Flowing Text Issue

[dkibui]

Yesterday I decided to take a dive into AP by updating my company profile in it. While i was able to finish the job but the App has some serious bugs (as expected I guess). The moment I create flowing text, text on the second frame becomes tiny while maintaining it's leading. I tried to manually edit the tiny text on frame two but I doesn't respond. Applying the same text styles to both did not work either!

At this point I tried to use page Colums because I wanted side by side text frames but it I could not manage to have spacing between the colums even using the textual ruler. I finally simply divided the text and created two frames manually like you have to do in AD. I remember that is one of the things I did not like in AD last year.

Another thing I noticed is that text frames don't always respond to text styles applied to them especially font and font colour. There just seemed to be something being applied to paragraphs that I had not created.

All in all though, this is a lovely app I can't to have the final release to add it to my arsenal

[walt.farrell]

For your first problem, it sounds like you may have used the wrong node to resize the second text frame. The lower right corner has two nodes. The one that is disconnected from the frame resizes the frame and scales the text. You should use the other one. But, really, the easiest way to deal with flowing text is to create one frame on a page, put all the text into it, then after it overflows, shift-click the red link icon (triangle next to the red eye icon). Publisher will duplicate the page, including the text frame, and put the overflow text into the new frame.

For columns, with the text frame tool selected the context menu will let you specify the number of columns for that frame. Or, using the Text Frame studio panel you have even more control, including gutter size.

Regarding "something being applied to paragraphs", once you have made a change it may be remembered by either the text frame tool, or as the current character or paragraph style. So after making a change to some text you may need to reset the character and/or paragraph studio panels to remove the changes you made, or they will apply to subsequent text.

[dkibui]

16 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

For your first problem, it sounds like you may have used the wrong node to resize the second text frame. The lower right corner has two nodes. The one that is disconnected from the frame resizes the frame and scales the text. You should use the other one. But, really, the easiest way to deal with flowing text is to create one frame on a page, put all the text into it, then after it overflows, shift-click the red link icon (triangle next to the red eye icon). Publisher will duplicate the page, including the text frame, and put the overflow text into the new frame.

For columns, with the text frame tool selected the context menu will let you specify the number of columns for that frame. Or, using the Text Frame studio panel you have even more control, including gutter size.

Regarding "something being applied to paragraphs", once you have made a change it may be remembered by either the text frame tool, or as the current character or paragraph style. So after making a change to some text you may need to reset the character and/or paragraph studio panels to remove the changes you made, or they will apply to subsequent text.

Thanks Walt for the help.

For your first comment, I think you did not understand what I meant. See attached GIF to for what I meant.

Text frame studio worked with the gutter size even though I don't know why the gutter size is not included in the context menu. I can't think of a situation where you would apply text columns and not use gutter size so that's definitely poor design on Serif's side.

"Something being applied to paragraphs" The reason why I mentioned this is because I have defined a text style for font, font size, font colour and leading and all that. If I apply a text style, I expect it to override all the other text formatting in the text frame.

[walt.farrell]

Thanks for the video. You're right, I didn't understand what you meant

I've seen a thread about that behavior, but I don't remember the resolution, and I cannot recreate what is happening to you. (By the way, I find that I'm also unable to create a new text frame and link it to hold the overflow as you demonstrated. I'm sure I've done it before, but I can't now, and perhaps that's why I can't recreate your problem. Can you describe what you did there?)

Quote

The reason why I mentioned this is because I have defined a text style for font, font size, font colour and leading and all that. If I apply a text style, I expect it to override all the other text formatting in the text frame.

I would need to see more description of what you did, or see a sample .afpub file, to understand what you're seeing there. Sorry. Perhaps someone else can comment.

[dkibui]

18 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

 I'm sure I've done it before, but I can't now, and perhaps that's why I can't recreate your problem. Can you describe what you did there?)

 

I would need to see more description of what you did, or see a sample .afpub file, to understand what you're seeing there. Sorry. Perhaps someone else can comment.

When you have overflowing text, there's a red triangle that appears on the overflowing text frame. If you click on that triangle and drag out a new text frame AP will copy the overflow text into the new text frame (Adobe InDesign does the same only instead of the triangle it has a square with a red + inside) That's what I did there. The problem for me is that the new text frame has very different text style and I don't seem to be able to change it's formatting even manually. I hope that helps.

[walt.farrell]

Thanks. I though that was the way, but it's not working for me. When I click on the link icon and drag it simply moves the existing text frame.

More experimentation needed, I guess

[dkibui]

Not to worry, at this stage the software has so many bugs! Hopefully they have enough time/resources to push through to the final version soon. They seem too focused on the iPad apps more than the desktops right now. The frequency of updates for AP and AD is all but stalled now. I wish they at least managed some good level of integration between the three apps by now. Right now you can't even copy anything from AP to AD or AP.

[PaulEC]

33 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Thanks. I though that was the way, but it's not working for me. When I click on the link icon and drag it simply moves the existing text frame.

More experimentation needed, I guess

Don't click and drag. Click, let go, drag out new text frame.

[walt.farrell]

8 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

Don't click and drag. Click, let go, drag out new text frame.

Ah. Subtle.

Thanks, Paul!

[dominik]

2 hours ago, dkibui said:

Right now you can't even copy anything from AP to AD or AP.

I believe this has nothing to do with the number of people working on APub. APub is already part of the 1.7.xxx version of the software while AD and APh are still at their 1.6.xxx version. It is very likely that this is the reason why it is not possible to copy anything between the apps. I am guessing here and someone from Serif has to confirm this.

d.

[dkibui]

On 11/15/2018 at 7:02 PM, dominik said:

I believe this has nothing to do with the number of people working on APub. APub is already part of the 1.7.xxx version of the software while AD and APh are still at their 1.6.xxx version. It is very likely that this is the reason why it is not possible to copy anything between the apps. I am guessing here and someone from Serif has to confirm this.

d.

I hope that's the case in which case I hope they update designer and photo so that we may use the three apps seamlessly

[Alfred]

On 11/15/2018 at 1:43 PM, dkibui said:

Right now you can't even copy anything from AP to AD or AP.

In this particular case it’s obvious from the context that your first reference to ‘AP’ means Affinity Publisher but your second reference means Affinity Photo. However, since it may not always be obvious it’s a good idea to get into the habit of referring to the former as APub or APu and the latter as APh.

The 1.7 beta versions of AD and APh for Windows will be with us soon, and we will then be able to open our APub documents or copy and paste from them.

[dkibui]

16 minutes ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

In this particular case it’s obvious from the context that your first reference to ‘AP’ means Affinity Publisher but your second reference means Affinity Photo. However, since it may not always be obvious it’s a good idea to get into the habit of referring to the former as APub or APu and the latter as APh.

The 1.7 beta versions of AD and APh for Windows will be with us soon, and we will then be able to open our APub documents or copy and paste from them.

Makes perfect sense. I will observe this next time around

[Wayne_IO]

It is now November 2, 2019; almost an entire year since this bug was brought to light by "dkibui".  I have Affinity Publisher 1.7.3.481 (the latest version), but the same issue still exists in this version.  This is a big deal, and a real pain when using flowing text boxes.  Can anyone provide an estimate when this bug will be fixed?

Thank you

[kimoshire]

On 11/3/2019 at 6:55 AM, Wayne_IO said:

It is now November 2, 2019; almost an entire year since this bug was brought to light by "dkibui".  I have Affinity Publisher 1.7.3.481 (the latest version), but the same issue still exists in this version.  This is a big deal, and a real pain when using flowing text boxes.  Can anyone provide an estimate when this bug will be fixed?

Thank you

Still having the same problem here. I have the 1.8.3 version. Any solution to this? It's really annoying

[Mr Meal Magic]

Version 1.10.1 ... problem still exists.