Picture Frames are creates as top-level layers (outside the "Body - 2 Pages", "Body-left", "Body-right" layer hierarchy)

[Felix Kasza]

Hi!

I am trying to write (re-write, as most of the stuff exists ina Word document already) a short guide to the TI-Nspire's descriptive and inferential statistics. I figured something short and simple would be an ideal place to try things, learn more about Publisher &c.

I am having *nothing* but trouble, and here is the next installment of this episodic tragedy:

If you look at the attached document (you can ignore the missing images, they make no difference), e.g. at the spread sequentially numbered as pages 6–7 (pagination is 2–3) and examine the layer stack, it looks just fine:

Gee, I hope the pic will be shown smaller in the finished posting …

Now we add a picture frame anywhere, doesn't matter where:

Why is this thing not part of the hierarchy under "Body - 2 Pages"? As a consequence, the usual flow of "place picture into frame, draw a textbox for the caption, group them, pin the group" fails utterly; as an informed guess I would say that pinning is only possible from a placed object to somewhere in the same hierarchy (with a shared parent, that is).

Things I have tried:

Reapply the master spread "Body" to individual spreads and to everything from p. 5 to end;

select random page elements (including the main text fraoime that comes from the master page) before adding the pic frame;

manually rebuild the whole document (now five times) by copying all text into a text editor, stripping off anything that is not text; creating a new document; redoing the master pages and the styles; paste the unformatted text back in; reformat everything; place the pictures. And after a while it happens again.

I am at a decision point:

• Stick with Word (strong dislike) or
• give Adobe even more money (great, massive dislike) or
• cut a reed stylus and write cuneiform on clay tablets (better than feeding Adobe) or
• find a way to work with APub that lets me make some progress instead of producing the same two pages over and over and over.

I am pretty much at the end of my wits here and will be extremely grateful for any help you can offer.

Thank you,

Felix.

 

 

Statistics with the TI-Nspire CX-II.afpub

[MikeTO]

6 minutes ago, Felix Kasza said:

Gee, I hope the pic will be shown smaller in the finished posting …

No 🙂 but you can double-click images you paste into this forum to change their size.

8 minutes ago, Felix Kasza said:

Now we add a picture frame anywhere, doesn't matter where:

Why is this thing not part of the hierarchy under "Body - 2 Pages"?

Where the new object is created depends on which layer is selected in the Layers panel.

• Select the master layer and the object will be created above it
• Select the pinned group and the object will be created inside the master layer
• Select an object inside the pinned group and the object will be created inside the pinned group (which could change the dimensions of the group depending on where you draw, and cause the text to reflow)

Cheers

[Felix Kasza]

Thanks for the tip on pasting pictures  Let me try this:

Yay! Thanks again! Anyway, I just placed the caret next to the last character on the left-hand page; there is not much else to select, as the current layer stack shows:

Now I create a picture frame. New layer stack:

Curses – foiled again!

You wrote: "Select the master layer and the object will be created above it", but there is nothing else but master layer items to select. How am I supposed to select a non-master-layer item when I cannot insert one in the proper layer stack position to begin with? 

I'll say this, cuneiform looks better and better. Give me a stack of clay tablets, and I'll give you any ordering you want.

Cheers.
Felix.

[MikeTO]

I should have mentioned that scenario. You can't create a new object inside a text frame this way to automatically pin it at the cursor location. You can add to an existing pinned object but not create a new pinned one. If you want to draw a new object and have it pinned there, click on a blank area of the page, create it so it's at the top of the layer stack, and then pin it to the cursor position.

I really like the way it works (once I figured out how it worked) but there is one challenge. Sometimes I'll have a pinned picture in my document and want to add a separate text object on its right side and group them together. But once the picture is pinned it cannot be grouped. You have to cut it and paste it above the frame, group it, and then pin it back.

[Felix Kasza]

16 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

You can't create a new object inside a text frame this way to automatically pin it at the cursor location.

Just so I am sure I understand: I create a picture frame.
I pin it to a position in my text frame. Whoosh, its position in the layer stack fixes itself.
I create a text frame. It goes wherever it wants, but let us assume that it's my lucky day and it goes into the Body-left part of the layer stack.
I can move the two frames (pic and text) together but I cannot group them: If I have pinned the pic frame, it is because of the pinning, and if I have not pinned the pic frame, it is because the pic frame is in the layer stack's Outer Mongolia.

The copy/paste you mentioned is something I fail to understand. Sure I can copy an existing group of ( group ( textframe pic frame ( picture ) ) ) and edit it, but that makes me think that APub needs to be shipped with a file in which a dev has manually put a group like that, and a Readme file stating "Do not delete this file: Cloning it, and copy/pasting from it are the only ways you'll ever get pinned and captioned picture frames into your documents."

I mean, really? What big thing am I missing?

Thanks,
Felix.

P.S.: Do you use APub professionally? I can take it or leave it, even though I would not like to do so; but what do people do who try to make a living with it?

Edited September 4 by Felix Kasza

[MikeTO]

41 minutes ago, Felix Kasza said:

I create a text frame. It goes wherever it wants, but let us assume that it's my lucky day and it goes into the Body-left part of the layer stack.

That can't happen because Body-left is a text frame and you cannot create objects inside of a text frame. It's an object layer and not a standalone Layer (uppercase Layer means it was created with the Layers panel) in which you can create anything. Objects can be pinned inside a text frame and notes can be created in a frame, but that's it.

To add a photo with a caption and pin it in Publisher:

1. Click on a blank area of the page and place the picture
2. Create a text object for the caption
3. Group the picture and text object together
4. Pin the group at the cursor position (you can do this by clicking the Float or Inline buttons in the toolbar, or by cutting and pasting the group into the text frame at the cursor position which will use the last settings for float vs. inline)

The feature Publisher lacks that would simplify this is image captions, a text field into which you'd type a caption and choose a style and specify the offset from the picture and which side it should be placed on. Then the picture wouldn't need to be grouped with a text object.

Good luck

[Felix Kasza]

Thanks again: I owe you. This works for picture frames, too, which is how I like to do things.

I very, very much appreciate your patience with me and your help!

Cheers,
Felix.

[Felix Kasza]

On 9/4/2024 at 9:17 PM, MikeTO said:

That can't happen because Body-left is a text frame and you cannot create objects inside of a text frame. It's an object layer and not a standalone Layer (uppercase Layer means it was created with the Layers panel) in which you can create anything. Objects can be pinned inside a text frame and notes can be created in a frame, but that's it.

And this is the key to understanding Publisher and its layers. Thank you!

Your excellent APub manual comes close to articulating this thought, and it does show how to work with layers and how to caption and pin a picture frame.

The documentation never mentions anything about layers beyond clipping, blending, masking (essentially Photo/Designer stuff). A note where it talks about moving objects in the z-order by moving their layers would have been useful: "You cannot move objects into a text frame, you can only pin them there. Pinned objects are z-ordered in the order in which they were pinned. This order can be changed with the "Move Back One" / "Move Foward One" and related commands from the "Arrange" group, but not by dragging the layers around in the "Layers" panel.

And finally there is the book "Affinity Publisher 2" (Christian Denzler, Rheinwerk Verlag) which manages to separate picture frames and images (the former go into a vague category of "objects"), never mind combining them and pinning them and so on. It has good parts, but also nothing on how layers, images, picture frames, z-order interact or why some frames are more equal than others.

So, thanks again!

Cheers,
Felix.