Text flowing across linked text boxes is resized.

[Jeff McFarland]

When a page is full of text and I attempt to flow the rest of the text onto another page the second linked text box scales the text to a very small size. 

When I paste new copy into the first text box, any overflow into the second page's text box is immediately scaled down. It doesn't keep the correct font size. This is really frustrating.

 

Also, your captcha for registering for the forum is really annoying. I thought I was caught in some kind of loop, answering question after question about the images. I almost gave up.

[Pauls]

I think you will have resized the 2nd text box so the text is being scaled as well. Best to adjust the size of the box using the inner handle not the very tempting one that sticks out

[Jeff McFarland]

OK. I think you're right. When trying to replicate this problem I can see that if I create a new text box and paste in a bunch of text, I can easily link it to a second text box and the remains the same. I get that now.

However, this still seems to me to be a bug, or at least extremely unintuitive.

Here's my point...

If I create a new text box and paste some copy into it at 9pt and use the resize handle to scale the box up so that the copy now reads 12pt, then any additional 12pt copy that I add to that box should remain 12pt when overflowing into a linked text box. Instead, the copy in the second box will be resized to 9pt. If I add 12pt type to a box, I expect 12pt type. 

But that's not the only confusing behavior. If I copy some of the 12pt type in the first box and then paste it into the second box, it will actually appear as 12pt type, as expected. And if I copy some of the 9pt type from the second box and paste it into the first box, it correctly appears as 9pt type. It's only if the copy flows between the boxes that it changes size unexpectedly.

When using the resize handle on a text box, it should simply resize the type inside, shouldn't it? 9pt type becomes 12pt. Done. Link to a new text box and the 12pt type just continues to flow into the new box. But that's not what happens. Instead it seems to also apply a scaling percentage to the box itself. A percentage that I can't seem to find in any of the palettes. Once resized, the text inside the box that reads 12pt, should in fact be 12pt type. Not 9pt type scaled up 133%. It's 12pt. Period. Or at least it should be.

I'm trying to wrap my head around why Affinity decided to implement this feature the way they did and I can't think of any reason for it. How is this useful? If I'm working on a project created by someone else and I see two text boxes containing a magazine article (for instance), I would expect to be able to select ALL the copy and paste over it with an updated draft of the article without finding that suddenly my type in the second box has shrunk to an unexpected size. I just don't understand this behavior at all.

[fde101]

1 hour ago, Jeff McFarland said:

Instead it seems to also apply a scaling percentage to the box itself. A percentage that I can't seem to find in any of the palettes.

I agree, this is how it seems to behave.  That scaling percentage should really be added to one of the studio panels, probably either the text frame panel or the transform panel.

[Jeff McFarland]

50 minutes ago, fde101 said:

I agree, this is how it seems to behave.  That scaling percentage should really be added to one of the studio panels, probably either the text frame panel or the transform panel.

Yes. At a bare minimum. This doesn't solve the underlying issue, but at least it would be a way to tell if a box had been transformed.

If the scaling percentage was added to a studio panel it should still have some sort of "expand" button that would reset the box back to 100% while at the same time applying the transformation to its contents. 

But then, why not just scale the contents of the box when transforming? I still don't understand why this isn't the default. If you have 9pt type and you transform the box 200%, just make the type 18pt. If you've got an 18pt headline and 12pt body type in a box that is transformed 200%, just make the headline 36pt and the body type 24pt. Why the extra layer of abstraction and confusion?

[Old Bruce]

Try Paste Without Format. I do agree that this is weird and can catch one unawares.

[Jeff McFarland]

35 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Try Paste Without Format. I do agree that this is weird and can catch one unawares.

That can be helpful in some cases, but depending on how you've scaled the two boxes even pasting without format will result in different sizes of text as it flows between the linked text frames.

Here's another odd thing about these text frames. I can select all the text that flows between two text frames and change the font size to, say 12pt. The studio panel will show that the type is ALL 12pt, while it's selected. But the type will actually be different sizes in each text frame. 

Try it out. Paste a bunch of 14pt type into a text frame until it overflows the frame. Use the scale handle to reduce the frame until the type reads 12pt. Then link the overflowing text to a new text frame that hasn't been scaled. Your type will show up as the original 14pt size in the new box. Select the second text frame and change the type size to 12pt. Now you've got two frames with type that is the same size. Now, select all the copy in both boxes (the copy, not the frames) and change it to 12pt. The text in the linked frame will jump back to 14pt, even though it shows that it is 12pt while the copy in both frames is selected. LOL.

That resize handle on text frames is totally useless if you plan on linking two or more text frames together. It causes. many more problems than it solves.

[SLVD]

Has a fix to this been found? I have the same issue...

 

[walt.farrell]

22 minutes ago, SLVD said:

Has a fix to this been found? I have the same issue...

There are at least two causes for this: 

1. It can happen with IDML files imported into Publisher, and is probably a bug. This is not yet fixed. 

2. It can be a user error, related to resizing a text frame using the wrong handle. The detached handle on the lower right of the frame also remakes the frame contents. The "fix" for that is to not use that handle if you don't want that effect.

[carl123]

1 hour ago, SLVD said:

Has a fix to this been found? I have the same issue...

It also occurs if you change the DPI of the document then add a text frame and try to link to that new text frame