turned on Justify Vertically for the text frame? It's in the context toolbar. That might account for more space between lines. If it's not that, check the Paragraph panel and see what the leading and space before/after values are. I'm seeing 14/20 (14 pt type on 20 pt leading) with 0 pt spacing before and after.

styles-2.afpub

[thomaso]

I don't know what style you have assigned to the text in your screenshot but quite a few of your saved styles (outside "Base") have massive space before and/or after set.

What style is assigned in your screenshot to the text with indent? Can you please upload a new screenshot: Select one of the intended words in your screenshot and show the upper part of the Paragraph panel together with its "Spacing" tab unfolded?

If the style name shows a '+' symbol right of the style name in the Paragraph Panel then please go to the upper text field of the Text Styles panel, select all text, copy it and paste it to your forum's post together with the new screenshot.

[Oufti]

2 hours ago, AnnPS said:

I am very familiar with styles and have used the styles Affinity established when I created the index, and it worked fine for many iterations as I added to the index entries. Now, it is completely bonkers. I have refreshed, with no change. I have edited the styles to try to force a change, nothing works.

Usually, the problem comes from the style on which the style in use is based. If the parent style is changed, your index style will change accordingly for every item labelled [No change] in its style definition. 

In your case, if you kept Affinty's default style definition for indexes, it seems to be based on [No style], which is often a problem. Perhaps would it be be easier to base Index parent style on something else, like Base style?

 

(It's late ; I had only a quick glance at your style sheet. Maybe there are other useful things to say…

P.S. @MikeTO & @thomaso did already! Nevertheless, I post this, in case of it could help…)

[MikeTO]

This is unrelated, but some of the styles such as Body have a -3 degree shear which you probably don't want. And some like Body again have a 98% horizontal scale which is likely not desired either.

[AnnPS]

19 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

Hi Ann, I gave it a try and am not seeing any spacing issues with these styles.

But in the screenshot above it looks like your index entries are 10 pt while I'm seeing 14 pt with the styles you sent.

Is there any chance that you accidentally turned on Justify Vertically for the text frame? It's in the context toolbar. That might account for more space between lines. If it's not that, check the Paragraph panel and see what the leading and space before/after values are. I'm seeing 14/20 (14 pt type on 20 pt leading) with 0 pt spacing before and after.

styles-2.afpub

Thanks Mike,

that is weird

None of the index styles have 14/20 when I look at them in the paragraph panel or edit the style, so I am mystified on that

It isn't vertically justified

when I open the paragraph panel it shows 10pt leading, and on the character panel the font size is 7pt for both index entries

very strange!

[AnnPS]

26 minutes ago, thomaso said:

I don't know what style you have assigned to the text in your screenshot but some of your saved styles (outside "Base") have massive space before and/or after set.

What style is assigned in your screenshot to the text with inset? Can you select one of them and show the Paragraph panel with the "Spacing" tab unfolded?

thanks thomaso

there is significant space after the section title styles but shouldn't be anywhere else so I will try to find those. When you say styles outside 'base' I'm not sure what you mean, could you let me know where to find those?

I've just posted paraagraph panel with spacing tab for previous reply

[AnnPS]

29 minutes ago, Oufti said:

Usually, the problem comes from the style on which the style in use is based. If the parent style is changed, your index style will change accordingly for every item labelled [No change] in its style definition. 

In your case, if you kept Affinty's default style definition for indexes, it seems to be based on [No style], which is often a problem. Perhaps would it be be easier to base Index parent style on something else, like Base style?

 

(It's late ; I had only a quick glance at your style sheet. Maybe there are other useful things to say…

P.S. @MikeTO & @thomaso did already! Nevertheless, I post this, in case of it could help…)

many thanks Oufti, I have observed the 'no style' seems to be used a lot by default, but I wasn't sure if it made sense to go through every style I have and replace it, but maybe that will help!

I don't have a base style, but this was based on a template I bought - I subsequently discovered it was a bit of a mess so I went through and recreated all the styles I thought I needed. Maybe I deleted base style inadvertently.

[AnnPS]

26 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

This is unrelated, but some of the styles such as Body have a -3 degree shear which you probably don't want. And some like Body again have a 98% horizontal scale which is likely not desired either.

thanks, I'll check those

I found the extra spacing now - it is showing up as a leading override in the character panel. I've set the style leading to 10 pt, I'm not sure where to find what is causing an override when I've set the style to be exactly 10pt?

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, AnnPS said:

When you say styles outside 'base' I'm not sure what you mean, could you let me know where to find those?

I've just posted paraagraph panel with spacing tab for previous reply

See my screenshot.

Unfortunately in your recent screenshots the text cursor position and the text of the currently reported "Index Entry …" styles are not obvious. Thus it is more clear if you select one of the affected words (or lines) in a further screenshot.

[SpotColour]

Hi @AnnPS,

A bug (AFB-7491) in Publisher v1 and v2 causes the TOC to go berserk in various ways, similar to what you’ve shown. I’ve recently noticed that it also affects footnotes, so it might cause trouble with other generated content, such as your index.

I’m unsure if this bug caused the problem you’re describing, but my layouts were similarly distorted, so you might want to see if my workaround works for you. You can find it here:
 

[AnnPS]

17 minutes ago, SpotColour said:

Hi @AnnPS,

A bug (AFB-7491) in Publisher v1 and v2 causes the TOC to go berserk in various ways, similar to what you’ve shown. I’ve recently noticed that it also affects footnotes, so it might cause trouble with other generated content, such as your index.

I’m unsure if this bug caused the problem you’re describing, but my layouts were similarly distorted, so you might want to see if my workaround works for you. You can find it here:
 

I have had exactly this same problem with the TOC, although it has been behaving of late ...

I will try your workaround!

Otherwise, I have to go through every line, change the style, change it back, and then it works. Not fun!

Appreciate your insights and workaround, going to give that a go now

[AnnPS]

46 minutes ago, SpotColour said:

Hi @AnnPS,

A bug (AFB-7491) in Publisher v1 and v2 causes the TOC to go berserk in various ways, similar to what you’ve shown. I’ve recently noticed that it also affects footnotes, so it might cause trouble with other generated content, such as your index.

I’m unsure if this bug caused the problem you’re describing, but my layouts were similarly distorted, so you might want to see if my workaround works for you. You can find it here:
 

Tried your workaround and it has worked! YAY!

How do I best draw this to the attention of those who work on bugs?   ** Edit:  I just added a comment to your previous TOC workaround entry, and drew it to the staff attention that way. Hopefully it gets there.

thanks

Edited October 31, 2023 by AnnPS

[Lee D]

@AnnPS I've added your report to the one with the developers from the other thread.

[SpotColour]

9 hours ago, AnnPS said:

Tried your workaround and it has worked! YAY!

Nice one! 😃 And thank you for confirming this!

9 hours ago, AnnPS said:

How do I best draw this to the attention of those who work on bugs?

First of all, the Affinity suite is only a few years old, and so you may run into some teething problems. But in my experience, Serif treats bug reports seriously. 😍 That alone convinced me to purchase a V1 license and later upgrade to V2. So, if you find a bug, please report it!

That being said, it’s been a while since I reported that issue with the TOC. I’m not sure if there’s a way to bring this issue to attention again or to see its status. But in general, if you want a person’s attention on this forum, you can type the @-sign followed by the username. Then, they will receive a notification.

[AnnPS]

7 hours ago, SpotColour said:

Nice one! 😃 And thank you for confirming this!

First of all, the Affinity suite is only a few years old, and so you may run into some teething problems. But in my experience, Serif treats bug reports seriously. 😍 That alone convinced me to purchase a V1 license and later upgrade to V2. So, if you find a bug, please report it!

That being said, it’s been a while since I reported that issue with the TOC. I’m not sure if there’s a way to bring this issue to attention again or to see its status. But in general, if you want a person’s attention on this forum, you can type the @-sign followed by the username. Then, they will receive a notification.

thanks, looks like its been picked up so hopefully it gets into an update soon!

Great thing is that this forum is excellent, got lots of help here

have a great day 👍