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Publisher crashes when opening large pdf


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When I try to open a "large" (it's actually only 689K) pdf file and select object (there are 62605 objects according to publisher) the program hangs and never returns. I end up closing publisher by force after it fails to respond. Example file attached. I've had no problem manipulating pdf's with smaller numbers of object and using these in publisher layouts.

anchor-bolting-bracing-foundation-drawing.pdf

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1 hour ago, smk said:

When I try to open a "large" (it's actually only 689K) pdf file and select object (there are 62605 objects according to publisher) the program hangs and never returns. I end up closing publisher by force after it fails to respond. Example file attached. I've had no problem manipulating pdf's with smaller numbers of object and using these in publisher layouts.

anchor-bolting-bracing-foundation-drawing.pdf

Hello @smk,

welcome to the forum and thankyou for providing the file in question.

For a start I opened this file in APub and as you describe it did not respond anymore (I waited just a couple of 10 seconds not minutes).

I am not too much of a PDF expert but I do have access to Adobe Acrobat X (from CS6). In there I converted the file via Preflight compatible with Version 7 and save as an Acrobat 1.6 file (I just hope I recall this correctly ;) ).

This file (see attachment) opens in APub and elements can be selected reasonably quick without a crash. Please try and see if this works for you as well.
If so, this may be a hint that there is an incompatibility between your original PDF and APub. I can not tell if it's a problem in the PDF itself or a bug in APub, though. 

Cheers,
d.

anchor-bolting-bracing-foundation-drawing-converted.pdf

Affinity Designer 1 & 2   |   Affinity Photo 1 & 2   |   Affinity Publisher 1 & 2
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12 minutes ago, dominik said:

...

If so, this may be a hint that there is an incompatibility between your original PDF and APub. I can not tell if it's a problem in the PDF itself or a bug in APub, though

The original PDF opens in CorelDraw in just less than 30 seconds (including zooming out to fit, so with a new redraw). Xara Designer Pro opens it in about 20 seconds (along with the zooming out/redrawing).

Likely Acrobat optimized the PDF if doing so allows APub to open it.

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This is an AutoCAD drawing and when the PDF was made all text was converted to lines and the same for the hatches, hence the large number of objects. Had they used TrueType fonts the drawing might actually have been manageable for Publisher or Designer as there would have been quite a bit less objects to handle. Because basically every letter is a polyline there is little you can do with regard to text in this PDF other than use it as a placed document.

Designer Beta can open the original PDF without issue but chokes when you want to select them all. If you want to extract parts of the drawing you may want to crop it in PDF software first before opening it with Designer or Publisher. I'd prefer to use Designer in this case.

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13 minutes ago, MikeW said:

The original PDF opens in CorelDraw in just less than 30 seconds (including zooming out to fit, so with a new redraw). Xara Designer Pro opens it in about 20 seconds (along with the zooming out/redrawing).

Likely Acrobat optimized the PDF if doing so allows APub to open it.

Yes, the same here for CorelDraw, it opens a bit faster than in Designer Beta. I can edit Designer Beta but it is definitely less responsive than CorelDraw.

However after saving the opened PDF as an Affinity file it becomes more responsive. Disabling snapping further increases responsiveness.

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Publisher seems to be having problems with huge amounts of elements. Illustrator opened that file within 30 seconds, Publisher needed 5 minutes. After converting to PDF X-4, Publisher openend the file also within 30 seconds, but I was not able to work with the document. I also experimented with a large PDF (432 pages, ca. 5 vector graphics per page) and it was more of a slide show. Sometimes the Publisher UI and Windows Desktop flickered as there was a constant switch between the both. Grouping of text frames is frequently strange as there are - in the original document not related - combined text frames, which give you extra work in splitting them. But I can live with that, I don't think Publisher was meant to be a PDF converter. So I won't convert too much in the much, but make the layout from scratch.

------
Windows 10 | i5-8500 CPU | Intel UHD 630 Graphics | 32 GB RAM | Latest Retail and Beta versions of complete Affinity range installed

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2 hours ago, Arun Sarkar said:

Hello :)

Smk's pdf open within 30-35 second in my aged desktop (which has only 4 GB ram).

Hello @Arun Sarkar,

the PDF opens here as well in about 20 seconds. The problem occurs once I click on any layer in the layers panel. Can you try and confirm this?

d.

Affinity Designer 1 & 2   |   Affinity Photo 1 & 2   |   Affinity Publisher 1 & 2
Affinity Designer 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Photo 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad

Windows 11 64-bit - Core i7 - 16GB - Intel HD Graphics 4600 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
iPad pro 9.7" + Apple Pencil

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Hello @dominik,

I just got back to this. I can open your converted file but it still caused publisher to hang when I selected a chunk of it. 

It's interesting to see how differently the file seems to behave on different systems. I can open the file (original) in about 4 seconds and see it just fine. The converted file takes about 6 seconds.

In any of the pdf's I can select a "bunch" of items from the Layers panel, then copy and paste into another document works fine (but if I select too many it hangs). 

As others have pointed out, publisher is not supposed to be a pdf editor, but being lazy, it's nice to be able to open pdf's (or other formats)  and grab the pieces I need to composite in my "final" documents without a lot of switching back and forth. Affinity generally works pretty well for this and maybe the file I happen to borrowing from is just messed up. 

The lock-up behavior I would still consider to be a bug, so hopefully that may get taken care of in future releases. In the meantime, thanks to all for suggested work-arounds and comments

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40 minutes ago, smk said:

It's interesting to see how differently the file seems to behave on different systems.

Hi @smk,

I just tried again with your original PDF. I selected about 50000 layers (objects) in the layers panel and had to wait for about 3 minutes. At least APub did not crash :)

Then I changed ruler units from Points to Millimeters. I had to cancel APub after a couple of minutes.

After all, APub currently can't handle documents with a huge amount of vector objects well. It seems to be sluggish.
OTOH, the document you provided has its problems of its own. All text is converted to 'micro curves'. This makes this document, perhaps, a candidate for a more specialised PDF editor than APub.

And let's keep in mind - as you wrote - 'publisher is not supposed to be a pdf editor' :)

Cheers,
d.

 

Affinity Designer 1 & 2   |   Affinity Photo 1 & 2   |   Affinity Publisher 1 & 2
Affinity Designer 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Photo 2 for iPad   |   Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad

Windows 11 64-bit - Core i7 - 16GB - Intel HD Graphics 4600 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
iPad pro 9.7" + Apple Pencil

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • Staff

Hi all,

Just to confirm what has already been said. My publisher did not crash either. It was slow selecting all the layers, but this is expected when you have 62605 layers, each made of multiple points. 

I think it's just a matter of having the right software for the right job. Which in this case, Publisher is not the right tool. 

Thanks,

Gabe. 

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