Used for the first time for a client's job

[AndrewNZ]

Apologies in advance. Most of this has probably already been talked about and some of it may already be there and I haven't seen it, but here's a list of things I've found while trying to prepare a client's job for printing:

Glitches:

• Title bar on place dialog says 'open'
• Empty picture frames export as they appear on screen (with cross through them)
• <ctrl><space> for zoom doesn't work if you press <ctrl> before <space>, or press them simultaneously
• Lots of crashing when trying to manage links - unembedding mostly.
   

Things I'd like:

• When setting keyboard shortcuts and there's a conflict - you need to be able to go to the conflict. I tried to add <Ctrl-D> to place, and it conflicted with Deselect, which I couldn't find in the menu.
• Inline tables and graphics
• Header row on tables - this is more important once inline placement is available
• Resource management - the ability to edit and explore the original (linked) file
• New objects seem to inherit their style from the last adjustment you made (like set the fill and outline on a rectangle, then create a new text box, and the text box will have the same fill/outline as the rectangle you just did) - can I set defaults for each object type?
• Icons for palette tabs in the UI? Text gets cut off when you've got too many nested and you can't read what they are
• Use the alt key to pan when editing text
• Columns (Already in text blocks, but guide based on the page as well)
• Redefine text style/create new text style based on current selection
• I had two documents which were almost exactly the same. I was trying to figure out what changes had been made so was <ctrl-tab>ing between them. They were both two page documents and I was looking on page 2. The display starts drawing the front page then changes its mind and draws the page you're on, then adds bleed after the rest of the page is displayed so trying to compare 2 documents is difficult
• Ignore text wrap option for text boxes
• Import/Export IDML files
• Place options? Pick a page of a PDF to import and the bleed/trim/art box for instance
• Replace selection on place
• Preview mode

All in all, a great start, and pretty stable for a beta!

Cheers,
Andrew.

[Tom Schülke]

thats straight forward,

trying out a beta for a real job..  you know it isn't supposed to use it this way already..    but except of that.

a great test and good suggestions..

_ ignore text wrap options for text boxes is already there by the way.. just dont remember where to find it...

- most important point for me...  idlm im and export..

- also would suggest  inline headlines spanning over several columns...

[Dave Harris]

On 9/26/2018 at 3:44 AM, AndrewNZ said:

• Header row on tables - this is more important once inline placement is available
• Redefine text style/create new text style based on current selection
• Ignore text wrap option for text boxes

Thanks for your feedback. The above features are already available. Header rows on tables come from the table format. There are buttons to create or update styles from the text selection at the bottom of the Text Styles panel. The option to ignore text wrap is in the Text Frame panel.

[Tom Schülke]

Dave Harris..
You said,  Redefine text style based on current selection is allready there  but this works only when i pick the changes from a textelement that has allready those style applied right ?

What when i got some other text that hasnt text style or that has another style applied...  can i cope the belonging attributes also to those first textstyle ? 

Often ausers beginn a text and dont apply a style, but later on want to say..  ok.. now i want these attributs on my headlines for example..  how can i do this ?

 

[Dave Harris]

41 minutes ago, Tom Schülke said:

Dave Harris..
You said,  Redefine text style based on current selection is allready there  but this works only when i pick the changes from a textelement that has allready those style applied right ?

What when i got some other text that hasnt text style or that has another style applied...  can i cope the belonging attributes also to those first textstyle ? 

Often ausers beginn a text and dont apply a style, but later on want to say..  ok.. now i want these attributs on my headlines for example..  how can i do this ?

 

Ah, no. You can create a new style from a text selection, and update the style it has applied, but not transfer the formatting to some other style. In some circumstance you could delete the style and re-create it.

[stmartin]

On 9/26/2018 at 4:44 AM, AndrewNZ said:

• Place options? Pick a page of a PDF to import

This is already possible—afterwards. In the top left corner when you select the placed PDF (screenshot). But selecting for example the trim box is mandatory.

Apart from that: +1

[AndrewNZ]

11 hours ago, Tom Schülke said:

trying out a beta for a real job..  you know it isn't supposed to use it this way already..    but except of that.

I know  Client supplied the job in AP so I had no choice!

8 hours ago, Dave Harris said:

Thanks for your feedback. The above features are already available. Header rows on tables come from the table format. There are buttons to create or update styles from the text selection at the bottom of the Text Styles panel. The option to ignore text wrap is in the Text Frame panel.

Thanks for the response! I hadn't seen them, so will have another look. Being able to redefine a style using the right mouse menu on the style palette would be a nice addition.

...and thanks stmartin! I didn't see that. Very nice!

I just ran into another problem. AP couldn't handle a font which was embedded in a PDF, so defaulted it to Arial. I opened the original PDF I had placed, and converted the font to paths using an Acrobat plugin. Not sure how Acrobat manages changes to a file (Is there some kind of embedded versioning?), but it still comes in to AP using the old text version until I Save-As from Acrobat. Attached is the PDF which I've converted to paths, but not done a Save-As on. It comes in to AP like this:

Cheers,

Andrew.

Final little girl xmas card.pdf

[MikeW]

What version of Acrobat are you using? 

[AndrewNZ]

Not sure about the original creator's version, but I used 9 to fix it.

Cheers,
Andrew.

[MikeW]

Andrew, I don't know what plug-in you are referring to, but it is a right pita to convert text to curves below a recent DC version. But it can be done.

The PDF you uploaded has no fonts in it.

[AndrewNZ]

3 minutes ago, MikeW said:

Andrew, I don't know what plug-in you are referring to, but it is a right pita to convert text to curves below a recent DC version. But it can be done.

The PDF you uploaded has no fonts in it.

Thanks for the reply Mike. You're correct. There shouldn't be any fonts in it because I already converted them to paths. So why does it show up in Affinity Publisher with the Arial substitute? Where does it get that from?

[MikeW]

No Idea, Andrew. I just opened it in CD and a couple other applications and other than there are way more objects in the file, but there are no font objects.

I would need to dig into the data to see if there are references. Using pdfToolbox to convert fonts on the uploaded PDF results in no issues loading it into APub. And the same would be true with the latest Acrobat DC as it is callas (makers of pdfToolbox) which licenses its technology to Adobe for Acrobat's preflighting and the fix-ups.

Would you like me to upload the result?

Mike

[AndrewNZ]

Thanks for looking into it Mike. I got it working already (by using Save-As from Acrobat which must clean the file), just wondering how AP handles PDFs.

...does the PDF spec include some kind of version control which AP is ignoring?

If I place that PDF in InDesign, it comes in as expected.

Cheers,
Andrew.

[AndrewNZ]

I just tried placing it in Affinity Designer and it has the same problem although the tracking/kerning for the substituted font is different in Designer. Designer and Publisher probably share the same library/code base for PDF handling.

[MikeW]

I don't believe a pdf has any versioning. But it might be possible there are still reference to the font that only gets removed in a save as operation.

InDesign uses pdf pass-through and so it wouldn't matter if the font was live. In this situation the letters shown in Acrobat are curves and likely that is what would be in an ID generated pdf.

[AndrewNZ]

 

16 minutes ago, MikeW said:

I don't believe a pdf has any versioning. But it might be possible there are still reference to the font that only gets removed in a save as operation.

That's what I thought Mike, but the PDF output from AP (attached) has the substituted text in it which shouldn't be there any more, and none of my pathed text. I could understand the text still being referenced, but this is pretty much the original file.

Test.pdf

[MikeW]

You had mentioned a plug-in. What is it?

[AndrewNZ]

Pitstop.