AP 2 Book Pad/Merge does not apply master pages to "added" pages

[Chris_06]

Affinity Publisher 2.3.1
Windows 10 22H2 19045.3930

With pad/merge AP will attempt to add/merge pages to maintain correct left/right page layout between chapters (or at least that's what it appears to do).

One would expect that when AP adds a page that the new page would have the first master page from the selected style source chapter applied to it. But this does not happen. To the contrary, a completely blank page is inserted to pad which really just ruins the layout of any particular book rendering the Book feature a non-feature.

The tool should at a minimum apply the first master page found in the style source chapter to the new page inserted to accomplish the padding.

A better option would be to allow selecting which master page should be applied from the style source chapter.

This seems to be a basic oversight on the part of the feature planning department. Its hard to imagine actually being able to use the Book feature in its current state to go directly to a published book.

PS. I have read the several threads in the other forums regarding a number of issues with the Book tool. This one fix would seem to address several of the symptoms described in those threads.

 

[Old Bruce]

3 minutes ago, Chris_06 said:

One would expect that when AP adds a page that the new page would have the first master page from the selected style source chapter applied to it. But this does not happen. To the contrary, a completely blank page is inserted to pad which really just ruins the layout of any particular book rendering the Book feature a non-feature.

We have opposite expectations. I expect there to be no Master Page applied to the added padded pages.

But as you point out there are many problems with the Book feature. I have taken to always starting my "chapter" documents with a Righthand Page and ending with a Lefthand page so as to avoid one more potential problem.

[Chris_06]

6 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

But as you point out there are many problems with the Book feature. I have taken to always starting my "chapter" documents with a Righthand Page and ending with a Lefthand page so as to avoid one more potential problem.

If I only set for one author I might be able to get away with that. But everyone seems to like it different than the other one. 😵

[Chris_06]

19 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

We have opposite expectations. I expect there to be no Master Page applied to the added padded pages.

This could be accommodated even with the fix I request. One option could be to apply no master.

In short: I would expect any pages Affinity "adds" to be as configurable as any page I would add. That should please all of the people most of the time.

[Dan C]

Hi @Chris_06,

Thanks for your report!

As I understand it, the current behaviour is expected and therefore this isn't technically a bug - however I certainly understand your expectations here and I agree there is room for improvement for this feature.

Therefore I'll be moving this thread to the Feedback section of the forums and will raise this with our development team for further consideration in a future update.

I hope this helps

[Chris_06]

1 hour ago, Dan C said:

As I understand it, the current behaviour is expected and therefore this isn't technically a bug

In that case, I would recommend hiring some folks from the publishing industry to assist Serif in their quest to produce "major league" publishing software. This is not the first time Serif has missed the mark.

If inconsistent padding/merging is an expected behaviour (or worse, an intended one), I would call into question the qualifications of whoever is in charge of feature design.

[Chris_06]

1 hour ago, Dan C said:

Therefore I'll be moving this thread to the Feedback section of the forums and will raise this with our development team for further consideration in a future update.

I hope this helps

Move it where you like. I certainly have no control over that.

However, I maintain my contention that this is a bug. Even if it is a design bug rather than a coding bug.

[Dan C]

Thanks for your feedback.

4 minutes ago, Chris_06 said:

If inconsistent padding/merging is an expected behaviour (or worse, an intended one), I would call into question the qualifications of whoever is in charge of feature design

I believe the current behaviour will always create a blank page, that does not have a Master applied, as your fist post noted- can you please expand on what you feel is inconsistent in this regard? Or are you referring to inconsistencies in comparison to manually adding a page to a file in Publisher?

As OldBruce mentions above, the desired behaviour may differ from user to user, so others may have different expectations from yourself.
However as I've confirmed, I have logged this with our development team for further considerations.

[Chris_06]

51 minutes ago, Dan C said:

can you please expand on what you feel is inconsistent in this regard?

See my comment on this thread.

FWIW, I have posted my thinking in more detail in that thread.

[MikeTO]

+1

I've previously requested options for padded pages to be based on a master (preferably a document or section's default master but even specifying a master in stray page options would be good) and an option to merge pages that have no content in master frames.

[Dan C]

Apologies for the delayed response, I just wanted to update you to let you know that I have not forgotten about this thread - I'm currently awaiting further responses from our teams internally regarding this feature and the issues raised in the linked thread / in Mikes original report when the feature was introduced.

I'll be sure to respond here ASAP with any information I am provided

[PaoloT]

On 2/1/2024 at 2:47 PM, Dan C said:

I believe the current behaviour will always create a blank page, that does not have a Master applied

For someone like me, who works on books with a coherent page design from the first to the last page, having the same master pages of the already existing pages is expected. If the first few pages have that design, the following ones will have the same.

Having to reapply master pages is both an action more, and there is the risk that there is something that has to be manually reformatted, having been put on page with the wrong page layout.

Paolo

 

[Dan C]

Thanks for your continued patience here - I've spoken further with our teams internally and they have determined that there are a few issues here.

Some of these appear to be bugs with the current options provided, however some points raised (both here and in the original thread Mike referred to) are improvements to be considered for a future update.
Essentially, the options provided should function as documented, however the options being requested that aren't currently part of this feature fall under improvement requests category.

We do appreciate this feature currently has limited options and certainly there is room for improvement, therefore the issues found with the current options are being logged as bugs with our developers now, and the requested functionality will be logged as a feature request/improvement for a future update.

I hope this helps!