Improved Text Selection & Speed

[JDW]

I am comparing Illustrator text selection to that of Affinity Designer 1.3.2.  In Illustrator, if I have multiple text boxes present on the page, I need only choose the Type Tool and the pointer changes to an I-beam, and when I mover that point over any text box, the box highlights with a blue underline.  I can then click and drag to select text.  And once text is selected that way in one box, I need only do the same thing to select text in another text box.  No double-clicking or special text insertion tricks required.  No so with Affinity Designer though.

 

In Affinity Designer, if I click the Artistic Text Tool and hover over any text boxes on the page, none of the text highlights.  Furthermore, if I try to just click-and-drag atop any text box, AD creates a new text box rather than highlighting text in the existing box!  I am forced to double-click to insert the text cursor inside an existing text box in AD.  And once there, I cannot simply click-and-drag on another text box to select it.  I must go to the trouble of double-clicking to insert the text cursor in other text boxes.

 

It may not sound like much, but this time waster is a huge time waster when you deal with a lot of text editing like me.

 

One more thing.  There is a small but noticeable lag when it comes to selecting a lot of text by click-and-drag and even typing text.  It feels on order of 200ms or so for text selection, and less than that for typing text.  I feel no lag at all when selecting text by click-and-drag or tying text in Illustrator though.  This is true in an existing document as well as in a new document.

[Dave Harris]

Thanks for the feedback. I'll see if selecting text can be improved in future. One thing: you don't need to double-click with the text tool to select a new object. A single click will do.

 

There shouldn't be a 200ms delay when selecting or typing text. Could you post a sample document so I can check whether it happens for me? It doesn't for an A4 page of 12pt Arial, but maybe there's something about your document that is making a difference. If not, it may be a general performance issue that I'll refer to one of my colleagues.

[JDW]

Thanks for the feedback. I'll see if selecting text can be improved in future. One thing: you don't need to double-click with the text tool to select a new object. A single click will do.

 

There shouldn't be a 200ms delay when selecting or typing text. Could you post a sample document so I can check whether it happens for me? It doesn't for an A4 page of 12pt Arial, but maybe there's something about your document that is making a difference. If not, it may be a general performance issue that I'll refer to one of my colleagues.

 

Here's a 60fps QT video screencast (25MB) with voiceover that shows the difference between Affinity Designer 1.3.2 and Illustrator (text handling):

 

https://copy.com/fI0jyEYkY19RImia

 

Thanks.

[Dave Harris]

Thanks for that. I'll see what I can do.