Publisher Text alignment errors on facing pages

[John T]

I have been producing a 44 page quarterly magazine for a local society to which I belong for a year now.

My first three were produced using Open Office Writer and came back from the printers OK, however the August copy produced in Publisher has come back from the printers with text alignment errors on facing pages, I am now trying to fathom out what went wrong

I use Times New Roman 12pt for the text and Times New Roman 14pt bold for the article titles. I have set these options in my styles.

I used the baseline grid feature in Publisher.  All looked fine on screen,, I exported all pages to PDF and rechecked still looked fine.

I exported all pages to PDF and sent to the printers.

Not intending to print myself, did not look at the print options. I have since selected print as book , print spread then print to PDF. Here I could clearly see the alignment errors.

is there a view  that will show me page 1 and 44, 2 and 43, 3 and 42 etc?. as if it were a book layout?

 

[Old Bruce]

We'd need more information such as page size, margins. Also how is the book bound and how many pages to a signature. If you could check the PDFs from the earlier versions too and see if they are grossly different on page 44, 43 and 42 etc from the Publisher versions.

[GarryP]

To add to what Old Bruce said above, would it be possible for you to take a screenshot of the problem areas on-screen (where there’s no problem) and get a scan/photo of the same places in the real document (where there is a problem) so we’ve got something to compare?

[John T]

Thanks for the speedy replies Old Bruce and Garry P.

We are an A 5 publication with 1 cm margins all round, saddle stitched and the signature contains 48 pages, I have never asked as to the paper weight but the pages feel like 100 gsm with the cover being 250 gsm?

I have looked at the PDF files that were sent to the printer and are ok.

Attached are the screen shot of Publisher also the scan of the printed page.

Thanks for your time.

Printed page.PDF

screen shot.PDF

[Palatino]

(Speculation) If text is very close to the edge of a text frame, opening a file on another computer can cause unexpected line breaks. The first line of text at the top of the page is very vulnerable, if it is aligned with the baseline grid, it then jumps to the second line.

Does your text frame go beyond the top of the page?

Sorry for DeppL errors

[Palatino]

[Wosven]

Hi,

Can you export a PDF with the same pages too*, and perhaps give an APub file with only those 2 pages?

When exported as PDF, items are at specific position (x,y), there's no more grid and margin options, all is fixed and shouldn't move. It seems that your page 18's text jump to an upper grid line when exported to PDF, as if APub, instead of using the already set position of your document, recalculate its position before creating the page.

 

* Or better, extract the 2 pages from the PDF you send to the printer?

[GarryP]

Here are my first thoughts:
1. There is a small line above the word “Wootton” at the top of page 18 of the screen shot. If this a direct, unedited, grab from the screen, where did it come from?
2. The margins around the printed page seem to be very different to those on the screen shot. I don’t know how this has happened. When things get printed there can be a small discrepancy for things like this but this particular difference looks a little large to me.
3. The typesetting is different on page 19 of the printed page than it is on page 19 of the screen shot. For example, notice where the second line of the third paragraph contains the word “The” at the end of the line on the screen shot but that word is at the start of the third line of the printed page. Other similar examples can be seen in that same paragraph culminating with the final line being much longer on the printed page. Again, I don’t know how this has happened. What you see in the PDF should be what you get printed unless something, or someone, has messed around with the contents of the PDF.
4. What baseline grid measurement did you use? I tried to replicate it on your screen shot (first attached image) but, after power duplicating the line, I see that the lines of text don’t follow what I would call a ‘natural rhythm’ either down the page or across the spread. Are you sure you’re using the baseline grid properly? The space between the first and second paragraphs on page 18 seems to add extra space that doesn’t conform with the grid.
If you can shed any light upon these things it might help us to get closer to figuring out what the problem is.

[Wosven]

@GarryP,

He's using space before paragraphs, that's why the lines don't follow the grid and it looks messed up (the text don't fit in a similar regular rectangle shape on all pages). And some paragraph are justified and some other are align to left: it's possible one of those style doesn't align to the grid.

[GarryP]

There’s definitely something awry with the line/paragraph spacing. However, it was my understanding that, even if you have extra spacing between paragraphs, that spacing should not interfere with the text being aligned to the baseline if the baseline grid is being used properly and consistently. E.g. the extra space will either force the text onto the next baseline or it will be ‘swallowed’ up so the text remains on the baseline it should have been on without the extra space.

I didn’t notice the different paragraph justifications, so good call on that one. As you say, that’s one extra thing that needs to be checked and might shed some light on things.

However, none of this explains how the text has been rearranged in the third paragraph of page 19. That seems to be very strange to me. I don’t know how that could happen unless something or someone was messing about with the contents of the file. And if that’s happening, how could we know what else it/they are messing around with?

[Wosven]

Perhaps not creating and sending the PDF to print at the end of last minute corrections, but an earlier version. And Affinity apps don't remember last folder as a file option, but as an application option, and I often export or save a document in the wrong folder.

It's easy to use an older file by error if you don't check/use the last modified/created info of your files.

[GarryP]

Yep. Done that myself more often than I want to own up to.
I have often wished for an “Ah, now where did I just export that to?” function. Luckily, the Recent Files area in Windows File Explorer does a pretty good job and usually comes to my rescue.
I think all we can do for now is to wait for JohnT to get back to us and answer the questions and address the issues already raised. The answer is probably already in there somewhere.

[John T]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Palatino

The text is aligned left so is hard on the edge of the text frame. The text frame is snapping to the margins of the page.

Wosven

as the magazine has been printed I have overwritten the file trying to resolve the issues prior to posting this thread but ,thanks for the input.

Garry P don't know how the small line appeared, I did not put it there.

The margins difference could be down to my printers?

The typesetting difference – I don't know how this has happened but the text is justified left on page 19, I have only ever used Align left. Some times Publisher seems to change things for no reason.

Baseline grid is something I have never come across prior to Publisher so it has been guess work. It does not always show up on my pages. I have tried different thresholds.

Is there a view that will show page 1 and 44, 2 and 43, 3 and 42 etc? This is just my thought and may not be needed by the professionals who know what they are doing.

It is a shame Serif have not produced a manual yet, I realise this is the first edition and they may not be ready yet. They only published basic videos, these are fine for the professionals but for the novice they need to produce more in depth ones.

I think I need to go and see my printer to see if he can shed some light on this.

Thanks guys for all your help.

[Wosven]

@John T,

I don't think your printer is responsible for this, but if he'd kept the PDF as usually they do as proof when there's a problem, you can get it back from him. It seems you modified the file and the PDF you send is different from the printed earlier version you have.

An advice is to always print the final PDF before sending it to the printer and check the pages (you can do it on screen, but usually we pick errors more easily on paper than on screen), correct the errors you find, and create a new PDF that you'll send to the printer.

[John T]

Thanks for the advice Wosven I will do that in future.