Absolutely frustrating behaviour of pictures and text boxes

[ArchDuke]

Hello Nisus community,

I'm sorry if this sounds a little bit negative, but lately I've become very frustrated by Nisus' treatment of pictures and text boxes. Maybe someone could help me here? That would be a very nice early xmas treat!

First off, Nisus insists on placing pictures inline with text. At least for my use cases this is the absolutely worst behaviour, because it will play havoc with my complete layout of other text boxes etc.

And second and aggravating this, if I change the placement of pictures or text boxes to floating, Nisus will arbitrarily hide some or all existing pictures or text boxes. Suddenly there's only the anchor element, often even with a number summarily counting the hidden elements. But it's neigh impossible to get Nisus to show the hidden elements again.

Since I'm regularly creating work sheets for my students I absolutely need Nisus to behave nice wrt text boxes etc. I'm sure there is some logic behind Nisus' behaviour but compared to my former word processor it feels very clunky and unhelpful.

Sorry for this negative post but this is really a shout for help! Most of the time I really like Nisus but this (for me) problematic behaviour often makes me want to go back to my old app. So I'd be really grateful if somebody could tell me what I should do different. Thanks!

Archduke

[adryan]

G'day, ArchDuke et al

I did some testing for you. There could be a bug (or several) here.

Insert an image at the beginning of a paragraph (not the first) in a "Lorem ipsum" document. Placement is "Inline with Text". Change Placement to "Floats with Paragraph". Now place the insertion point in the middle of the first paragraph and observe while inserting multiple returns.

The image moves down the page until its associated paragraph moves to the next page, whereupon the image disappears. On insertion of the next return, the image reappears but at the beginning of the document. On inserting yet another return, the image moves to the beginning of its associated paragraph (on the page following its initial placement). Crazy behavior (including straddling of the page break) ensues with further insertion of returns.

Furthermore, Undo fails to work as expected. Instead of backtracking step by step on each invocation of the command, a single invocation restores the image to its original position but with Placement set to "Floats with Paragraph" rather than "Inline with Text".

Given this aberrant behavior with a single image, I didn't bother experimenting with additional text boxes, so I haven't seen your exact situation. But no doubt it's all related and needs fixing.

Cheers,
Adrian

[Amontillado]

Just below the placement option there is an array of six options for text wrapping. They become available if "floats with paragraph" or "floats on page" is selected.

The middle one on the top row of wrap options should be the only one to allow text behind your image.

Have you tried switching to a different text wrap?

My favorite is the middle on the bottom row. That lets me park a picture on the right margin without having to be exact about the picture. I can include some white space to the right of the picture by just not dragging it all the way to the margin. 'Course, I could use the padding options, too, if I weren't such a slacker.

For a picture against the margins, any option except upper right (above and below with a break for the picture) or upper middle (no wrapping, let the picture overlay the text) would work.

The reason you can overlay a picture on top of text is for pictures that are transparent. Note the opacity slider in Nisus is for the stroke (frame) of the picture, not the picture itself.

[ArchDuke]

Hello adryan,

thanks, that sums my experience quite nicely up. Using several text boxes or pictures at the same time is even more aberrant and frustrating as you can guess. So it seems this is really a (several) bug(s).
I'd be very, very grateful If this could be fixed since I need this in almost every single document.
Thanks again!

Archduke

[Amontillado]

I can't duplicate that bug. I'm on Mac 12.6.2 because I don't have a new Mac yet.

Nisus version is 3.3

G'day, ArchDuke et al

I did some testing for you. There could be a bug (or several) here.

Insert an image at the beginning of a paragraph (not the first) in a "Lorem ipsum" document. Placement is "Inline with Text". Change Placement to "Floats with Paragraph". Now place the insertion point in the middle of the first paragraph and observe while inserting multiple returns.

The image moves down the page until its associated paragraph moves to the next page, whereupon the image disappears. On insertion of the next return, the image reappears but at the beginning of the document. On inserting yet another return, the image moves to the beginning of its associated paragraph (on the page following its initial placement). Crazy behavior (including straddling of the page break) ensues with further insertion of returns.

Furthermore, Undo fails to work as expected. Instead of backtracking step by step on each invocation of the command, a single invocation restores the image to its original position but with Placement set to "Floats with Paragraph" rather than "Inline with Text".

Given this aberrant behavior with a single image, I didn't bother experimenting with additional text boxes, so I haven't seen your exact situation. But no doubt it's all related and needs fixing.

Cheers,
Adrian

[ArchDuke]

Just below the placement option there is an array of six options for text wrapping. They become available if "floats with paragraph" or "floats on page" is selected.

The middle one on the top row of wrap options should be the only one to allow text behind your image.

Have you tried switching to a different text wrap?

My favorite is the middle on the bottom row. That lets me park a picture on the right margin without having to be exact about the picture. I can include some white space to the right of the picture by just not dragging it all the way to the margin. 'Course, I could use the padding options, too, if I weren't such a slacker.

For a picture against the margins, any option except upper right (above and below with a break for the picture) or upper middle (no wrapping, let the picture overlay the text) would work.

The reason you can overlay a picture on top of text is for pictures that are transparent. Note the opacity slider in Nisus is for the stroke (frame) of the picture, not the picture itself.

Hello Amontillado,

thanks for your suggestions! I already know and use these different text wraps and other options regularly. They just don't help wrt to suddenly disappearing boxes and pictures.

Archduke

[Amontillado]

What version of the MacOS are you running? At this point, that's my guess as to why you see that behavior and I don't.

Edited to add:

And I agree, that sounds most frustrating! My guess, there's a cure.

[adryan]

G’day, all

What I said about Undo isn't quite right. One shouldn't expect Undo to undo each return insertion progressively. Removal of them all at once is the expected behavior. I must have thought otherwise because of the slow-motion insertion of all those returns.

Cheers,
Adrian

[Amontillado]

Now that I think about it, I have had to do some coaxing in some cases. The pictures were very large, I remember that much.

Later today I'll experiment some more.

Hello Amontillado,

thanks for your suggestions! I already know and use these different text wraps and other options regularly. They just don't help wrt to suddenly disappearing boxes and pictures.

Archduke

[martin]

The image moves down the page until its associated paragraph moves to the next page, whereupon the image disappears. On insertion of the next return, the image reappears but at the beginning of the document. On inserting yet another return, the image moves to the beginning of its associated paragraph (on the page following its initial placement). Crazy behavior (including straddling of the page break) ensues with further insertion of returns.

Thanks for that clear description Adrian! I've reproduce the behavior, which is indeed a bug. The image should not disappear once the anchoring paragraph slides to the next page. The image should automatically adjust itself to show itself relative to the new anchoring page.

The relevant factor seems to be widow and orphan control. If you disable "prevent widows/orphans" for the document, the floating image behaves correctly and does not disappear. My guess is that this bug was caused by changes to the macOS system text engine. Other paragraph layout control options like "keep with next paragraph" may trigger similar a bug.

I'll file a bug report that we look at getting this fixed in a Nisus Writer update. Sorry for the frustration!

[martin]

There appear to be problems even when widow/orphan layout options are disabled. The visibility and placement of floating content is really wonky and unpredictable. It's quite crazy.

[Vanceone]

One problem I've noticed is that the layout engine has issues when it tries to reflow a paragraph and a picture. If there is space on the page for the paragraph, in a normal paragraph it works fine. Add a picture that floats inline or with paragraph, and suddenly it has to put the picture on the page. If there's not enough room, it shoves the paragraph and the picture to the next page, which leaves enough room on the previous page for the text of the paragraph that just moved... so the layout engine tries to move it back, the picture moves back, no room, and it goes into a cycle. The engine recognizes it's in a layout cycle and errors out, putting the offending picture somewhere, usually within a page or two of the actual paragraph it's on.

The only cure I've found is to float independent of a paragraph, and "caveman place it" to be next to the paragraph you want. But then it never moves... so this solution only works at the end of your typing as sort of a final "picture placement editing pass" where you have to start at the beginning of your document and go down, laboriously moving pictures where they need to be.

I've also noticed that putting large PDF's under headings is frequently hard to do without turning off widows and orphans and "Keep with next" and so on.

[jganding@outlook.com]

Is there any way to vote up the priority on resolving the issues associated with placing graphics? Solid operations using graphics is important to me but graphic behavior is currently unpredictable and crazy. Thanks for doing what you can to fix this.

[tedg]

Plus one.

I live in Nisus, and create complex documents with many images. There are too many advantages for me to consider changing, but squirrelly image movement drives me nuts.

I'd happily pay for a super pro version that has better layout management.