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v.145 problems


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I experienced a series of problems trying to set up a new document yesterday. I was in a rush so I couldn't report them at the time so apologies if some of the descriptions are not as thorough as they might be:

  1. Dragging pages around I the pages panel was incredibly unreliable. Once or twice, the page would move where I had dragged it to. Most of the time it went somewhere completely different. Confusing and is dangerous in that you could unexpectedly end up with a page in the wrong place if you aren't paying enough attention. With a large document you might have to spend quite some time trying to locate the file
  2. I created the file by doing a save as of a document set up as a spread. I wanted the new document to not have spreads, but to be a series of single sheets. This split the master page spreads into two. This is fine as might be expected. The problems then started:
    1. It seemed to be a bit random as to which pages had which master applied. I would have thought each page should retain the half of the spread master that it originally had
    2. The split spread master pages both had the same names (maybe part of the various problems experienced?). I think it would be helpful to append a 'right' and 'left' to each half so that they can be identified in the master pages panel.
    3. The guides and margins from the master pages no longer seemed to be applied properly to the pages. Reapplying them did nothing. The only solution was to delete all the pages and then create new ones from the master pages.
    4. I know this has been mentioned before, but the pages really need a visual indicator as to which master is applied to which page
  3. Creating a new page before another didn't work. It still went to the end of the document
  4. Still problems with working with images that are of a particular scale and being able to identify what and how the image has been scaled relative to its 100% size. This is essential for us as Architects. We absolutely MUST know what scale drawings have been inserted at. That applies to images directly placed as well as ones inserted into frames.
  5. File sizes are still out of control and despite having the file set to 'linked preferred' for placed files, the files have all ended up embedded. A file with 13 photos is over 120MB. This is nuts.
  6. It must be possible to set publisher to ONLY work with Linking rather than embedding. This is going to be a major roadblock to us adopting it fully if this inherent preference to embedding is the final solution for the AP.

Otherwise, I am really liking it. Just need to sort out some of this serious issues (the ones in bold) and I think it will be a killer app.

Robin

@Chris_K @MEB 

 

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Hi robinp

1) I'm going to say I'm not seeing an issue here I'm afraid, the page is going to exactly where I have told it to. This may need a video or screenshots to show what you are seeing

2)  From what I can tell when split, pages on the right side side of the spread have the master that was the right side applied and pages that are on the left side of the spread have the master that was on the left side. This is doing what I would expect. When unnamed they split into master A and B, but if you have manually chosen a name that it will continue to honour this, and if you added more master pages you can still add this name. Perhaps adding an A or B after the name would not be a bad idea. All the guides and margins are appearing for me too. There is a possible issue with these on retina screen that we thought we sorted but still might be something lingering.

3) Again this is working as expected for me, the page is created in the position I am choosing

4) With placed images, we keep the document's pixel size and adjust it via the DPI value. Although a % scale would require doing some maths so it might be a useful idea to add a scale ratio of some sort in the Resource Manager

5) This is still something to be looked at but we are very aware of it. Even though the file is linked there is still a lot of extra stuff that is embedded contributing to the file size

6) You can already do this. When starting a new document you can set if you prefer resources to be linked or embedded. You can then change this option in the Document setup.

Thanks

Serif Europe Ltd - Check the latest news at www.affinity.serif.com

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16 minutes ago, Chris_K said:

Hi robinp

1) I'm going to say I'm not seeing an issue here I'm afraid, the page is going to exactly where I have told it to. This may need a video or screenshots to show what you are seeing

2)  From what I can tell when split, pages on the right side side of the spread have the master that was the right side applied and pages that are on the left side of the spread have the master that was on the left side. This is doing what I would expect. When unnamed they split into master A and B, but if you have manually chosen a name that it will continue to honour this, and if you added more master pages you can still add this name. Perhaps adding an A or B after the name would not be a bad idea. All the guides and margins are appearing for me too. There is a possible issue with these on retina screen that we thought we sorted but still might be something lingering.

3) Again this is working as expected for me, the page is created in the position I am choosing

4) With placed images, we keep the document's pixel size and adjust it via the DPI value. Although a % scale would require doing some maths so it might be a useful idea to add a scale ratio of some sort in the Resource Manager

5) This is still something to be looked at but we are very aware of it. Even though the file is linked there is still a lot of extra stuff that is embedded contributing to the file size

6) You can already do this. When starting a new document you can set if you prefer resources to be linked or embedded. You can then change this option in the Document setup.

Thanks

Hi Chris

I'll try to recreate some of the issues and record videos of them.

With regards to point 4

InDesign has this info visible all the time in the UI. It is essential when working with potentially 100+ images in a document that you can just check at a glance whether the images are at 100% or say, 50% if you are halving the scale. For example, a A1 drawing at 1:25 scale inserted on to an A3 page would be 1:50 scale (or 50%) which is a nice easy one if inserting to the full extents of the page. If you just want to use an image frame (or crop tool) to focus in on only part of the drawing then you lose that.

If you are placing a file and rather than clicking you drag a window to define the size of the inserted file, I have yet to find a way to revert it to either 100% or any known / specified scaling factor. This seems like a major flaw to me; I can't believe we (Architects) are the only ones that need to know and set the size of placed images with certainty. Even if we are, I'd have thought Architect are probably a major target market. I certainly know many are very interested when I've told them about Publisher.

Personally, I'd either like this info permanently in the toolbar at the top of the app (there is LOADS of wasted space currently) or at the very least within the transform panel which already has W and H boxes for transform and these accept % figures. I guess all I need is for these to be persistent and relative to actual size rather than the current size. Or at least an option to display them that way.

To have to open up the Resource Manager is a non-starter. The window is too obtrusive and unwieldy to have open all the time. I wouldn't be against it being there as well, potentially it could be useful to be able to scroll through all placed files and look out for any weird scaling issues as a QA process before printing.

With regards to point 6 (and 5 to a certain extent)

I am aware of the option by document. It was set to this yet all the photos ended up embedded. It is just not robust. I want / need to be able to tell Publisher to not accept embedded files full stop. No ifs. No buts. I just don't get why it always seems to default to embedding rather than linked regardless of what you do. It often changes linked files to embedded without being asked. It inserts images as embedded even when the file is set to default to linked. Please either ditch the whole concept of embedded or make it an app preference to not allow embedded files.

I appreciate the high quality preview you get by default (vs what InDesign does) and appreciate that this probably necessitates more info being included (embedded!?!) in the file to be able to provide this level of persistent preview, but to inflate files by much more than the sum total of the files inserted seems bizarre and perhaps linked to the flakey embedded / linked behaviour described above?

thanks

Robin

 

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57 minutes ago, robinp said:

...I want / need to be able to tell Publisher to not accept embedded files full stop. No ifs. No buts. I just don't get why it always seems to default to embedding rather than linked regardless of what you do. ...

Start a new document, set the Image Placement Policy drop down menu to Linked then go up to Page Preset and click on the far right drop down menu and select Make New Preset, choose a good name and it will remember all your settings.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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42 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Start a new document, set the Image Placement Policy drop down menu to Linked then go up to Page Preset and click on the far right drop down menu and select Make New Preset, choose a good name and it will remember all your settings.

Thanks but my point above is that even when a document is set to default to linked it doesn’t actually do it.

I’ll give setting a preset a go, that could be useful for some other things. 

I think really what I want, given the way Publisher seems to want to fall back to embedding is to turn off embedding full stop. 

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1 hour ago, robinp said:

Thanks but my point above is that even when a document is set to default to linked it doesn’t actually do it.

I’ll give setting a preset a go, that could be useful for some other things. 

I think really what I want, given the way Publisher seems to want to fall back to embedding is to turn off embedding full stop. 

I do agree! The embedding is not working all together. I work with the WIN version but it seems to have the same issue.

Described it here: 

 

PS: If you like maps you might also have a look at this community!
PPS: Want to know more about me and my ways? Head over to an Affinity Spotlight article about me and my maps!
PPPS: Do you love public transit and transit maps too? Then have a look at my home-made collection of transit maps under www.instagram.com/transitdiagrams or www.twitter.com/transitdiagrams

PPPPS: Other works than transit maps can be found here www.behance.net/chrisneuherz 

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34 minutes ago, robinp said:

I think really what I want, given the way Publisher seems to want to fall back to embedding is to turn off embedding full stop.

I want that too, I doubt that anyone doesn't want it. We all want to have linked files be linked.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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2 hours ago, Chris_K said:

4) With placed images, we keep the document's pixel size and adjust it via the DPI value. Although a % scale would require doing some maths so it might be a useful idea to add a scale ratio of some sort in the Resource Manager

% info would indeed be helpful. About DPI: if images were all vector would not set physical dimensions keep when importing?

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I believe point 6 would be a problem if one were to paste an image copied from another program (one that hasn't been saved to disk)?  In that situation linking would not be possible.

 

As to #3, this is working for me also, but you need to pay attention to how you ask for it.  If you double-click a page in the pages list, no page remains selected there.  If in that situation you click the add page button in the bar across the top of the pages list, the "Page:" number shows the last page of the document by default, so the pages get added after that unless you change that number (the page which is showing in the window is ignored).  If you select a page by clicking once before clicking that button, then that page number is entered there by default; alternately, you can right-click on an existing page and select "Add Pages...".

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1 hour ago, fde101 said:

I believe point 6 would be a problem if one were to paste an image copied from another program (one that hasn't been saved to disk)?  In that situation linking would not be possible.

You shouldn’t ever do this in my opinion. I guess that’s the point, I’m talking about a professional, team based, workflow. Copy and pasting an image in from another document should never be part of a robust and responsible workflow if your livelihood depends on it. Far too prone to failure and impossible for teams to work together on assembling a document. 

Maybe being able to do that is a good hobbyist type feature and I’m not saying the app shouldn’t do that. What I’m saying is that I want / need the ability to set Publisher to not allow these kinds of bodging methods. 

Perhaps a app wide switch to go into ‘pro mode’ would do it?

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"pro" mode doesn't really fit that description - more like "crippled mode" since you are effectively reducing the feature set of the program.

I'm not trying to say that a feature to do that (as long as truly an option) is specifically bad, but it does seem superfluous - if you don't like pasting in images, then just don't do that.

In the meantime, copy/paste has long since become an expected behavior of a modern computer program, so it should obviously be supported.

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1 hour ago, fde101 said:

"pro" mode doesn't really fit that description - more like "crippled mode" since you are effectively reducing the feature set of the program.

I'm not trying to say that a feature to do that (as long as truly an option) is specifically bad, but it does seem superfluous - if you don't like pasting in images, then just don't do that.

In the meantime, copy/paste has long since become an expected behavior of a modern computer program, so it should obviously be supported.

Look, copy and pasting a linked file around the document would be fine. Copy and pasting a block of text or a frame or even a guide (this is something I've requested previously) all makes sense.

I understand what you are saying, why have fewer features? "MORE FEATURES IS GOOD!" seems like a hard position to disagree with, but I'm afraid in this case it is simply wrong in my opinion.

Imagine a team of 5, 10, 20 or 30+ all who are contributing to the assembly, artwork and writing of a document. In my field (Architecture) DTP is just one small (but very important!) aspect of our jobs. We have to know many other very complicated programmes which we spend far longer using (and are therefore relatively more expert in). My concern having managed a team of around 10 working towards completing a single document is that you need everyone to be able to contribute without worrying that they are all going to screw up the document.

There isn't time, nor does it make sense to spend the time, nor is it likely to stick, to train everyone sufficiently to make sure that an accidental pasting of an image directly into a document is spotted or even avoided entirely.

In the event that something like that happening (or a placed image that is embedded) I can just see (from painful experience) that you would discover at 3am that many images in a document haven't been updated to reflect the current artwork as expected because the images were embedded or pasted directly into the document.

So while more features may seem that more features is good, sometimes the wrong feature can be worse than not having it.

It is quite simple, I want a way to make sure that artwork is only ever linked into the Publisher document. It is quite simple and I'm happy if there are options for allowing hobbyists to mess around being less rigorous / less robust but please please please, allow those of us that work with sometimes large teams to set it up so that a rogue team member can't mess up an entire document without anyone realising.

 

 

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On 10/18/2018 at 3:40 PM, Chris_K said:

Hi robinp

1) I'm going to say I'm not seeing an issue here I'm afraid, the page is going to exactly where I have told it to. This may need a video or screenshots to show what you are seeing

2)  From what I can tell when split, pages on the right side side of the spread have the master that was the right side applied and pages that are on the left side of the spread have the master that was on the left side. This is doing what I would expect. When unnamed they split into master A and B, but if you have manually chosen a name that it will continue to honour this, and if you added more master pages you can still add this name. Perhaps adding an A or B after the name would not be a bad idea. All the guides and margins are appearing for me too. There is a possible issue with these on retina screen that we thought we sorted but still might be something lingering.

3) Again this is working as expected for me, the page is created in the position I am choosing

4) With placed images, we keep the document's pixel size and adjust it via the DPI value. Although a % scale would require doing some maths so it might be a useful idea to add a scale ratio of some sort in the Resource Manager

5) This is still something to be looked at but we are very aware of it. Even though the file is linked there is still a lot of extra stuff that is embedded contributing to the file size

6) You can already do this. When starting a new document you can set if you prefer resources to be linked or embedded. You can then change this option in the Document setup.

Thanks

Hi Chris

Further to the above points, I haven't yet been able to recreate problem "3", nor have I managed to recreate "2.1".

With regards to problem 1, see below video. The first time a page is dragged it goes where you expect it. The second time, who knows where it went!

 

Problems 2.2 to 2.4, the issues are a bit more nuanced but mostly still there.

This shows the master page (including guides and margins) before changing the document from 'spreads' to 'pages'.

2010368029_Screenshot2018-10-22at16_30_58.thumb.png.81c81d167f47b6e5a8b7d125a0458417.png

Here is one half of the master after the split which shows the margins missing:

1236674252_Screenshot2018-10-22at16_31_23.thumb.png.34fca2008b5833e1c2d8077335aeac51.png

 

Here is a page with the margins etc immediately after the split from spreads to pages:

564483633_Screenshot2018-10-22at16_31_51.thumb.png.db761acc5aac3560f821a620717ecca4.png

Here is the same page after re-applying the relevant master page. Note that all guides and margins have been lost:

217894052_Screenshot2018-10-22at16_31_58.thumb.png.9b539c40b788c543e9f4dd2a3f6d5329.png

 

There are clearly a few bugs here!

Robin

@MEB @Chris_K

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On 10/27/2018 at 2:24 PM, robinp said:

Has this just slipped under the radar @Chris_K @MEB ?

If it is something you're looking into it would be nice to just have a quick reply saying you've seen it and are investigating.

Thanks

Is anyone actually looking in to this? I’m very happy putting effort into reporting bugs to help you guys out but some kind of acknowledgement that it’s been seen or being looked into would seem to be a reasonable expectation. 

Cc

@Ash

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