Automatic figure & table numbering

[Daniel Geiger]

I am desperately looking for automatic, dynamic figure numbering and referencing in text. Would jump QXP for this feature alone. Similar to the old Virginia System InSeq plug in for ID, or what Mellel word-processor does. Keeping track of 1000 figures in as many pages is not to be done manually anymore.

[Steve Thackery]

6 hours ago, Daniel Geiger said:

I am desperately looking for automatic, dynamic figure numbering and referencing in text. Would jump QXP for this feature alone. Similar to the old Virginia System InSeq plug in for ID, or what Mellel word-processor does. Keeping track of 1000 figures in as many pages is not to be done manually anymore.

Bump! 

I agree - this is an essential feature for me.  I need automatic figure numbering, and the ability to insert references to the figures in the text, such as 'see Figure 1', where the '1' is automatically updated as new figures are inserted.

I've gotta say, Affinity Publisher is looking great for an early beta!  Congratulations to the team.

[Michael117]

Automatic numbering is needed at multiple levels: chapter, section, heading, sub heading along with figures and tables.  

[Daniel Geiger]

8 hours ago, Steve Thackery said:

Bump! 

I agree - this is an essential feature for me.  I need automatic figure numbering, and the ability to insert references to the figures in the text, such as 'see Figure 1', where the '1' is automatically updated as new figures are inserted.

I've gotta say, Affinity Publisher is looking great for an early beta!  Congratulations to the team.

Yes, I should have made it clearer that numbering also needs to be dynamic, and across multiple documents in books. Also agree on surprisingly good beta. 

[A_B_C]

There is already some style-based cross-story numbering that can be used to assign numbers to otherwise unconnected text frames. But … hmm … it doesn’t seem to be dynamic in the envisioned sense.

Edited September 1, 2018 by A_B_C
Feature might be different than I initially thought.

[Dave Harris]

11 hours ago, Steve Thackery said:

Bump! 

I agree - this is an essential feature for me.  I need automatic figure numbering, and the ability to insert references to the figures in the text, such as 'see Figure 1', where the '1' is automatically updated as new figures are inserted.

I've gotta say, Affinity Publisher is looking great for an early beta!  Congratulations to the team.

Cross-references are a complex feature that will come later.

We intend that the paragraph list formatting be usable for automatic figure numbering. Essentially, if you make a numbered list, give it a name like "Figure" and tick the Global option, set Restart numbering to Manual Only, and set the text to something like "Figure \#", then it will insert a number at the front of the paragraph that increments automatically as other figures are added before it in the document.

 

[Michael117]

@Dave Harris are you saying the to be able to include the chapter number in the Figure number would be managed through a cross reference?  Table 8-1 is the first table in Chapter 8?  Using some from of cross reference makes sense to carry the chapter number through the book.

[Dave Harris]

3 minutes ago, Michael117 said:

@Dave Harris are you saying the to be able to include the chapter number in the Figure number would be managed through a cross reference?  Table 8-1 is the first table in Chapter 8?  Using some from of cross reference makes sense to carry the chapter number through the book.

Lists can be multi-level. You should be able to use the first level as the chapter level and the second level as the figure level, to do what you want. You might need to include a hidden figure at the start of the chapter to increment the chapter number.

We also have some support for sections, and you can use sections as chapters. You can insert the section number as a field, but you can't currently insert it as part of a numbered list text.

Cross-references are when one piece of text refers to another piece, so that you can say, "See table 8-1" in the main body of the text. I appreciate that having numbering change dynamically is a lot less useful without cross-references to track them dynamically.

[Steve Thackery]

41 minutes ago, Dave Harris said:

Cross-references are a complex feature that will come later.

We intend that the paragraph list formatting be usable for automatic figure numbering. Essentially, if you make a numbered list, give it a name like "Figure" and tick the Global option, set Restart numbering to Manual Only, and set the text to something like "Figure \#", then it will insert a number at the front of the paragraph that increments automatically as other figures are added before it in the document.

 

Thanks for taking the time to answer, Dave - very much appreciated.

I've been thinking about your reply, and it occurs to me that it seems like a slightly obscure procedure.  Would it not be possible to put a much simpler UI on it, but implement the feature "under the hood" in the way you've described?

I'm just thinking about making it as user-friendly as possible.  Perhaps something vaguely like MS Word does it - provide an "Insert caption" dialog for each picture, offer "Figure" as the default text (but editable), and then the automatic number.

It isn't necessarily intuitive for a user to think about paragraph list formatting when they want automatic figure numbering.  Do you see what I mean?

[Dave Harris]

Maybe. We have to be careful, though. Adding more specialised UI to make certain things easier can be lead to so many options that the total UI becomes overwhelming, and the trees get lost in the forest. Some things are better left to dedicated documentation and tutorials.

[Steve Thackery]

Just now, Dave Harris said:

Maybe. We have to be careful, though. Adding more specialised UI to make certain things easier can be lead to so many options that the total UI becomes overwhelming, and the trees get lost in the forest. Some things are better left to dedicated documentation and tutorials.

Yes, I understand.  You have hundreds of feature requests and suggestions (some of them conflicting or mutually exclusive) from all your beta testers, plus your own vision for the program, that you have some pretty tough decisions to make.

Anyway, so long as this request is in there with the rest, that's fine.  I'm really looking forward to seeing how Publisher develops.  Can't wait for the next few releases!  

[A_B_C]

1 hour ago, Dave Harris said:

We intend that the paragraph list formatting be usable for automatic figure numbering. Essentially, if you make a numbered list, give it a name like "Figure" and tick the Global option, set Restart numbering to Manual Only, and set the text to something like "Figure \#", then it will insert a number at the front of the paragraph that increments automatically as other figures are added before it in the document.

I had done it exactly this way, Dave. But I couldn’t get the numbers to update dynamically. Therefore, I edited my earlier post. Might there still be bugs? 

[A_B_C]

Here is an example document. The numbers will only update when I insert a new image/description group, but not when I reorder my images on the pages.

Figure-Numbering.afpub

[Dave Harris]

2 minutes ago, A_B_C said:

Here is an example document. The numbers will only update when I insert a new image/description combination, but not when I reorder my images on the pages.

Figure-Numbering.afpub

It will find the stories in z-order. Moving them up and down the page makes no difference; you need to move them up and down in the Layers panel (or use Move to Front etc from the main control bar.)

This is because you might have figures in a left column and a right column with body text in the middle, and then you might want the numbering to go from left to right and then top to bottom, or top to bottom and then left to right. We felt that using the Layers panel would give better control than using x-y position, because changing x-y position has more effect on the appearance of the document.

[A_B_C]

Wow … that’s a neat concept! But I must confess I wouldn’t have guessed that it would work this way … 

[A_B_C]

And it works like a charm indeed! 

[Steve Thackery]

1 hour ago, A_B_C said:

Wow … that’s a neat concept! But I must confess I wouldn’t have guessed that it would work this way … 

Me neither.  That's why I wonder if an "easier" UI to that feature might help.  But I do recognise the arguments against.....

[Daniel Geiger]

Thanks Dave. Cross referencing will be essential for dynamic numbering to be useful. For cross referencing, I can't see how a "Figure \#" could work. That works for automatic increments, but not for cross references where you need a specific descriptor for each element, like "Picture Flower" "Picture Dog" "Picture Cat". That is how Virginia System InSeq did it, and this is how Mellel implements it as well.

My last book had 1042 figures over 1291 pages, and I did cross reference across documents and out of order. It would have been impossible to keep track of that many figures over that many pages without VirginiaSystem InSeq. My next book will be about the same order of magnitude. So this is not hypothetical, but very real.

[Giuseb]

Has proper numbering and cross-referencing for things like figure/table captions been implemented in Publisher V2?

This is a deal maker/breaker for me, as I need to work on textbooks with hundreds of figures and tables, each accompanied by a caption starting with something like "Figure 12.8 - Cell membrane organization"

The dynamic bits (in this example, chapter and figure number) should be updated both in the caption and in in-text citations, whenever items are added, removed, rearranged.

Thanks!

Edited March 12, 2023 by Giuseb

[walt.farrell]

6 minutes ago, Giuseb said:

Has proper numbering and cross-referencing for things like figure/table captions been implemented in Publisher V2?

Numbering was implemented in V1. However, it's just a simple number, not a complex one like you're looking for so you would need to handle the chapter number part manually. That's still true in V2, I think.

Cross-referencing is implemented in the current 2.1 beta, so it should be available to everyone when 2.1 becomes available. For an early look, you can join the beta program. For more info, please see: 

 

[Giuseb]

Thank you Walt, I have joined the beta program and will take a careful look at the functionality.

Best, Giuseppe