Publisher flows text inconsistently when text wrap impacts footnoted text block

[Mercury]

In the latest Publisher (2.5.5), I’m experiencing inconsistent text flow in a text box with footnotes when that text box is affected by another object with text wrap.

To demonstrate, the first screen shot shows a plain document that is displaying as expected. The pull quote is selected, since moving this object causes the problem.

The second screen shot shows the document after the pull quote has been moved slightly higher. Note how little text is now displayed in the main text box, despite there being plenty of room.

I’ve attached this document in the state shown in the second screen shot. If you open the document and move the pull quote up or down, you can see how wildly the text flow in the main text frame varies.

In actual documents I’m working on, the effect is often not as severe as in this test document. Often the footnote block just moves up a line or two when I move a pull quote lower on the page. But since the note position is set to “Bottom of Column,” this is still not the expected result. For now, I’ve had to keep pull quotes higher on the page to avoid this bug.

Footnote position bug.afpub

[Old Bruce]

50 minutes ago, Mercury said:

In the latest Publisher (2.5.5), I’m experiencing inconsistent text flow in a text box with footnotes when that text box is affected by another object with text wrap.

For some reason if I change the text to use a 1 pica (1.666... inch) first line indent then things work out fine. Note that I have the latest version of Publisher 2.5.6.

[Mercury]

Yes, that would correct the text flow, as would all sorts of other changes to the text. But if you then moved the pull quote, you would find that at other positions it still caused the same problem. At any position, you could adjust the text so the problem didn’t emerge, but the bug is still there.

Edit: I just updated to 2.5.6 (which became available since I started the topic) and this bug is still present.

[MikeTO]

This is definitely a bug with the fitting of footnotes and I think this is a very good test document for the developers.

It might be a variation of AF-2972 or one of these others. They're probably all related and perhaps should be grouped.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/search/&tags=af-2792

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/search/&tags=AF-2702

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/search/&tags=AF-1600

[NathanC]

This issue appears to be the same as AF-1600, so i've added the sample file and bumped it. 🙂

[Affinity Info Bot]

The issue "Text frames with overflowing text and text wrapped objects can cause footnote positioning to behave erratically" (REF: AF-1600) has been fixed by the developers in the latest beta build (2.6.0.3089). The fix is planned for inclusion in the next customer release.
Customer beta builds are announced here and you can participate by following these instructions.
If you still experience this problem once you are using that build version (or later) please reply to this thread including @Affinity Info Bot to notify us.

[Mercury]

As @Affinity Info Bot noted, this bug was addressed in 2.6, though the new behaviour is not yet correct. While the sample file I uploaded now displays correctly with footnotes at the the bottom of the frame, in my real-world files footnotes now often show large gaps between the notes and the main text. These new issues seem to occur regardless of whether there is an object with text wrap.

As the screen shots below show, footnotes no longer split correctly to fill available space, even when “Allow split notes” is turned on (first screen shot). Even worse, if I turn that setting off, even note 1 that was fully on the left page moves to the next page (second screen shot). I’m really not sure what’s going on. It’s no longer the same issue, but it appears that this behaviour came about through trying to fix the previous issue. As far as I can tell, these problems did not exist in 2.5.x before footnotes were tweaked to fix the other issue.

 

[Mercury]

I’ve made a test case file that shows the problem (with standard fonts and filler text).

Footnote position bug 2.afpub

[MikeTO]

Interesting. I haven't seen that in my own documents in 2.6.0 or the new 2.6.2 beta. There are no flow settings so I didn't see any obvious reason why the note didn't split.

I made a more extreme version of your test doc in an attempt to figure out why the note is not splitting so for anybody else looking at it, this is a good starting point.

original.afpub

I then tried to recreate your issue in a new document but it split nicely. So I made a document with frames of the same size as yours and pasted your text into them and got different results than you. But the results aren't perfect either, while the note is being split, it isn't being fitted properly and overlaps the main text so there's something in this text which is causing the issue. Perhaps somebody else with fresh eyes will spot the issue.

recreated.afpub

[Mercury]

26 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

there's something in this text which is causing the issue.

That’s weird, since the text was generated with “Insert Filler Text” and then expanded.

Thanks for checking it out.

Edit: By the way, your “original.afpub” is good for showing some of the issues, but it doesn’t show how turning “Allow split notes” off can move a footnote to the next page (as shown in my second screen shot above, and as my test case demonstrates if you toggle that option). So, the issue isn’t just with split notes.

[MikeTO]

3 hours ago, Mercury said:

That’s weird, since the text was generated with “Insert Filler Text” and then expanded.

I didn't mean an issue with the actual characters but the formatting.

I've done more testing down and determined your document's issue is related to the baseline grid but I don't know why so I'm missing the second piece of the puzzle.

Here is a revised test document for anybody who wants to look into this. Note that this document is formatted somewhat differently than the original.

new.afpub

1. Open the document and choose View > Baseline Grid and deselect Use Baseline Grid - the note is split properly but this shouldn't make a difference
2. Turn baseline grid back on
3. Click in the left frame
4. In the Paragraph panel > Spacing, select Align to Baseline Grid - the note is now split (very badly but that's a separate issue) but the last word before the note reference marker, which I've highlighted in yellow, isn't in the left column with the note. It's actually at the top of the right frame and I've selected it in the right screenshot. Affinity isn't supposed to allow the note reference marker to appear on a page after the start of the note so something curious is going on with the fitting of this footnote.

Before and after selecting Align to Baseline Grid

 

[Mercury]

Thanks Mike. Yes, I see that disabling the baseline grid does fix my “Footnote position bug 2.afpub” too. In that file, the main text aligns to the baseline grid while footnotes do not. The disappearing marker on the wrong page that you noted in step 4 is concerning: it really looks like there are some fundamental problems here: it’s not just footnotes and text wrap, or now footnotes and baseline grids.

That’s why, though I appreciate your new files, I hope that when Affinity works on this issue they look at my sample file too – as well as others. Perhaps the problem with the 2.6 fix for AF-1600 was that it was so zeroed in on a file that isolated the problem. While the fix addressed that file perfectly, it caused new issues in more realistic situations that use a different combination of features. Before footnotes didn’t work reliably when combined with text wrap, and now they don’t work reliably when combined with a baseline grid. Hopefully a future fix will be tested on a whole host of realistic use cases. Obviously we want features like footnotes, text wrap, baseline grids, etc. to not only work in isolation, but work when used together in the same document. Your files and my file show that 2.6 is still quite far from that goal.

[MikeTO]

I think I understand what is happening now. The bug happens when either View > Baseline Grid > Use Baseline Grid or Text Frame panel > Use Independent Baseline Grid is selected and Paragraph panel > Spacing > Align to Baseline Grid is deselected.

new2.afpub

[Mercury]

Interesting, yes. Specifically, it seems to occur when the footnote paragraph has Align to Baseline Grid deselected. The setting for the main text doesn’t seem to matter.

[Mercury]

To summarize, the fix for bug AF-1600 in 2.6 broke how footnotes flow when using a baseline grid. @MikeTO’s posts above show some of the details. The bug is apparently still present in the 2.6.2 beta.

I’m hoping someone could confirm that this issue has been logged with the developers, since the last official message in this thread (by @Affinity Info Bot) treated the problem as solved.

[NathanC]

Hi @Mercury,

The baseline grid note fitting issue is logged separately under AF-6202, this thread is tagged with that ref.