musikinsnetz

IT'S THERE IN BETA 1.8! Now you can customize all the move/select actions! Yay! Yay! THANK YOU, SERIF!
Paolo
 

+1 on this. Just checking out a Publisher trial vs Indesign at the moment, this is really disappointing. Can't imagine switching between my editor (which follows Mac conventions) and Publisher without going absolutely mental.

Unfortunately, this change has not been implemented in the new 1.7.3 version out today. Maybe the next one…
Paolo
 

OK, I've logged this to be done.

Thanks for replying, Dave … 
First off, you are perfectly right, that I changed my Indesign shortcuts to match the standard Mac behavior. But the big difference is, that I can do so in Indesign, while I cannot do so in Affinity Designer.
Upon closer inspection, you will note that Indesign supports customisation options for all the keyboard shortcuts listed in my attachment below. So it seems quite obvious, that you could “do both at once” … just support customisable shortcuts for all the options below, and we would be fine.
Would you, please … I mean, pretty please …, consider this request another time? Just think of all the Affnity users who have no muscle memory from the long-term use of Adobe applications, but are instead accustomed to text editing in other Mac applications. Why would it make sense to force them into learning new work strategies and habits, when it is so simple to have the best of both worlds by adding some more customisation options? Please, don’t dismiss this idea lightly … 
Thank you so much for all you do,
Alex

Hey guys,
there is another small thing that *really really* bugs me.
Editing texts in Affinity Designer is a pain at the moment, and that is mostly due to the fact, that you seem to deliberately deviate from the system-wide shortcut behavior of navigating within a text block by using arrow and modifier keys. If I am mistaken about this, I would gladly be corrected.
Just have a look at the standard system behavior that we know from Text Edit, Mail, or Safari, for instance:
Option + Left Arrow (Right Arrow). Move the caret cursor one word to the left (to the right). Command + Left Arrow (Right Arrow). Move the caret cursor to the beginning (to the end) of the present line. Shift + Option + Left Arrow (Right Arrow). Select the word to the left (to the right) of the caret cursor. Shift + Command + Left Arrow (Right Arrow). Select the phrase from the caret cursor to the beginning (to the end) of the present line. Option + Upwards Arrow (Downwards Arrow). Move the caret cursor to the beginning (to the end) of the present paragraph or, if its already there, to the beginning of the previous (the following) paragraph. And so on … I believe we all are accustomed to using these shortcuts, and in my opinion it is a major fault in the present implementation of text-related shortcuts, that we cannot use them in Affinity Designer as well. Of course, I am well aware that you want to provide shortcuts for adjusting kerning or line spacing to the user, but in my opinion, it is pretty inconsistent, that you provide a way to customise and even disable them, while on the other hand you don’t allow us to use the shortcuts that we know from every other Apple application.
In order to sort this out, I would suggest to add all the shortcuts for text navigation that are available in Indesign. In this very special case I would suggest to have a look how they do it (one example below). By providing these additional customisation options, everyone can adjust his working environment to his or her liking and even go back to the standard system behavior.
Please consider this request. It would be a huge relief … 
Thanks, Alex

I heartily support this request. Having to constantly switch from one way of moving cursor to a different one is very annoying. All programs following the Apple guidelines use a system different than the one in Publisher, and you end up having to "change your hat" each time you switch from a text editor to the page layout program.
An additional set of customizable shortcuts for keyboard navigation would be a mind saver.
Paolo
 

Definitely not the only one … 
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/18412-consistency-for-shortcuts-in-caret-cursor-navigation/
This is really a big issue for me … and it shouldn’t be … 

Dear Affinity Team,
I love your applications and I’m immensely happy about having an InDesign alternative now as well. However, there’s one thing that somewhat annoyed me from the beginning: for the navigation through text you chose the Adobe shortcuts instead of the native macOS shortcuts. This is rather disturbing if you’re a keyboard person and constantly using Apple’s iWorks suite as well as different text editors. As I somewhat understand that you want to make the switch easy for Adobe users, why not add the “Text shortcuts” as listed on your help site to the keyboard shortcuts customisation in the settings? You can even do this in Adobe programs.
Example Moves cursor to start of word:
macOS native:  ⌥← (which is Text/Spacing/Tighten in Affinity or Adobe)
Affinity: ⌘← (which is Moves cursor to start of line in macOS native shortcuts)
I wrote something similar a few years back and I am not the only one disturbed by this.
Cheers,
Hagen.

Dear Affinity Team,
I love your applications and I’m immensely happy about having an InDesign alternative now as well. However, there’s one thing that somewhat annoyed me from the beginning: for the navigation through text you chose the Adobe shortcuts instead of the native macOS shortcuts. This is rather disturbing if you’re a keyboard person and constantly using Apple’s iWorks suite as well as different text editors. As I somewhat understand that you want to make the switch easy for Adobe users, why not add the “Text shortcuts” as listed on your help site to the keyboard shortcuts customisation in the settings? You can even do this in Adobe programs.
Example Moves cursor to start of word:
macOS native:  ⌥← (which is Text/Spacing/Tighten in Affinity or Adobe)
Affinity: ⌘← (which is Moves cursor to start of line in macOS native shortcuts)
I wrote something similar a few years back and I am not the only one disturbed by this.
Cheers,
Hagen.

Hi there,
 
first of all: a big thank you for building alternatives to Adobe’s programs! The latter are so annoying in many ways but regrettably still unavoidable for graphic designers. Which brings me straight to my point: I’ve noticed you’ve implemented many things to work like in the Adobe programs which is the right thing to do in most cases if you want to get Adobe users to switch. But – for me – one of the most annoying things in Adobe programs is that editing text works completely differently to the Mac standard way.
 
The keyboard shortcuts for jumping around from word to word (alt + left/right arrow keys) or to the beginning/end of a line (cmd + left/right arrow keys) should in my opinion be the Mac standard ones and not the Adobe ones. It happens regularly that I change the kerning when I want to jump back or forth in text.
 
Thanks a lot in advance for reading this.
 
Cheers,
Hagen.

Dear Affinity Team,
I love your applications and I’m immensely happy about having an InDesign alternative now as well. However, there’s one thing that somewhat annoyed me from the beginning: for the navigation through text you chose the Adobe shortcuts instead of the native macOS shortcuts. This is rather disturbing if you’re a keyboard person and constantly using Apple’s iWorks suite as well as different text editors. As I somewhat understand that you want to make the switch easy for Adobe users, why not add the “Text shortcuts” as listed on your help site to the keyboard shortcuts customisation in the settings? You can even do this in Adobe programs.
Example Moves cursor to start of word:
macOS native:  ⌥← (which is Text/Spacing/Tighten in Affinity or Adobe)
Affinity: ⌘← (which is Moves cursor to start of line in macOS native shortcuts)
I wrote something similar a few years back and I am not the only one disturbed by this.
Cheers,
Hagen.