Support for keyboard and mouse/trackpad

[Vladimir Krstic]

With iOS 13.4 that is coming out on 23rd of March iPads will get full mouse and trackpad support. How is Designer looking with keyboard support and can we expect mouse and trackpad support soon?

[kaiwienen]

This would be greate😍 

[wtrmlnjuc]

Fingers crossed for precision input on Designer. 

[HEEN]

Hoping this comes soon, game changer!

[Double76]

I’ve tested this using a 2nd gen iPad Pro and a Bluetooth mouse and bridge keyboard set up - seems to work great so far!

[Vladimir Krstic]

It works, but the experience is far from stellar. Mouse functionality on the OS level is not that great, the trackpad is much better, but I don't like trackpads for the graphics work. Two things should be Affinity's priority. Alter the pointers. A default one is not suitable for precise drawing. Bring a powerful key-bindings editor. Every panel should have a keyboard shortcut since we are limited to 13" screen, and it's painful to open and close all those panels with a pointer.

[wtrmlnjuc]

13 hours ago, Vladimir Krstic said:

... A default one is not suitable for precise drawing. ...

I find Pencil input kludgy already on my 12.9” iPad Pro. A precise input for Pencil option (or selection radius adjuster) would vastly increase my work speed. I use Procreate a lot and it gets frustrating seeing precise input become very imprecise in comparison. 

[Vladimir Krstic]

@wtrmlnjuc Procreate is using raster graphics so it's kinda natural to draw with a pencil. With vectors you usually want to see pointer presented on a screen and that doesn't work well with a pencil, at least not on small screens.

[wtrmlnjuc]

5 hours ago, Vladimir Krstic said:

@wtrmlnjuc Procreate is using raster graphics so it's kinda natural to draw with a pencil. With vectors you usually want to see pointer presented on a screen and that doesn't work well with a pencil, at least not on small screens.

I'm well aware of the difference between vector and raster, it just feels like using an oversized screwdriver compared to each other and compared to mouse input on Desktop.

[Vladimir Krstic]

@wtrmlnjuc Right. I'm just saying that working with vectors with a pencil, on a small screen, possibly can never be that good. Would love Affinity to prove me wrong. What definitely is not good is to modify controls with finger gestures, we need strong keyboard support for that.
 

[wtrmlnjuc]

20 hours ago, Vladimir Krstic said:

@wtrmlnjuc Right. I'm just saying that working with vectors with a pencil, on a small screen, possibly can never be that good. Would love Affinity to prove me wrong. What definitely is not good is to modify controls with finger gestures, we need strong keyboard support for that.
 

I’d like the option. Besides, that’s why I bought a 12.9” in the first place. 

[ashf]

Somebody says pointer is shown with wrong style(vertical line which is for text) but circle on 13.4

[Phojoegraphy]

I just tried an Apple Magic Mouse 1 and a Logitech M705 mouse with Designer 1.8.2 and I could click to select tools, but neither one of them would activate any of the tools on the artboard. ie: grab and move an object with the move tool, add or adjust a node with the node tool, add text with the text tool. I had to use the Pencil. Even disconnecting the Pencil didn't change the behavior. 

iPad Pro 3 (12")
iPadOS 13.4 
Designer 1.8.2

[kaiwienen]

You have to disable „touch only for gesture „ in the settings. After then everything works.