[Beta 6] Problems (Bugs?) with Symbols

[R C-R]

I am having a lot of trouble understanding how symbols should work in the Mac 1.5.x Betas, & if what I am seeing is the result of bugs or just me expecting them to work differently than intended. The main problems:

 

• The Symbols help topic says to create symbol instances, I can either drag a symbol onto the page from the Symbols panel or duplicate an existing 'on page' one. Drag from panel works fine, but duplicating a symbol creates a new group instead of another symbol instance. It doesn't matter if I create the duplicate by option-dragging a symbol on the page, by selecting it & using CMD+J, or from the Layers panel popup > Duplicate command.

 

• Manipulating a selected symbol (resize, rotate, whatever) does not affect any other instance of it on the page. For that to work, I have to expand the symbol in the Layers panel & select the 'child' object.

 

• The Symbols help topic says I can disable sync on the Symbols panel, edit an instance independently of the others, & then reenable sync to sync across all instances again. When I try that, enabling sync again does not sync across all instances any more -- each symbol instance seems to be permanently desynchronized.

 

• Deleting all instances of a symbol on the page causes the symbol in the Symbols panel to lose its icon. From then on, dragging it (by name or where the icon should be) onto the page creates an empty symbol instance.

 

• Renaming a symbol in the Symbols panel does not update the symbol name of any existing symbols in the Layers panel, although new instances I add to the page do get the new name. (Perhaps this is by intent?)

 

• Rotating a synced symbol instance on the page causes the symbol icon (in the Symbols panel & the Layers panel) causes the icon to change size in both places. Only at 0° & a few other angles does it have the original size; at most angles it shrinks substantially.

 

• Renaming a symbol sometimes crashes the app. This is usually preceded by the inability to enter text in the rename field -- the cursor is there & blinking but no typed characters appear in the field.

 

Any help with what I am misunderstanding or confirmation of buggy behavior would be greatly appreciated.

[MEB]

The Symbols help topic says to create symbol instances, I can either drag a symbol onto the page from the Symbols panel or duplicate an existing 'on page' one. Drag from panel works fine, but duplicating a symbol creates a new group instead of another symbol instance. It doesn't matter if I create the duplicate by option-dragging a symbol on the page, by selecting it & using CMD+J, or from the Layers panel popup > Duplicate command.

This seems a bug. I will log this.

 

Manipulating a selected symbol (resize, rotate, whatever) does not affect any other instance of it on the page. For that to work, I have to expand the symbol in the Layers panel & select the 'child' object.

This is By Design. Global transforms are not synchronised between symbol objects so you can for example scale one instance of a logo for a webpage on one artboard, while keeping other at the original size for a flyer on another artboard and all still sync. If you want to scale all instances you have to select the objects "contained" inside the symbol and scale them.

 

The Symbols help topic says I can disable sync on the Symbols panel, edit an instance independently of the others, & then reenable sync to sync across all instances again. When I try that, enabling sync again does not sync across all instances any more -- each symbol instance seems to be permanently desynchronized.

Seems to be working here, however you may need to zoom in/out to force a refresh. Sometimes the symbols aren't being redrawn correctly. I believe MattP is already aware of this one.

 

Deleting all instances of a symbol on the page causes the symbol in the Symbols panel to lose its icon. From then on, dragging it (by name or where the icon should be) onto the page creates an empty symbol instance.

I'm not seeing this here. Mine retains the symbol in the Symbols panel. I will check if i can reproduce this.

 

Renaming a symbol in the Symbols panel does not update the symbol name of any existing symbols in the Layers panel, although new instances I add to the page do get the new name. (Perhaps this is by intent?)

I believe this is by design. You should be able to rename layers independently of being symbols or not, so i don't expect the symbols names (from the Symbols panel) to be synchronised with symbols layer's names. I will check this with the devs.

 

Rotating a synced symbol instance on the page causes the symbol icon (in the Symbols panel & the Layers panel) causes the icon to change size in both places. Only at 0° & a few other angles does it have the original size; at most angles it shrinks substantially.

Rotating symbols on canvas doesn't rotate the symbol in the Symbols panel for me (neither it should). The "icon" in the Layers panel is a realtime preview so this one should change when you rotate the corresponding symbol on canvas.

 

Renaming a symbol sometimes crashes the app. This is usually preceded by the inability to enter text in the rename field -- the cursor is there & blinking but no typed characters appear in the field.

I will try to reproduce this here. Thanks for reporting it.

[camloken]

I've noticed in both betas (5 and 6) that moving a symbol on the page is painfully slow. In fact it does not move in real time, but rather the screen updates after the mac spinner stops. However, if I use the arrow keys, the screen updates a lot quicker. Not sure whats going on, but I reverted to using beta 4 as it seems to be more stable in this regard.

[R C-R]

MEB:

 

Thanks much for the detailed reply! It will take me a while to digest it all & do some more testing to see if what I thought might be bugs are just features that work as intended, & perhaps to add some info about how to get the behaviors you are not seeing to appear. However, there are a few things I want to mention now:

 

Regarding rotating a symbol instance causing changes in the appearance of the symbol in the Symbols & Layers panels, it isn't just that they rotate, it is also that they change size (shrink or expand), even though they remain the same size in the document window.

 

That behavior & perhaps a few of the others may be due to the app being in an unstable state prior to crashing (because of the renaming issue). I will try to see what is repeatable if I avoid doing any symbol renaming & report on that.

 

Regarding renaming a symbol not updating the names of its instances in the Layers panel, I see what you mean about that probably being by design. Even so, it would be nice if any symbol layer instances that had not previously been manually renamed with something other than the original symbol name did update to inherit the symbol's new name, while those that had been renamed in the Layers panel did not. I hope what I mean by that makes sense. If not, I can try to describe it better.

[nravenlock]

Regarding rotating a symbol instance causing changes in the appearance of the symbol in the Symbols & Layers panels, it isn't just that they rotate, it is also that they change size (shrink or expand), even though they remain the same size in the document window.

 

@R C-R

 

The change in the thumbnail size when you rotate an object on the page is to be expected. The symbol is not actually changing size, only the thumbnail in the Symbols panel which appears to change size. This is due to the fact the thumbnail in the panel is always square.

 

This happens in the Layers panel too. However, it is easier to understand because the thumbnail's background is dark, whereas in the Symbol panel there is no background.

 

As an example:

• Display both the Symbol and Layers panels.
• Add a perfect square to the page and convert it to a symbol.
• In both panels, the square fills the entire thumbnail space.
• Expand the (Symbol) item on the Layers panel and then select the child (Rectangle) layer and rotate it.
• Notice on the Layers panel, the thumbnail now gets a black background and the square will appear to shrink, so it still appears fully in the thumbnail area. This also happens on the Symbols panel, you just don't see the black background and therefore the shrinking is more obvious.

Does that make sense?

[R C-R]

Yes, it made perfect sense once I understood that the thumbnail is always square (& resizes to fit the available space in the panel?).

 

I think this may also explain why sometimes a regular duplicated layer in the Layers panel sometimes has a smaller thumbnail than the original, something else I have wondered about for quite a while.

 

Thanks!

[camloken]

Okay so I've noticed with beta 6 on El Capitan my multi-artboard, multi-symbol document is slow and unusable when moving objects/pages. This is not the case with beta 4. Just thought you should know. 

[MattP]

Okay so I've noticed with beta 6 on El Capitan my multi-artboard, multi-symbol document is slow and unusable when moving objects/pages. This is not the case with beta 4. Just thought you should know. 

Are you able to send a version of the file to us at support@seriflabs.com - it may be something that we're able to resolve... I can't think why it would have got any slower though? :S

 

Anything you send to us would be treated in confidence and deleted after testing :)

 

Thanks,

Matt

[revelmo2]

I am having a lot of trouble understanding how symbols should work in the Mac 1.5.x Betas, & if what I am seeing is the result of bugs or just me expecting them to work differently than intended. The main problems:

 

• The Symbols help topic says to create symbol instances, I can either drag a symbol onto the page from the Symbols panel or duplicate an existing 'on page' one. Drag from panel works fine, but duplicating a symbol creates a new group instead of another symbol instance. It doesn't matter if I create the duplicate by option-dragging a symbol on the page, by selecting it & using CMD+J, or from the Layers panel popup > Duplicate command.

 

• Manipulating a selected symbol (resize, rotate, whatever) does not affect any other instance of it on the page. For that to work, I have to expand the symbol in the Layers panel & select the 'child' object.

 

• The Symbols help topic says I can disable sync on the Symbols panel, edit an instance independently of the others, & then reenable sync to sync across all instances again. When I try that, enabling sync again does not sync across all instances any more -- each symbol instance seems to be permanently desynchronized.

 

• Deleting all instances of a symbol on the page causes the symbol in the Symbols panel to lose its icon. From then on, dragging it (by name or where the icon should be) onto the page creates an empty symbol instance.

 

• Renaming a symbol in the Symbols panel does not update the symbol name of any existing symbols in the Layers panel, although new instances I add to the page do get the new name. (Perhaps this is by intent?)

 

• Rotating a synced symbol instance on the page causes the symbol icon (in the Symbols panel & the Layers panel) causes the icon to change size in both places. Only at 0° & a few other angles does it have the original size; at most angles it shrinks substantially.

 

• Renaming a symbol sometimes crashes the app. This is usually preceded by the inability to enter text in the rename field -- the cursor is there & blinking but no typed characters appear in the field.

 

Any help with what I am misunderstanding or confirmation of buggy behavior would be greatly appreciated.

I'm having the same problem with symbols that R C-R is having in the third example. If I disable sync, modify the instance of the object, then re-enable sync it doesn't sync back up. It stays completely detached. I tried zooming in and out, but it didn't help. It's still doing this in AD 1.5.0-Beta 7...

[MattP]

Once an attribute is detached, it cannot be re-attached. You can turn syncing back on, edit some other object or another instance and these will sync. Indeed, any properties which were not modified while 'unsynced' will still sync together. I'm not sure if my sentence made sense, but hopefully you can understand what I'm trying to get at!?! :)

[R C-R]

So basically you are saying that only unmodified attributes will remain synced, & that this applies to all instances of the same symbol?

 

I think I understand what you mean but I will have to play around with this some more to see if I really get it.

[MattP]

So basically you are saying that only unmodified attributes will remain synced, & that this applies to all instances of the same symbol?

 

I think I understand what you mean but I will have to play around with this some more to see if I really get it.

Yes, but if you go to any of the other instances, they are all still linked in all respects, so if you turned syncing back on, they'll act like they originally did (but won't modify the detached elements of that other symbol instance). It's only the specific attributes on that particular instance that you detach when you modify something without syncing turned on. :)