Frightening bug with Affinity Publisher stalling on a document due to a corrupted lock file

[LEB]

Hello everyone,

I have encountered the following bug on an almost finished Publisher document. I am using Publisher 2.4.0 on a Mac running OS Ventura 13.6.5 (22G621).

Problem encountered:
- After placing an image and updating an image externally, I closed Publisher.
- When I restarted, the (expected) window opened, indicating that I could update the linked document with the Resource manager.
- Whether I continued with this process or not, the application froze, with either a color wheel spinning or the complete impossibility of doing anything (for example, 'Export' didn't open the corresponding window, double-clicking a page would not go to this page, etc.).

I tried to restart Publisher and my operating system several times with no success. I then tried to open the document in Affinity Designer. Designer then refused to open it, saying that the "Document is already open in Publisher 2", which was not true.

I therefore thought that there was an invisible lock file preventing me from using the Affinity applications.

Duplicating the file using the Finder did the trick, and my file is now editable as normal.

I consider that not being able to open a file in Affinity Publisher due to a corrupted lock file, with no easy way of understanding the problem, is a significant bug that could affect other users, preventing them from opening their files.

 

[carl123]

14 minutes ago, LEB said:

I consider that not being able to open a file in Affinity Publisher due to a corrupted lock file, with no easy way of understanding the problem, is a significant bug that could affect other users, preventing them from opening their files.

If the document crashes its associated lock file is supposed to time-out after a few minutes (5?) and thus not interfere with opening a file after that time

Also, if you configure your computer to show hidden files you will always see them (lock files) in the same folder that the associated document is in, and you can then delete them manually

 

[LEB]

Thanks @carl123.

Interesting. In fact, I can now reopen the document that looked corrupted and work as before.

And I can also confirm that I can see the lock file in the folder.

What I think is a bug is that Affinity Publisher should raise an error like Designer did, and allow the problem to be fixed or report an error instead of the observed behavior (stall with rotating color wheel, no action allowed).

(NB: I also do not see why it cannot detect that the lock file is erroneous if it indicates that the file is used… by the app itself).