Advanced Page Management: Multiple Pages Feature

[MikeTO]

Changing spine location: I've mentioned before that we can't change spine location for a master after creating it, and the only way to change the location for a document spread is to drag pages to the other side of the spine. (It would be much easier if we could just drag the spine itself or drag the spread about its spine.)

But it's a bit more complex than I realized.

Changing the spine location for a spread with text reflow off can be done but it's tedious if you want to drag a page immediately from one side of the spine to immediately on the other side. In the left example, I want to move page 8 to the left of the spine. If I just drag it there I'll get the not permitted mouse pointer which seems like a minor bug. The only solution is to drag page 8 to the left of page 7 and then drag the original page 7 to the left of the original page 8.

Changing the spine location for a spread with text reflow on cannot be done at all. In the right example, I want to move page 8 to the left of the spine again. If I try the above workaround, page 7 will move to the right of the spine because the pages shuffle. I imagine this is by design but it means you can't even work around the spine location issue, except to turn off text reflow, use the workaround, and then turn text reflow back on.

   

[MikeTO]

For those who would like instructions for using the multi-page spread feature in 2.6, I've shared draft manual pages in another thread. Please provide feedback there and not here. Cheers.

 

[Petar Petrenko]

19 hours ago, Clayton King said:

This seems like an unnecessary step.

Here is mine dialog box:

[Hangman]

2 minutes ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Here is mine dialog box:

Is that with a facing or non-facing page document?

[Petar Petrenko]

1 minute ago, Hangman said:

Is that with a facing or non-facing page document?

With facing pages.

[Hangman]

1 minute ago, Petar Petrenko said:

With facing pages.

I believe the issue is with non-facing page documents where All Pages fails to export All Pages but instead, exports Spreads...

[Petar Petrenko]

8 minutes ago, Hangman said:

I believe the issue is with non-facing page documents where All Pages fails to export All Pages but instead, exports Spreads...

...and this is with no-spreads:

[Hangman]

1 minute ago, Petar Petrenko said:

...and this is with no-spreads

The problem is that with a non-facing page document when you select All Pages, it exports as a Spread instead of individual Pages which is what it should do...

[Petar Petrenko]

19 hours ago, Clayton King said:

Thanks for taking the time, but I'm not clear on what it is you're doing here.

My recommendation to you is to use facing pages when working with spreads, because in that case you have all options you want: spreads and pages.

[Petar Petrenko]

2 minutes ago, Hangman said:

The problem is that with a non-facing page document when you select All Pages, it exports as a Spread instead of individual Pages which is what it should do...

A-ha... the same problem occurs with facing pages, too.

[Hangman]

Just now, Petar Petrenko said:

A-ha... the same problem occurs with facing pages, too.

It shouldn't do, see the screen recording in the 5th post on this page...

[Petar Petrenko]

3 minutes ago, Hangman said:

It shouldn't do, see the screen recording in the 5th post on this page...

Yes, it shouldn't. It is a bug and Affinity will take care of it during this beta cycle.

[Petar Petrenko]

What about this idea:

regardless the pages in the book are facing or not-facing they should be exported in PDF as single pages, but... if there are spread(s) they should be exported as spread(s), so the printer could get the idea how pages should be prepared for printing?

[Clayton King]

I hate to be thick headed, but I truly don't understand the use of facing pages in a multipage spread. You are literally defining individual pages (I keep using the trifold as an example) which is made of up of three individual pages in a single spread. Which pages are facing which in this case?

The goal is simply to print the spread with all three pages in the order in which you set them. If you export spreads, that layout should export. If you export pages, you should get three separate pages.

My gut tells me software engineers and not designers are developing this implementation.

[Hangman]

Hi @Clayton King,

As mentioned above, this is a bug with non-facing pages. Selecting All Pages should export individual pages, not spreads. Using facing pages was simply suggested as a workaround until the bug is fixed.

[Petar Petrenko]

20 minutes ago, Clayton King said:

I hate to be thick headed, but I truly don't understand the use of facing pages in a multipage spread. You are literally defining individual pages (I keep using the trifold as an example) which is made of up of three individual pages in a single spread. Which pages are facing which in this case?

The goal is simply to print the spread with all three pages in the order in which you set them. If you export spreads, that layout should export. If you export pages, you should get three separate pages.

My gut tells me software engineers and not designers are developing this implementation.

If you create covers, ads, trifolds and other kind of spreads, you can use not-facing pages, but if you have spreads inside a book -- the pages of the book must be facing pages and the spreads should be, too, combination of facing pages.

[Clayton King]

1 hour ago, Petar Petrenko said:

If you create covers, ads, trifolds and other kind of spreads, you can use not-facing pages, but if you have spreads inside a book -- the pages of the book must be facing pages and the spreads should be, too, combination of facing pages.

Certainly. I guess my question is when would you have a document with multiple pages per spread AND facing pages? Or is all of this because it's a workaround right now?

[Clayton King]

On 11/16/2024 at 11:14 AM, Old Bruce said:

Where is Page 3?

I boneheaded... 

[Hangman]

Hi @anto,

29 minutes ago, anto said:

How can I convert a spread created with New Spread to a regular spread?

Without seeing a screenshot of your pages panel it's difficult to understand how you have your 12 pages laid out. Are they laid out as three, four-page spreads?

To convert a spread created with 'New Spread' to a 'Regular Spread' you'd right-click the spread, select Spread Properties and check Reflow through Spread. If you have Reflow Pages selected in the Pages panel preferences this will reflow pages back into any 'ghost pages' from the previous spread.

 

32 minutes ago, anto said:

If I have 12 pages in a document and there are three booklets, I can't print the first booklet (pages 1 through 4), it's impossible to do so. 

There is a long-standing bug in Publisher regarding Booklet Printing. Selecting a page range, e.g., 1 to 4, fails to honour the selected range and instead uses the full page range of the document. There are several reports of this issue in the forums.

Currently, the only workarounds are to either export the 12 pages to PDF and use Acrobat Readers' Booklet option which will allow you to print your 12 pages as three, four-page booklets or, if on Mac use something like the 'Create Booklet' app, which if you do a lot of Booklet Printing is perhaps a worthwhile investment. I'm unsure if there is something similar for Windows.

https://www.thekeptpromise.com/CreateBooklet/

[MikeTO]

@anto Publisher will always resize the thumbnails when you add more pages to a spread, that's just the way it has to work. But there is an issue. When you create a spread or move a page within a spread so that the spine isn't centred, Publisher creates additional blank space in the panel on the other side of the spine even if there are no spreads with pages there. I believe this has been acknowledged as an issue to be investigated.

[Hangman]

@anto,

54 minutes ago, anto said:

Why, for example, from your video I can't print 3 booklets: 1-4, 5-8, 9-12?

Do you mean a booklet as in printing 4, 1 then 2, 3 or do you mean print pages 1-4, 5-8 and 9-12 as individual pages? Are you printing to a printer or exporting to a PDF?

If booklet printing, then as mentioned above there is a known bug with booklet printing the workaround is to export to PDF and print from Acrobat Reader...

54 minutes ago, anto said:

Why are there so many nested spreads within spreads?

I'm not sure I follow, the screen recording shows, three, four-page spreads... What is it you can't print exactly?

 

[Hangman]

5 minutes ago, anto said:

The booklet printing of the selected range does not work.

Can you confirm that you're trying to do this...

[Hangman]

Just now, anto said:

But this is not a publisher(. Can't the Publisher do it?

As mentioned twice above, there is a known bug in Publisher which looks as though it was originally logged under APL-1517 and means Booklet Printing isn't working. As far as I'm aware this has been the case since the release of Version 2.0...

A quick forum search for Booklet Printing shows 411 posts, many relating to this very issue. That's all I can really tell you, it's not unique to the 2.6 Beta or to multipage spreads, it's a long-standing bug still awaiting a fix...

Affinity Publisher is supposed to support Booklet Printing as shown in the Help file...

https://affinity.help/publisher2/English.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Publishing/print.html&title=Print

My hope is that this bug will be fixed in a future version as it seems to be an issue raised often in the forums...

[Evaluation complete.]

28 minutes ago, Hangman said:

As mentioned twice above, there is a known bug in Publisher which looks as though it was originally logged under APL-1517 and means Booklet Printing isn't working. As far as I'm aware this has been the case since the release of Version 2.0.

What? This is not serious maintenance, prioritization, management of the product, nor of the customers' interests and investment. It is not a small problem, a minor flaw, or a trivial impact on the customers.

Alright, I am writing a very critical note in my evaluation form, which I am to submit up the hierarchy, where quality software with assurances of stability both over time and today is being demanded. 24 months and counting since release of 2.0 and no remedy. I see.

[Hangman]

Rearranging a page or pages to the left or right of the spine when Reflow Through Pages is off can result in the spine running through the centre of a page...