Pages scale automatically after moving around

[Simon Scheiwiller]

Hello all

I encountered a very strange bug. Please advise if it that would be normal behaviour and I'm just mishandling publisher (newest version, on Windows 11).

I have to prepare music books for printing for the publisher where I work. We send the content pages as single pages and the cover as spreads.

So for preparing the spreads, I move the last two pages to the front. Then all the text content of the last page gets scaled to 200% (not the frames or pictures, just the font size, tab stops etc.). So that's the before and after screenshots:

 

Attached is a sample of that file (without the content, which is scanned music, so the file would be much too big :-).

I'm happy for all help! (or bug repellent).

GM-1102_sample.afpub

[Hangman]

Hi @Simon Scheiwiller,

The problem is caused by an old text scaling bug in the Affinity apps logged under AF-1288 and AF-1342 which has, in theory, been fixed in v 2.5.3.

Could you confirm the following:

1. Was the document created from scratch in Publisher or did it start life as an InDesign file
2. If created from scratch in Publisher was it created entirely in v2.5.3 or was it originally created in an earlier version of Publisher

At some point in its life, the Publisher document DPI has been changed from 300 dpi to 600 dpi and new pages have been added at the new document resolution.

If you look at the two text styles, Fliesstext and Titel in the text styles palette you'll notice that the font sizes are 3.5 pt and 7 pt respectively and that all other values have been halved, e.g., Left Indent, Space Before, Space After, Decoration Stroke Width, Offset etc.,

Instead, these have been manually overridden in Character and Paragraph panels...

• If Pages 5 and 6 are selected and then dragged together to appear before Page 1 you see the text scaling issue with what is now Page 2
• If Pages 5 and 6 are dragged independently so both appear before Page 1 no text scaling occurs

However, this doesn't correct the text scaling issue...

Note: If the document is intended to be 600 dpi (rather than 300 dpi), then all text styles' values should be corrected (i.e. doubled) in the Text Style Editor so they reflect their true values...

Steps to Correct the Text Scale Bug with the Sample Document

1. Correct the values for the text styles in the Text Style Editor and reapply the text styles to the text on Pages 6 and 7 (see note above)
2. Unlink the first text frame on Page 6 (2) from the last (third) text frame on Page 5 (1)
3. Add two New Pages to the sample document before Page 1 using the second instance of the A-Mustervorlage Master (this should be renamed as there are currently three Masters using the same name)
4. Add a text frame with three columns and a 4 mm gutter to Pages 1 and 2 (or to the respective Master Page)
5. Link the text frames on Pages 1 and 2
6. Click inside the first text frame on what is now Page 7 and use Crl A to select all the text
7. Ctrl C to Copy the text
8. Click inside the text frame on Page 1
9. Ctrl V to Paste the text
10. The text will now flow across Pages 1 and 2 without any scaling and will be sized correctly if the respective text styles are reapplied to the text or applied elsewhere in the document
11. Delete Pages 7 and 8

[Simon Scheiwiller]

Hi @Hangman

Thank you very much!

22 hours ago, Hangman said:

Could you confirm the following:

1. Was the document created from scratch in Publisher or did it start life as an InDesign file
2. If created from scratch in Publisher was it created entirely in v2.5.3 or was it originally created in an earlier version of Publisher

It's actually more complicated than that. It was in fact started in InDesign, then transferred to Publisher v1, and then edited again in v2. Then, I have a whole folder of files with catalog pages for different instruments (it wouldn't make sense putting a catalog for violin pieces on a flute trio score 🙂), which I add to the end of the books. However, these were mostly also started in InDesign and transferred to Publisher, and then gradually edited when we publish new pieces. And to make things worse, that catalog file was set to 300 dpi.

I tried your solution above, which unfortunately didn't help. What worked eventually was creating the catalog file from scratch, with 600 dpi, and then adding that new file to the main file. Your hint with the different resolutions was the crucial point for the solution, though!

 

 

[Hangman]

Hi @Simon Scheiwiller,

Thanks for the additional information...

Unfortunately, the basic bug you have here is how Publisher interpreted the source InDesign files... When opening the InDesign files in earlier versions of Publisher, regardless of the DPI used for the InDesign file or the Publisher document, Publisher interprets the InDesign files at 72 dpi.

This means if your Publisher document is set to 300 dpi or in your case 600 dpi when new pages are added to the Publisher document and text frames are added to these new pages and then these new text frames linked to existing text frames on pages from the original InDesign file the text is scaled between the two text frames because on a page from the original InDesign file Publisher says, that text frame includes 12 pt text on a page that is 72 dpi (the bug) and I'm now linking the 12 pt text to a new page created in Publisher which is 300 dpi.

Subsequently, the linked text on the new page created in Publisher appears at 2.88 pt, (72 / 300) x 100 = 24% - 12 pt x 24% = 2.88 pt.

The workaround for the bug was to change the Publisher document dpi to 72 dpi before adding any new pages, then once added and text linked between pages the document could be changed to 300 or 600 dpi and everything would work correctly...

With your file, not only had this bug crept in because it was created in earlier versions of Publisher where the bug existed, but the text sizes had been manually overridden in the Character and Paragraph panels to compensate for the bug. To add to this the document dpi was then changed from 300 to 600 dpi which with the sample provided doubled the size of all the text style settings on the affected page...

This means mixing and matching InDesign-created pages with Publisher-created pages in a new Publisher file created an endless nightmare of scaling issues so while the technique mentioned above worked for me with your cut-down sample it's quite likely it won't work across your document...

The bug has been fixed in v2.5.3 which is why starting from scratch with a 600 dpi document works without issue, i.e., v2.5.3 now interprets InDesign files using the correct dpi, so there are now no scaling issues when linking text frames after creating new pages in the Publisher document...

Hopefully that all makes some sense...

[Simon Scheiwiller]

On 8/16/2024 at 12:43 PM, Hangman said:

With your file, not only had this bug crept in because it was created in earlier versions of Publisher where the bug existed, but the text sizes had been manually overridden in the Character and Paragraph panels to compensate for the bug. To add to this the document dpi was then changed from 300 to 600 dpi which with the sample provided doubled the size of all the text style settings on the affected page...

This means mixing and matching InDesign-created pages with Publisher-created pages in a new Publisher file created an endless nightmare of scaling issues so while the technique mentioned above worked for me with your cut-down sample it's quite likely it won't work across your document...

That sounds reasonable. Though I never changed any text sizes and resolutions in Publisher. Up until recently, all I noticed was that when I added the new catalog files after the old ones, the old ones were suddenly changed to very small fonts, but that didn't matter because I then deleted them anyway. But I could move it around and export the spread without problems until around v.2.5.0 or so.

What I have to do know is creating new catalog files, luckily it doesn't make a mess when I just copy the old text in, then I can add these to the files without problems.

[Hangman]

1 minute ago, Simon Scheiwiller said:

That sounds reasonable. Though I never changed any text sizes and resolutions in Publisher.

That wouldn't necessarily matter... on opening an IDML file in earlier versions of Publisher, even though you may have a 300 dpi Publisher file, internally the text frames created in the InDesign file were interpreted by Publisher at 72 dpi so even linking an existing InDesign text frame to a new one created within Publisher will demonstrate the issue because you were effectively linking a 72 dpi text frame to a 300 dpi text frame which is where the scaling issue occurred...

This has been fixed in v2.5.3 so is no longer a problem when opening InDesign files in the current version of Publisher because the text frames created in the InDesign file are now interpreted correctly...

[Simon Scheiwiller]

2 minutes ago, Hangman said:

you were effectively linking a 72 dpi text frame to a 300 dpi text frame

Would it be possible then to change the resolution of a single text frame? Maybe that could save me from having to create all these files again 🙂

[Hangman]

1 minute ago, Simon Scheiwiller said:

Would it be possible then to change the resolution of a single text frame? Maybe that could save me from having to create all these files again 🙂

In theory, if you have opened the IDML file in an earlier version of Publisher, before adding any new text frames or any new pages to the Publisher file, changing the Publisher document's dpi to 72 dpi under the Document Setup window before adding new pages and new text frames should overcome the text scaling issue...

Once you've added all the new pages and text frames and linked them accordingly you should then be able to change the document dpi accordingly to 300 or 600 dpi without the text rescaling between text frames though now the issue is fixed in 2.5.3 you would need to experiment to check if this still works as you might now see different behaviour...

If you have a test document, even a slimmed-down version where you see the issue still happening, feel free to upload it so we can take a look...

[Simon Scheiwiller]

5 minutes ago, Hangman said:

In theory, if you have opened the IDML file in an earlier version of Publisher, before adding any new text frames or any new pages to the Publisher file, changing the Publisher document's dpi to 72 dpi under the Document Setup window before adding new pages and new text frames should overcome the text scaling issue...

 

After some testing, I at least know it's clearly the catalog files that are corrupted (and luckily not all the books that I already digitalized). But if I can't change the settings of single text frames, I will very probably have to recreate all these files.

[Simon Scheiwiller]

Coming back to the problem ...

I tried to build some templates from scratch, so I don't have any InDesign-Data in it which might make problems. But it seems something in the text styles is deeply rotten.

How to reproduce (in Publisher 2.5.5):

1. start a new document
2. check a text style with a set font size
3. the style settings don't match the font size setting just above:

4. In the Document settings, change resolution to 96 dpi
5. Now the sizes match:

 

[Hangman]

Hi @Simon Scheiwiller,

This again is a known bug on Windows logged under AF-3804 currently awaiting a fix...

[Simon Scheiwiller]

@Hangman

Thank you. Does this have anything to do with my first problem above?

[Hangman]

Hi @Simon Scheiwiller,

This is actually a separate, Windows-specific bug, i.e., the bug isn't present on Mac and has nothing to do with the first problem...

The current hope is that these bugs will be fixed in the v2.6 Beta cycle though we have no guarantees at this stage that will be the case...