RainbowsC Posted April 6 Posted April 6 Hi. I am running Affinity Publisher on a MacBook (Sequoia 15.3.2) with 16MB RAM. I have just installed V2.6.2. I am typesetting a novel using text pasted from a word processor, and the Preflight is giving me a long list of 'Missing Character' messages, but it is impossible to determine what is causing it and it won't let me ignore the messages. I have checked the Font Manager and it says there are unsupported characters used in the Baskerville Regular font I've used for the main body text, but I can't locate any character that could be causing the problem. I managed to eliminate a couple of the instances by fixing incorrect quotation marks, but there are still up to 8 instances of claimed 'missing characters' on a single page and there is just no way to identify what is causing this. I have attached the file in case anyone is able to assist. I would be deeply grateful for any suggestions as to how to address this issue. Thank you. WillofDeceit_Part1.afpub Quote RainbowC Located in north Brisbane, Australia Running Affinity Publisher V2.6.2 on an Apple MacBook M2Pro running Sequoia 15.3.2 Mostly for typesetting novels for printing - Generally relatively simple formatted text
Alfred Posted April 6 Posted April 6 Double-clicking on the issue in the Preflight panel should take you to the first relevant object in the document. Quote Alfred Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.5.1 (iPad 7th gen)
RainbowsC Posted April 6 Author Posted April 6 Thanks Alfred, but it does not. It does show the page, but nothing that indicates what is causing the problem. Nothing on the page is highlighted in any way. Quote RainbowC Located in north Brisbane, Australia Running Affinity Publisher V2.6.2 on an Apple MacBook M2Pro running Sequoia 15.3.2 Mostly for typesetting novels for printing - Generally relatively simple formatted text
R C-R Posted April 6 Posted April 6 1 hour ago, RainbowsC said: Thanks Alfred, but it does not. It does show the page, but nothing that indicates what is causing the problem. Nothing on the page is highlighted in any way. For me, it highlights (presumed) spelling mistakes, for example "Cobcroft" on the master & several document pages. It does not show missing characters, but I'm not sure how it could do so unambiguously. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.6 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 All 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7
kenmcd Posted April 6 Posted April 6 13 hours ago, RainbowsC said: I managed to eliminate a couple of the instances by fixing incorrect quotation marks, but there are still up to 8 instances of claimed 'missing characters' on a single page and there is just no way to identify what is causing this. I zoomed-in and looked at some odd characters. Highlighted them and toggled to Unicode. 202D LEFT-TO-RIGHT OVERRIDE 202C POP DIRECTIONAL FORMATTING Note: Baskerville on macOS is an Apple AAT font, not OpenType. (Palatino too) So it will not work as expected. I changed the font to Baskerville Pro - and it still had the missing characters. That is when I went looking and found the above. Looks like junk coming over from the word processor perhaps. R C-R and Alfred 2 Quote
Oufti Posted April 7 Posted April 7 10 hours ago, R C-R said: For me, it highlights (presumed) spelling mistakes, for example "Cobcroft" on the master & several document pages. It does not show missing characters, but I'm not sure how it could do so unambiguously. Missing characters are not highlighted when they don't have any width; otherwise they should be. They are also quoted between parenthesis in the Preflight panel. And if you zoom a lot before double-clicking a Preflight alert, this character will be selected on the center of your screen, even if it's not visible. Activate Unicode is then a good way to identify their nature. You can apply this command (or press the key 🌐 if you've a Mac keyboard) immediately after double-clicking the alert, since the character will already be selected, wether it's visible or not. Alfred and R C-R 2 Quote Affinity Suite 2.5 – Monterey 12.7.5 – MacBookPro 14" 2021 M1 Pro 16Go/1To I apologise for any approximations in my English. It is not my mother tongue.
Oufti Posted April 7 Posted April 7 21 hours ago, RainbowsC said: the Preflight is giving me a long list of 'Missing Character' messages, but it is impossible to determine what is causing it and it won't let me ignore the messages. Preflight alerts are not mandatory: you can ignore by yourself those that you consider being not relevant. By right-clicking on the burger button on trhe right of the Preflight Profile, you can also modify and save as preset the alerts you care about. Quote Affinity Suite 2.5 – Monterey 12.7.5 – MacBookPro 14" 2021 M1 Pro 16Go/1To I apologise for any approximations in my English. It is not my mother tongue.
Alfred Posted April 7 Posted April 7 14 minutes ago, Oufti said: Missing characters are not highlighted when they don't have any width; otherwise they should be. They are also quoted between parenthesis One of your examples is quoted before the parentheses, and it’s listed twice! Quote Alfred Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.5.1 (iPad 7th gen)
Oufti Posted April 7 Posted April 7 2 hours ago, Alfred said: One of your examples is quoted before the parentheses, and it’s listed twice! The missing accent character (a combining caron, U+030C) is supposed to be above the preceding letter. Placed on an opening parenthesis, it looks like it's before it… a + ˇ = ǎ ( + ̌ = ̌( (And this character appears twice on the same page in the text, thus it's found twice.) Alfred 1 Quote Affinity Suite 2.5 – Monterey 12.7.5 – MacBookPro 14" 2021 M1 Pro 16Go/1To I apologise for any approximations in my English. It is not my mother tongue.
RainbowsC Posted April 7 Author Posted April 7 Thank you so much to all who responded - especially Kenmcd, whose answer solved the problem for me, and Oufti for advising how I can ignore irrelevant error messages. I now have only two missing characters to find. I switched to saving the Word Processor file as RTF and importing it and that works much better. I suspect that, understandably, Affinity for Mac doesn't much like Microsoft Word files! Cheers everyone. It's great to belong to such a helpful community. kenmcd and Oufti 2 Quote RainbowC Located in north Brisbane, Australia Running Affinity Publisher V2.6.2 on an Apple MacBook M2Pro running Sequoia 15.3.2 Mostly for typesetting novels for printing - Generally relatively simple formatted text
SamMN Posted April 8 Posted April 8 14 hours ago, RainbowsC said: I suspect that, understandably, Affinity for Mac doesn't much like Microsoft Word files! If I'm using text from a Word document, I open TextEdit and set it to plain text, paste the text into TextEdit, then copy the text from TextEdit into Publisher. Should help strip out any hidden formatting that Word tends to invisibly insert that can cause issues in Publisher. Not sure it'll solve missing character issues though. Old Bruce 1 Quote
RainbowsC Posted April 9 Author Posted April 9 Thank you SamMN. I have concluded that Affinity Publisher and Microsoft Word don't play nice together. I am finding saving the Word file as RTF and importing works, but I think plain text is safer still. I certainly won't be importing MS Word files again! Old Bruce 1 Quote RainbowC Located in north Brisbane, Australia Running Affinity Publisher V2.6.2 on an Apple MacBook M2Pro running Sequoia 15.3.2 Mostly for typesetting novels for printing - Generally relatively simple formatted text
Old Bruce Posted April 10 Posted April 10 1 hour ago, RainbowsC said: I have concluded that Affinity Publisher and Microsoft Word don't play nice together. I would go so far as to say that any software and any other software don't play nice together. Quote Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.6 Affinity Designer 2.6.0 | Affinity Photo 2.6.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.6.0 | Beta versions as they appear. I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.
RainbowsC Posted April 10 Author Posted April 10 You are right, Old Bruce, and it's particularly true of Windows apps vs Apple apps. But some software is more compatible than others. Microsoft isn't renowned for creating software that plays well with Apple software. And I am using an Apple MacBook. To further complicate things, I don't actually use MS Word. I export an MS Word file from the authoring software I use because that's the only valid export option other than PDF which I then have to convert to MS Word. Regardless of what I export, I end up with an MS Word file that I now, knowing Word creates dramas, open in Softmaker's Text Maker and save as an RTF or plain text. That seems to import to Publisher quite well. Quote RainbowC Located in north Brisbane, Australia Running Affinity Publisher V2.6.2 on an Apple MacBook M2Pro running Sequoia 15.3.2 Mostly for typesetting novels for printing - Generally relatively simple formatted text
Old Bruce Posted April 10 Posted April 10 @RainbowsC, you are talking to a big fan of plain text. Rich text, less of a fan. Quote Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.6 Affinity Designer 2.6.0 | Affinity Photo 2.6.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.6.0 | Beta versions as they appear. I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.
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