Text frame links and text size

[Kroco]

Hello,

When I drawn a text frame and resize it with it's content (for exemple I pass from 18pt to 24pt), the links text frame will used the 18pt text size.

David

[Old Bruce]

Short answer is that you are only changing that (top) Text Frame's text size. You would have to select all the text in order for it all to change.

[Kroco]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

Short answer is that you are only changing that (top) Text Frame's text size. You would have to select all the text in order for it all to change.

Heum...the second frame was create after I resize the first.

[mac_heibu]

Think, you simply are using the wrong handle. Read this: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/68476-connecting-text-boxes/&tab=comments#comment-354692

[Old Bruce]

I think what is happening is you are resizing the Text Box with the little handle on the bottom right  which proportionally resizes the text too, then when you make a new text frame it is created to take text of the size of the first (at its original moment of creation) text box. And it gets worse, if you select all the text in the linked mismatched size Text Boxes and change the size to some other value the text changes proportionally, the large text box text will still be larger in that box only.

I have the same results with Copy and Pasted Text, Text from a File and Filler Text. If there is a way to "reset" the text size I couldn't find it. Oh and changing the Paragraph Style and or the Character Style keeps the scaled effect.

Some uses may be imagined for such behaviour but I am stumped to come up with one right now off the top of my head.

I think this is a bug.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, Kroco said:

the second frame was create after I resize the first.

I think we need to know the exact actions, and sequence of actions, that you took. You did something to resize the first frame (and the text), and then you did something to create the second frame, and you did something to get some of the text from the first frame into the second. But what order did you do things, and what did you do to accomplish each?

I have tried to duplicate it, and my text ended up the same size in both frames.

Also, are you on Windows or Mac?

[Old Bruce]

Make a text frame put enough text in to fill it.
Resize the frame using the bottom right dot outside of the frame handle. Your text's font size should increase.
Resize the frame from one of the sides or the top or bottom, this should result in the text overflowing.
Make a second text frame (this can be done any time). 
Flow the text from the larger size into the new frame, the text will be the original font size.
I am on Mac so if it doesn't make big text then small text it will be a Mac only thing.

[Wosven]

It happens too on Windows.
If you select the first frame, and enlarge it, the text that'll come back in it will be bigger too.

I read that the object's size is is a propriety.
I suspect it works like this: you create a new frame: it's "size" 100%. You enlarge it: it's 120%.
The second frame is a new one at 100%. When the text come back in the first frame, it grows at 120% to get the propriety of its container (the first frame).

It's what cause trouble with effects or save styles: it takes the object's size and you can't paste a 2 pt stroke on objects of different sizes, the stroke width will adjust to the object's "size". You'll have to manually moduify the stroke if you want it to be 2 pt.

 

[Kroco]

Hello,

Yes, I'm on window (10), so it's all version apparently.
It's not a big bug, but, even when you use style, the size will stay different.

David

[walt.farrell]

9 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

Flow the text from the larger size into the new frame, the text will be the original font size..

But how did you create that second frame, and how did you flow the text?

If I just shift-click on the link icon, letting Publisher create the new frame and flow the text, then the text size is correct.

[Old Bruce]

 

31 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

how did you create that second frame, and how did you flow the text?

I used the text frame tool and then linked the two boxes.

[walt.farrell]

25 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

 

I used the text frame tool and then linked the two boxes.

Thanks. So that probably explains what's happening. When you let Publisher create the new frame and flow the text it uses the same settings as the current text frame (which includes the increased font size).

However, when you manually draw a new text frame Publisher uses the default (i.e., last) font size value set for the tool, which is the original text size before the last frame was adjusted. Then when you link them and flow the overflow text into the new box it has that original text size.

[Kroco]

A video will help (I hope).

[Incoming Fax]

Experiencing same issue and came looking for solution, assuming it was a bug or hidden setting. Creating a new, linked text frame from an overflowed text frame should inherit all text properties from the first frame, regardless of the dimensions of the new linked frame. More often than not, I want to manually scale and position a newly linked text frame while keeping text format continuous. If the intended behavior is that newly created and scaled text frames also scale text, then the design sucks. 

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Incoming Fax said:

More often than not, I want to manually scale and position a newly linked text frame while keeping text format continuous. If the intended behavior is that newly created and scaled text frames also scale text, then the design sucks. 

It should work fine if, when you need to resize the new text frame, you use the handles that are attached to the bounding box. But if you use the scaling handle (the detached handle below the lower-right corner) you will have problems.

 

[Incoming Fax]

17 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

It should work fine if, when you need to resize the new text frame, you use the handles that are attached to the bounding box. But if you use the scaling handle (the detached handle below the lower-right corner) you will have problems.

 

Thanks for your reply. I understand how these handles work (kind of a separate usability discussion), but they are not the problem. The problem is that when clicking the flow arrow on a text frame, then using the new "flow" cursor mode to click-drag-draw a continuing text frame, the second, continuing frame contains text of a different size (3pt) than its linked predecessor (12pt). This occurs before the opportunity to use the resize handles. The behavior depicted in the video from Kroco above is exactly the issue. 

[MEB]

Hi Incoming Fax,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
In the video Kroco posted above it does use the detached "handle" which scales the text frame plus the text contained inside it. That's what is causing this issue. If he had used the handle located on the text frame itself (see walt image above for reference) it would have worked correctly - the text frame itself would be scaled up to fit the area he wanted but the text would reflow rather than scale with it - keeping the same size. Then when linked to the new text frame the size would be the same.

The confusion here comes from scaling a text frame with the detached handle - people understandably assume that the new size after the scaling is the size that should be used ("transported") for the text on the linked text frame but Affinity uses the size set for the original text frame before the scaling as the reference for the size of the newly linked text frame. I'm passing this to the dev team for comments.

[Incoming Fax]

On 11/21/2019 at 10:55 AM, MEB said:

Hi Incoming Fax,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
In the video Kroco posted above it does use the detached "handle" which scales the text frame plus the text contained inside it. That's what is causing this issue. If he had used the handle located on the text frame itself (see walt image above for reference) it would have worked correctly - the text frame itself would be scaled up to fit the area he wanted but the text would reflow rather than scale with it - keeping the same size. Then when linked to the new text frame the size would be the same.

The confusion here comes from scaling a text frame with the detached handle - people understandably assume that the new size after the scaling is the size that should be used ("transported") for the text on the linked text frame but Affinity uses the size set for the original text frame before the scaling as the reference for the size of the newly linked text frame. I'm passing this to the dev team for comments.

Thanks for the explanation. It's not the UI choice I'd have made but maybe there is a prevalent use case that isn't immediately apparent. 

[Joachim_L]

I would like to disagree a bit to a certain degree. Not always the scaling handle on text frames is to blame for this behaviour. In the beginning when there was no ability to open .idml (Beta of course) I had often enough PDF generated from Indesign and opened with APu, where suddenly linking text frames lead to different font sizes with no chance to get formatted nicely again. For the Indesign documents I am pretty sure, that I did not enlarge or minimize text frames there. Why should I do so, when it comes to handle floating text?

The only workaround is to copy all the text of the linked frames and paste it into new text frames. Just my 2ct.

[MEB]

Hi Joachim_L,
Can you provide one of those PDF's (generated in InDesign) where after importing to Affinity Publisher and linking the text frames would lead to that behaviour please? If that's the case it may worth check what's going on. Thank you.

[Joachim_L]

Will do if you send me a link.

[Joachim_L]

Hmm, I think I have to apologize. Maybe my fault, that APu went nuts on the PDF. Here my recipe:

1. Opening PDF within APu, best fidelity, chaining text frames, 300dpi.

2. Made facing pages.

3. Change spread size from A4 to A5 with rescale.

4. Imported my standard text styles.

5. Made first frame smaller in height (not with rescale handle), because heading and body were in the same frame. Created a new frame (with overflow icon) for the overflowing body and linked this with other frames on the facing page.

6. Assigned paragraph style for the complete text and started formatting. From this point onward I had problems with formatting.

[AleMello]

I got a weird situation I couldn't understand: before I create a second frame, the text is huge. Then, it go back to normal. But the last word (in my images), if goes to second frame, lose its previous atributes. before I

[garrettm30]

It looks like one of those two text frames has been scaled before, and that would have happened if you had dragged the outer handle, which scales the contents rather than change the boundary of the frame. This is what Walt described above (quoted here again for convenience):

On 11/20/2019 at 4:00 PM, walt.farrell said:

It should work fine if, when you need to resize the new text frame, you use the handles that are attached to the bounding box. But if you use the scaling handle (the detached handle below the lower-right corner) you will have problems.

The Publisher interface is not of any help to let you know which of the frames is unscaled and which as been scaled, so this is what I would do: I would create a completely new frame, copy all the text to it, and delete the other two, since we can't know which one is more or less than 100%.

 

 

[fde101]

16 hours ago, garrettm30 said:

The Publisher interface is not of any help to let you know which of the frames is unscaled and which as been scaled

This really needs to be fixed.  The scale of a text box (as per that lower handle) needs to be displayed, if not editable, numerically somewhere on the interface (the transform panel seems to be a likely candidate, or the text frame panel would work also).

It would also be nice if there were an option to hide that handle completely, and it were hidden by default; nearly every post I've seen referencing this handle has the comment not to use it.  Particularly for new users it seems to be more confusing than helpful.