Objects not visible when moved off the printable area

[DKP]

I'm using Publisher 2 (2.5.7). When I drag an object off the document and place it on the grey background area it disappears. I read the reply that says to go to View > View Mode and uncheck Clip to Canvas. Even with this feature unchecked, the object still disappears. What's required to make objects visible when moved off the document?

Regards,

DKP

[Hangman]

Hi @DKP and welcome to the forums,

Unchecking Clip to Canvas will work though owing to the nature of a page-based software format you would need to position your off-page objects horizontally in line with the page bounds of your document pages whether one or multiple pages...

 

[DKP]

Thanks Hangman.

I did see a post from biedert posted Feb. 27, 2020, and it seemed that he was able to make objects visible in the grey area after following the suggestion from another member.

Any thoughts?

Regards, DKP

 

[Hangman]

10 hours ago, DKP said:

I did see a post from biedert posted Feb. 27, 2020, and it seemed that he was able to make objects visible in the grey area after following the suggestion from another member.

If you have a multipage document off-page objects will appear visible when aligned horizontally to spreads but not when they appear outside a spread area or in-between spreads...

Could you upload a screen recording so we can see what you're seeing...

[R C-R]

10 hours ago, Hangman said:

If you have a multipage document off-page objects will appear visible when aligned horizontally to spreads but not when they appear outside a spread area or in-between spreads...

I have always considered this if not a bug, at least a less than desirable design choice.

It seems to me that once they are moved off the page they are no longer part of any page or spread & thus should not appear in any page or spread in the Layers panel unless & until they are placed in a different one, but at least should show in the document window.

[walt.farrell]

17 hours ago, R C-R said:

but at least should show in the document window.

They will show in the document window if they are located in the pasteboard area associated with the current page/spread. They will not appear if they're in the pasteboard area of a different (non-current) page/spread.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

They will show in the document window if they are located in the pasteboard area associated with the current page/spread. They will not appear if they're in the pasteboard area of a different (non-current) page/spread.

Yes, I know that. But once objects are moved off the page/spread then are they really part of that page/spread? IOW, is there really a pasteboard area associated with each page/spread ... or should it be considered one document-wide pasteboard like it is in AD, even with multiple artboards?

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

is there really a pasteboard area associated with each page/spread

Yes, there really is.

[R C-R]

39 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Yes, there really is.

Well, I know that is the way it behaves now but even considering that, does it make any sense that its pasteboard display area is limited to the left & right of that page/spread? IOW, if I move something off to the side & then upward or downward into the area (?) of a different one's pasteboard why should it vanish from view? It is clearly still part of the 'parent' page/spread because it is visible in the Layers panel for that page/spread. 

Only after moving into the area of a different page/spread (not just its pasteboard area) would it become a layer of that page/spread.

There has to be a better way for this to work.

[R C-R]

Let me put this another way. Referring to the video @Hangman posted above, the page 1 pasteboard visually behaves as if exists to the left & right of everywhere there is another page/spread but not above or below the area used by all the pages/spreads, and not in the space between them.

So if one were to try to intuit its size from this behavior its sides would be infinitely wide but its height would be limited to around the total height of all the pages/spreads except for the vertical gaps between them.

With this in mind it seems to me that no matter where the object is placed off its 'parent' page/spread, in the workspace view it should always remain visible. Does this seem reasonable?

[thomaso]

15 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

They will show in the document window if they are located in the pasteboard area associated with the current page/spread. They will not appear if they're in the pasteboard area of a different (non-current) page/spread.

Fortunately it appears to be different: Objects in the pasteboard of any page are visible regardless of the current page. In Hangman's video the moved text frame is visible next next to every spread until minute 0:28 while page 1 remains the current page throughout.

Accordingly in V1 (below): Current spread 832,833, objects visible next to 834, 837, 838.
(btw, if Preview mode is disabled then none of the objects in the pasteboard is visible, even for the current page and its currently selected object in the pasteboard)

 

[thomaso]

10 hours ago, R C-R said:

It is clearly still part of the 'parent' page/spread because it is visible in the Layers panel for that page/spread. 

Not really. If I I drag the object vertically in the clipboard slowly enough or release the mouse button, I see the gray border of "current page" jumping to another spread. – To test where a clipboard object belongs, simply move or duplicate a spread and see what happens to its clipboard objects.

[R C-R]

18 minutes ago, thomaso said:

 If I I drag the object vertically in the clipboard slowly enough or release the mouse button, I see the gray border of "current page" jumping to another spread. 

Try dragging an object off page 1 upward until it is well above page 1 on the document window like @Hangman does at about 0:14 in his video with the red rectangle. It & its bounding box disappear once it is deselected but it clearly is still a page 1 object, as shown in the Layers panel. Its bounding box only becomes visible after it is reselected. The same thing happens if a last page object is moved downward far enough off that page -- it is still an object of that page but totally invisible unless/until selected.

So apparently, the top page's pasteboard extents upward to infinity & the bottom page's pasteboard extends infinitely downward.

Also, each intermediate page's pasteboard extends exactly half way between its neighbor's. Its off-page items will not jump to the adjacent spread until this invisible threshold is crossed.

I know you can'yt open V2 docs but for those who can, consider this off-page stuff.afpub file. It has a total of 5 vector objects (& zooming out far enough you can use the Move Tool to draw a selection box around all of them as shown below) but good luck seeing what page each of them is on & their shapes without a lot of effort unless you do that.

[walt.farrell]

7 hours ago, R C-R said:

So apparently, the top page's pasteboard extents upward to infinity & the bottom page's pasteboard extends infinitely downward.

It extends until it hits another page's pasteboard, I believe. And at the top/bottom that would logically work as you describe.

There's a trick for making it larger above/below a page, that I've seen mentioned before: Increase the top/bottom Bleed of a spread, and you also increase the size of its top/bottom pasteboard.

 

[thomaso]

7 hours ago, R C-R said:

but good luck seeing what page each of them is on & their shapes without a lot of effort

The Transform Panel gives clear info about the coordinate of a selected object. Even if you create a situation like below, where the red object would usually be visible, both the Transform Panel + Ruler + Layers Panel + gray border in the Pages Panel show sufficient and unambiguous hints about this object's coordinate & page without "a lot of effort":

This is just one of many situations in Affinity that behaves different than expected, to me it is rather a minor glitch pointing to low coding quality rather than an issue or bug. Interestingly in this example the red object remains invisible if I move it next to its page via the Transform panel – whereas it gets visible immediately if I move it with the mouse just a bit, which also moves it in the Layers Panel to the other page.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

The Transform Panel gives clear info about the coordinate of a selected object.

Imagine having a 50 or more page file with objects far above the first and/or far below the last page. This could happen by accident, like by accidentally typing a very large or very small Y value in the Transform panel. Now, change to some other tool or do anything that does not select one of those objects. How easy do you think it would be to locate those objects later?

It all boils down to this for me: there is no good reason I can think of for off-page objects ever not to be visible in the workspace.

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

It extends until it hits another page's pasteboard, I believe. And at the top/bottom that would logically work as you describe.

There's a trick for making it larger above/below a page, that I've seen mentioned before: Increase the top/bottom Bleed of a spread, and you also increase the size of its top/bottom pasteboard.

A trick for making what larger above/below the first or last page/spread? Like I said, it appears that the pasteboards for them extend to infinity already. 

[thomaso]

4 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Imagine having a 50 or more page file with objects far above the first and/or far below the last page. This could happen by accident, like by accidentally typing a very large or very small Y value in the Transform panel. 

I can't imagine how I would enter such a value without noticing unwanted disappearance immediately with the consequence of simply undoing or fixing it.

As is often the case, you create a theoretical scenario just because you can think of it, but without reference to usual, known workflows. Why do you think that in the many years since APub's existence this topic has not been discussed with the same or greater intensity as you are doing now?

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, thomaso said:

I can't imagine how I would enter such a value without noticing unwanted disappearance immediately with the consequence of simply undoing or fixing it.

What are you talking about? As soon as an object is moved a small distance into the pasteboard below the last page/spread or into the pasteboard above the first page/spread, it disappears. So as long as someone for whatever reason, intentionally or not, moves an object there, it is no longer visible. So yes, while a user would notice that, it is as currently designed the expected behavior.

The attached pasteboard examples V1.afpub is saved in V1 format so you can open it. it only has 4 pages to keep things simple, but imagine it has 50 or more. Would you really want to have to zoom way out & drag out a huge selection with the Move Tool to see the bounding boxes of every object, or go through it page by page, selecting every partially off page object to see every object's shape?

As I said above, I can see no good reason for ever hiding all or part of objects that are not fully within a page's border. If that is distracting there is always Preview mode that can be used to hide them all with a single click.

[DKP]

Thanks to everyone who's joined this thread - it's really provoked some great discussions!

I reviewed Hangman's video and it appears there's an issue with my app.

Snap8 shows the selected object. Snap9 shows it moved to the left side of the pasteboard and it disappears. If I move the object to the right side the same things happens.

 

[R C-R]

5 minutes ago, DKP said:

Snap8 shows the selected object. Snap9 shows it moved to the left side of the pasteboard and it disappears. If I move the object to the right side the same things happens.

I do not understand what you mean by "Snap 8" or "Snap 9" but regardless, do you perhaps have Preview mode enabled? If so, it is normal for off-page items to disappear, only showing their bounding boxes when selected.

[Oufti]

22 hours ago, R C-R said:

I do not understand what you mean by "Snap 8" or "Snap 9"

It's the original name of the file, hidden in middle of the posted image URL. 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/uploads/monthly_2025_01/Snap9.png.98b7b6d8e81eb961a98e2b2b0602037c.png

[Hangman]

11 hours ago, DKP said:

Snap8 shows the selected object. Snap9 shows it moved to the left side of the pasteboard and it disappears. If I move the object to the right side the same things happens.

Go to View → View Mode and uncheck Clip to Canvas...

[walt.farrell]

20 hours ago, R C-R said:

A trick for making what larger above/below the first or last page/spread? Like I said, it appears that the pasteboards for them extend to infinity already. 

The pasteboard area. If you increase the top/bottom Bleed for your document, then the pages become further apart in the workspace (which you can see when scrolling up/down in the workspace to move from spread to spread. And objects you place in the pasteboard in that expanded top/bottom area will be visible.

[thomaso]

On 1/9/2025 at 1:17 PM, walt.farrell said:

There's a trick for making it larger above/below a page, that I've seen mentioned before: Increase the top/bottom Bleed of a spread, and you also increase the size of its top/bottom pasteboard.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/126653-publisher-workspace-around-printable-page/#findComment-694896

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/190897-placement-of-canvascontrolling-work-area-in-photo/page/3/#findComment-1123726

18 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

The pasteboard area. If you increase the top/bottom Bleed for your document, then the pages become further apart in the workspace (which you can see when scrolling up/down in the workspace to move from spread to spread. And objects you place in the pasteboard in that expanded top/bottom area will be visible.

Considering that R C-R requested only "above/below the first or last page/spread" and that he likes/prefers extreme constructions, requiring/assuming a document with 50 pages, then scrolling might get cumbersome.

An alternative workaround ('trick') without a need for excessive scrolling would affect only the first/last spread by simply increasing their page height (with the anchor set accordingly)... although both workarounds would of course require to be reset before export (which might be less confusing if the impact is only on two spreads rather than potentially each one by changing the bleed).