Publisher 2 - Text editing very laggy

[Jo Mu]

Hello,

I created 2 relative big documents with Affinity Publisher 1 and continued to editing them with version 2. Lets call them document A and B.

The working performance for both documents is good with one exception.

Everytime I edit the text (in connected text frames) in document B, the reaction comes delayed. About 2 letters a second. So I write a text and then I have to wait some seconds until the text is displayed. The reaction in document A is good. The funny thing is, I can have both documents loaded and one is laggy and the other not. But It also lags when I only load document B.

Document A (with no problems) has a size of 286 KB, it main connected text frame has 188.379 characters including white spaces.

Document B (with text lag) has 17.273 KB size (was 103.145 KB before I deleted some pictures for testing) and its main connected text frame counts 177.198 characters including white spaces.

I use currently Affinity Publisher 2.5.6 and the Lenovo Legion 5 15ACH6H with AMD Ryzen 5 5600H, 16GB RAM and a Geforce 3070 with current drivers.

 

Please help to stop this text lag.

[MikeTO]

Hi @Jo Mu and welcome to the forums.

The documents sound fairly similar but does the slower one include images that are pinned inline? Or text wrap? These are the features that can slow down text flow.

Regardless of the cause, I recommend breaking the story (the series of linked frames) into one per chapter, or at some logical point of there aren't any chapters. The same document with a dozen stories will be much faster to work with than if all the text frames are linked together. Breaking up a story is the most important thing you can do to speed up text flow, aside from buying a faster computer of course. 🙂 

Good luck

[Jo Mu]

Hi @MikeTO, thanks for your welcome and your ideas. I will think about splitting up my text boxes. Is there a nice trick or do I need to copy/paste and then delete, delete, delete?

Regarding the lags: I deleted all the pictures to see if they have an impact. But it still behaves the same. I also placed a new text frame which isn't linked to others and this also responds very slow to the keyboard. So it seems, that it has a different reason.

Edited December 4, 2024 by Jo Mu

[MikeTO]

18 hours ago, Jo Mu said:

Hi @MikeTO, thanks for your welcome and your ideas. I will think about splitting up my text boxes. Is there a nice trick or do I need to copy/paste and then delete, delete, delete?

Regarding the lags: I deleted all the pictures to see if they have an impact. But it still behaves the same. I also placed a new text frame which isn't linked to others and this also responds very slow to the keyboard. So it seems, that it has a different reason.

The only way to split up a story is to position the cursor at the start of the frame you want to split before, select to the end of the story, cut it, break the link between the two frames, and paste it back in. Then repeat for each other split you want to do.

There could be another trigger for the slow typing. I sent Serif one test document in which typing was horribly slow which was caused by trying to fit in a sidenote or footnote.

[Jo Mu]

Hello Affinity team,
I could make some progress regarding this bug.

The lag disappears when

• I remove everything from my common master pages or
• I delete almost all of my content

So I created a test document for you, where you can try to find the problem. I removed the pictures and replaced my text with the lorem ipsum fill text. Then I added a new text frame on page 4 where you can reproduce the text lag.
When you delete the content of the master pages "Inhalt gerade" and "Inhalt ungerade", then the lag should be gone.

Do you want to take a look at that? Shall I upload the file to this thread or is there a different way for this?

[MikeTO]

42 minutes ago, Jo Mu said:

Hello Affinity team,
I could make some progress regarding this bug.

The lag disappears when

• I remove everything from my common master pages or
• I delete almost all of my content

So I created a test document for you, where you can try to find the problem. I removed the pictures and replaced my text with the lorem ipsum fill text. Then I added a new text frame on page 4 where you can reproduce the text lag.
When you delete the content of the master pages "Inhalt gerade" and "Inhalt ungerade", then the lag should be gone.

Do you want to take a look at that? Shall I upload the file to this thread or is there a different way for this?

If you're willing to share the file in public, then please upload it to this thread so that others here such as myself can test it. I wouldn't mind trying it. If you don't want to share it publicly, then please wait for Serif to review this and ask for the file in private.

Cheers

[Jo Mu]

Okay, I've appended my stripped down test document here.  Most text frames are cleaned and then filled with lorem ipsum... but there is bad placed and not chained text frame on page 4 where you can enter texts which should show the lags.

@Serif: Please check the document to find the source of the lags and please fix that performance bug.  It's not nice to write in that document. I currently have to write large texts outside of Publisher and copy/paste them into my document.

@all: You're invited to test it to see how big the impact of the environment is. 

 

Mythantika v2 test3.afpub

[Hangman]

Hi @Jo Mu,

A quick test suggests the issue is caused by the graphic elements on your Master Pages...

If you select all the Layers on the Inhalt gerade Master, (the Master used for Page 4), with the exception of the Page Number, right-click and select Rasterise and don't Preserve Layer FX then there is much less lag when typing on Page 4...

If you make a Copy of your original document so you can revert to the original if you need to and do the same to all Master Pages that use those graphics... Save the document close then re-open the amended file and let us know whether or not that improves the lag you've been experiencing...

[Jo Mu]

Hi @Hangman, thanks for your analysis. I made a copy of my master pages in a different document and rastered the master pages (without page and chapter number) in my working copy and tried it. I have no text lag with rastered master pages. That looks like a good way to work. Thanks!

Maybe Serif can embed this behaviour in future so that I or we do not need to split the sources of the master pages and content pages. So e.g. use a rastered preview when working outside of the master pages and use vectors/effects/etc when going into the master pages.

But this helps for now, thank you!

[Hangman]

Hi @Jo Mu,

That’s really good to hear, hopefully, that will make things a little easier moving forward…

Thanks for testing and letting us know…