Affinity Publisher cannot seem to make PDFs anymore?

[Foolish Frost]

Affinity Publisher cannot seem to make PDFs anymore?

I just tried to export a PDF from Affinity, and it always errors out:

Was working before the update.

Any ideas?

[Hangman]

Hi @Foolish Frost and welcome to the forums,

Does your file export without issue when exported to your internal Hard Drive rather than Dropbox or do you see the same error?

If you do see the same error it’s possible there is an element in your file causing the export issue…

Which version of Publisher are you using and which PDF preset are you exporting your file with?

Let us know and if your file still won’t export are you able to use Save as Package and then Zip the files up and upload the Zip file so we can take a look?

[Foolish Frost]

Good questions:

1. Outside dropbox does not help. Still fails the same way.

2. It's happening with multiple files. If it is a bad file, it's considering all my old files from before the update bad suddenly. That's not good for it's own reason.

3. Just downloaded the latest update. 2.3.1

[Foolish Frost]

And resetting the settings for the app did not solve it either.

[Foolish Frost]

Okay, where do I upload it?

[Oufti]

8 hours ago, Foolish Frost said:

Okay, where do I upload it?

When you answer in the forums, you'll see a line :

• Drag files here to attach, or choose files...

Clic on "Choose files…" and select the file on your disk to upload it here ; 

Then you choose "Insert" and finally "Submit reply". 

[walt.farrell]

9 hours ago, Foolish Frost said:

Okay, where do I upload it?

If you can share it publicly, just do it as Oufti suggested.

If you need to keep it private,  you'll need to wait for a Serif Staff member to post and provide a private upload link for you.

[Foolish Frost]

I can do better.

Last error in log is:

[Last exception 17020 in PDF_rect]["Element type Sect (id 54) cannot contain content items, but only other structure elements"]

Whatever this is, it exists in my files since the last versions, and seems to be that one of my templates is not illegal to the export process.

While I can use trial and error to find what's causing this, I think this is probably due to the system needing to know how to deal with it?

pdflib.log

[Foolish Frost]

I'm betting this has to do with a moderately complex bit of trade dress I made to allow me to make an expanding scroll window on the page...

I'm guess something about how it stacks is breaking the new version of the app.

Tested...

Yup. It's broke due to that element.

And I use it throughout multiple RPG books I've put out.

I'm either going to need help with this, or I'm rebuilding hundreds of pages.

[Hangman]

Hi @Foolish Frost,

It's good that you've identified the culprit... as @walt.farrell mentioned earlier if you're happy to upload one of the source files by using 'Save as Package' (so it includes any linked graphics) and then Zipping everything up then we'd be happy to take a closer look at why this particular element may be causing export issues...

If you can also let us know which PDF Preset you're using or variation of, that would be helpful as well...

[Foolish Frost]

Moonmoth.zip

There you go. Good luck!

[Oufti]

This document exports well here (macOS Monterey, Aff 2.3.1), be it with Press or Print standard export presets.

[Foolish Frost]

You are right. Print versions DO seem to work. It's the digital that break. Odd, but maybe useful.

 

[walt.farrell]

It also exports fine using the PDF Digital (Small) Preset as long as I turn off the Tagged PDF option.

[Hangman]

Hi @Foolish Frost,

Many thanks for your file...

I found a couple of issues with your file, the main one being the paper background texture on Master A which kept crashing Publisher...

If exporting using the PDF (print) or PDF (press ready) presets then the scroll overlays that use the Gaussian Blur FX, don't export correctly so I duplicated the scroll and overlay layers on Pages 2 and 3 and rasterised them so they now appear correctly if exporting using these two presets...

Exporting using either of the Digital PDF presets exports without issue with the original scroll FX layers (i.e. without rasterising them) as soon as Tagged PDF is unchecked as @walt.farrell mentions...

I've attached an updated version of the file which includes both the original and rasterised versions of the scrolls on Pages 2 and 3 with all the images resaved and replaced which I only did to rule out any other potential issues...

Moonmoth v2.zip

Equinox_Encounters_MoonMoth_Digital Small.pdf Equinox_Encounters_MoonMoth_Digital High.pdf Equinox_Encounters_MoonMoth_Print.pdf

[Foolish Frost]

Ah, so something broke in tagged PDF. As for the other issue with the Gaussian Blur FX, I've seen that one before.

I'll look at the options and work out the best way forward. Now that we have an example, I'm sure they'll look into it as well.

Still odd it just showed up in the latest version.

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, Foolish Frost said:

Still odd it just showed up in the latest version.

Tagged PDF support is new in Publisher 2.3.

[Dan C]

Welcome to the Affinity Forums @Foolish Frost & thanks for the files provided!

I can confirm I've been able to replicate this issue in your document - it appears to occur when using Constraint Groups & Tagged PDF export enabled, even without any custom Tag data added to the document.

I'm getting this logged with our development team now to be resolved in a future update, in the meantime I'd recommend unticking the 'Tagged PDF' option when exporting to workaround this issue.

I hope this helps