Weird Text Wrap Functionality?

[mmuller 19]

I may be late to the party but just noticed that text wrapping doesn't respect text frame layering. If you have a layer in the middle of two others - the wrapping is applied to both the layer below (correct imho) and also the layer above (incorrect imho). I have added a video to show what I mean.

[mmuller 19]

Okay found that you can add the 'Ignore text wraps' toggle from the text wrap menu to get the kind of functionality I expected for the upper most layer. But this breaks instantly if you need to add another wrap on top to get multi layered wrapping on multiple text boxes...

[Aammppaa 657]

Not sure that this is the best solution, but you can Edit Wrap Outline on your middle Text Frame, such that the top repels text, but the bottom doesn't.

Edit Wrap Outline in on the toolbar next to Show Text Wrap Settings, or Text > Text Wrap > Edit Wrap Outline.

See attached for an example…

 

Affinity Edit Wrap Outline Example.afpub

[mmuller 19]

@Aammppaa, its a fudge but it works and would be hard to manage when moving items around and changing layers. Out of the box,I would have thought text wrapping should honour the layering of the items and each one should only affect the layers below, not above...

[Aammppaa 657]

Tend to agree, but am no expert so hope others with more experience will weigh in. 

[mmuller 19]

30yrs+ of working in Print and Design, this is something that took me by surprise

[Dave Harris 1,210]

This was an oversight; it should be fixed in a future beta.

[mmuller 19]

Great, glad to be of service!

[Lagarto 161]

I think that there is no inherently correct way for wrapping. E.g QuarkXPress does not wrap text around an object if it is behind the text object (which IMO is an utterlly restricting feature; object order should not have any effect on whether an object wraps or not, as long as there is a text frame option -- as there is in Affinity Publisher and InDesign -- that allows it to ignore wrapping). InDesign wraps text not only when the object is below (or above) the text (in z-order), but also when it is on a different layer that is below the layer of the text object. In addition, it by default also wraps text even if the wrapping object is on a hidden layer (but this is an option that can be turned off). Whether a wrapping frame contains text or graphics does not matter (and accordingly neither does the text flowing or text frame z-order).

Even it Publisher is different in many ways from InDesign (e.g., each text frame being also a layer object), I'd rather see Publisher follow the example of InDesign than of QuarkXPress. 

This is how wrapping (can) work in InDesign, and in Publisher: the user decides about wrapping, not the app. So this is not an oversight, please do not change this!

EDIT: Sorry, I probably missed the point. If multiple text frames all have wrapping feature turned on, then the object z-order should determine which object wraps, and this is how it works at least in beta 442, so perhaps this worked differently before but has now been fixed?

EDIT2: Yes, checked this, and the behavior was different in release version. However now the z-order of the overlapping text frames seems to determine always the wrapping EVEN if not all frames have text wrapping feature turned on. This is different from how it is done in InDesign. There the z-order only determines wrapping method when all affected text frames have wrapping turned on. E.g., if the yellow text frame above does not wrap (as it does not in the exmple), then the underlying text frame with wrapping turned on is the frame that wraps. I'd prefer Publisher to behave similarly, if possible. This leaves as much as possible the decision to the user.