Affinity Publisher Public Beta - 1.7.0.305

[AdamW]

Status: Public Beta
Purpose: Stability and General Testing
Requirements: 64 Bit Win 7 SP1 / Win 8.1 / Win 10  (>=1607)

We are pleased to announce Affinity Publisher build 305 is now available as a manual download from the link above. To be notified when there is a new beta please press follow on this announcement thread

As this is a beta it is considered to be not suitable for production use. This means that you should not attempt to use it for commercial purposes or for any other activity where you may be adversely affected by the application failing, including the total loss of any documents. 

We hope you enjoy the product, and as always, if you've got any problems installing or running up, please don't hesitate to post in this thread.

Any problems actually using this version please make a new topic in this forum and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Please feel free to leave general suggestions and comments in the Discussion Forum. 

Many thanks for your continued feedback.

---

New Features

Pinned Objects for Text
It is now possible to 'pin' objects to a specific location in the text flow. As text is edited and reflows, the object travels with its pin.
To access this feature you can use the 'Float with Text' or 'Inline with Text' buttons on the main toolbar. Further control of the object's placement is available via the 'Pinning Panel' (View > Studio > Pinning)

DocX Import
DocX is now offered as an option for import wherever txt and rtf were previously available (for example File > Place). It is chiefly designed with import of text content in mind. 

Due to the wide variety of docx documents out there we will inevitably encounter issues and indeed there are features we won't initially support, for example:

- DrawingML 
- Fields
- Footnotes and Endnotes
- Multi-page tables

If you have docx documents that are failing to import we would encourage you to share them with us if possible.

Updates and Fixes

General
(Win) Fixes for Thumbnail Handler
(Win) Fixed document grid for documents not in pixels

Studio and Panels
Allow navigating master pages with page buttons
Fixes for master layers and masks
Fix for 'Add swatch from Fill as Global' not always working
(Mac) Fixed possible crash on closing documents
(Mac) Preferences, Auto-Correct section layout issue
(Mac) Fixed dragging selection into Assets Panel
(Win) Fix for crash if Paragraph panel undocked in non English and Display DPI is scaled
(Win) Fix for crash on Reset Studio with no document open.
(Win) Fix for Fields panel not updating on document change
(Win) Fixed grid colours not being saved correctly

Import / Export
Can't change page for certain PDFs when specifying 'TrimBox'
Importing an RTF can cause app hang if RTF is invalid
Better handling when closing documents

Resources / Resource Manager
Resource Manager reports images as Document Colour Space
Fix for Replace Document always converting to Embedded

Text / Tables
Fixed 'Find' based on Format only
Spell check on double page spread master page appears on 'empty' page space
Fixes for Style Attributes that reference other Styles not updating correctly, e.g. Drop Caps, Initial Words
Allow toggle overflow on frames from master pages
Table selection fixes in instances where table has been scaled
Table row / column header fixes in instances where table has been scaled
Fixed crash attempting to apply a Table Format to a text frame
Removed auto-convert Picture Frame to Text Frame. Explicit conversion is still available.
Numbers highlighted as spelling errors when language set to German
(Win) Changed precise increase / decrease leading shortcuts as they interfere with text navigation
(Win) Character Variants failing to show up in Typography panel

---

Earlier Release Notes Beta 293

[Petar Petrenko]

Thank you very much for

• pinned objects, and
• DOCX import.

Both works perfectly. Even the problem I had about having to convert the DOC/DOCX files to RTF (not in Word) to import Macedonian text is solved.

[Patrick Connor]

1 minute ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Both works perfectly

We'll see about that ... I'm pleased that it's looking good for you so far.

[AdamW]

27 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

We'll see about that ... I'm pleased that it's looking good for you so far.

"Choose to be optimistic, it feels better."

[Patrick Connor]

Conversation about readiness for release branched off here

Please report problems installing in this thread and any problems using the software in new threads.

[Petar Petrenko]

Thanks Patrick. Sorry for any inconvenience

[Uwe367]

Sorry from me too.

[dominik]

Just as a feedback: this was the first time for me that the download took more than two hours. Before, even when others from other parts in the world were having slow downloads, I never encountered this. I assume this is an Amazon thing. Anyway, I am up and running 

Cheers,
d.

[Petar Petrenko]

18 minutes ago, dominik said:

Just as a feedback: this was the first time for me that the download took more than two hours. Before, even when others from other parts in the world were having slow downloads, I never encountered this. I assume this is an Amazon thing. Anyway, I am up and running 

My big compliments go to the new Pinning feature. I was convinced that something like this would be introduced before APub's initial release. This looks promising!

Cheers,
d.

I think you missed the thread. You should write this on the announcement of the new .305 version. We were redirected because our discution was on the wrong thread.

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, Petar Petrenko said:

I think you missed the thread. You should write this on the announcement of the new .305 version. We were redirected because our discution was on the wrong thread.

This is the thread announcing the new .305 version, Petar.

[dominik]

3 minutes ago, Petar Petrenko said:

I think you missed the thread. You should write this on the announcement of the new .305 version. We were redirected because our discution was on the wrong thread.

Well, I'll leave the part about the download speed here. This has nothing to do with the readiness of the software. 
Thanks for pointing out, though.

d.

[dominik]

4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

This is the thread announcing the new .305 version, Petar.

Sure thing. But I'd rather congratulate on pinning somewhere else.

d.

[DNA0101]

I have been following the updates for months and learning and testing Publisher. All far so good ...now for some heavy lifting....

Will be layout a 150 page guide book this week with plenty of photos.

Was always waiting and hoping for a improved hyperlink feature. Sure wished when I paste my text onto the pages the web links would remain.

Seems I will have to put a few 100 back. That's a lot of boring work I was hoping to dodge.

Dan

[Martigny]

Up and running with no issues!

Yay to pinned objects. Yay to DocX Import

Thank you Patrick and Adam

Can't wait to play with this!!!!

[sdrum]

So all the betas I have worked with, from the very beginning, never caused any major issues. This latest version (170.305) is the first one that freezed so much I had to go back to 170.293. This shows that sometimes a newer version is not "beta" than the previous ones.

Win 10  64 Bit

16 GB Ram

Acer Aspire R15v and Lenovo Yoga 720

[AlexisM]

When loading this beta version I received a "Setup Failed" message.

I downloaded the the latest version, disabled all virus protection and opened the file to install. It looked like it was installing properly but finished with a setup failed error.

[walt.farrell]

9 minutes ago, AlexisM said:

When loading this beta version I received a "Setup Failed" message.

I downloaded the the latest version, disabled all virus protection and opened the file to install. It looked like it was installing properly but finished with a setup failed error.

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, @AlexisM.

First, try rebooting and then reinstalling.

If that doesn't work, right-click the installer .exe file in File Explorer and choose Run As Administrator.

If that doesn't work, press the Windows key and R, and type %Temp%\AffinityInstaller which will open a File Explorer window at that location. You should find some directories there. The one with the latest timestamp corresponds to the last failure.

Inside that directory you will find two files: Setup.log and SetupUI.log. Examine each one, and look for the word "Error", which should let you see a message with more information about the failure.

Also, what version of Windows do you run?

[Petar Petrenko]

10 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Inside that directory you will find two files: Setup.log and SetupUI.log. Examine each one, and look for the word "Error", which should let you see a message with more information about the failure.

Can't they be sent automatically to Affinity? With all info they need?

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Can't they be sent automatically to Affinity? With all info they need?

No, because the product did not install successfully.

Edit: At least, not without much more programming in the installer. And then there would be the issue of getting the user's permission to send the files.

[AlexisM]

17 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, @AlexisM.

First, try rebooting and then reinstalling.

If that doesn't work, right-click the installer .exe file in File Explorer and choose Run As Administrator.

If that doesn't work, press the Windows key and R, and type %Temp%\AffinityInstaller which will open a File Explorer window at that location. You should find some directories there. The one with the latest timestamp corresponds to the last failure.

Inside that directory you will find two files: Setup.log and SetupUI.log. Examine each one, and look for the word "Error", which should let you see a message with more information about the failure.

Also, what version of Windows do you run?

Thanks ... reboot worked

Windows 10 Pro  10.0.17134

[ejnaren]

On 5/1/2019 at 6:43 PM, walt.farrell said:

If that doesn't work, press the Windows key and R, and type %Temp%\AffinityInstaller which will open a File Explorer window at that location. You should find some directories there. The one with the latest timestamp corresponds to the last failure.

Inside that directory you will find two files: Setup.log and SetupUI.log. Examine each one, and look for the word "Error", which should let you see a message with more information about the failure.

Also, what version of Windows do you run?

I'm having same issue. Reboot does not fix the problem.

I have tried on two different machines running windows 10.
Both have same issue.

I have attached the log as detailed above.

Setup.log

SetupUI.log

[ejnaren]

This is getting kind of bad.
I have now tried to unistall Affinity Publisher but it just gives me and error saying another process is installing something and then hang there....

[ejnaren]

Alright, an update on this issue.
Its seems that the problem with both isssues has something to do with windows doing update installing in the background.

To solve the issues I opened windows update and made sure it installed alle latest updates and then restarted the machine. After making sure no update / installing process was runnning on the machine I uninstalled Publisher Beta and installed from the newest installer on the forums.

It seems to have solved the issue. I will update this if any further issues arise but so far so good...

[pixelinkmedia]

So far, everything seems to be working for me. (Windows 7)

I do have one feature that I think is not ideal. And that is the Text wrap button on the top bar of window.

i don't see a "Studio" panel that I could use on my side panels.

If I were working with lots of images, it would be better if I had a panel on the side then having to always just click button ever time I need to make a change.

Just a suggestion.

BTW... I love the Table function. Nice!

Thanks

[SamSteele]

Hi Adam,

Why do you hide your update notes under "Bugs" and not  put them where one would normally expect to find them, i.e. in "Announcements"? I don't start my day by reading the Bugs column  of AP.

I opened up AP and it forced me to upgrade. No problem.  But with the upgrade should come a ReadMe or something that lists the new/upgraded features.  Your explanation of the "pinning" feature isn't that good either.  The product is not ready for prime time but keep going.