Shortcut for 'Lock Children'

[reminous]

Hi there!

I find myself using 'Lock Children' all the time... I wish we had a way to do a shortcut for out of that so I don't need to rely finding on top panel.

By the way, this feature cannot be found in any menu also, which pretty unusual. I guess that should at least be placed somewhere in the Layers panel no?

[dominik]

39 minutes ago, reminous said:

I find myself using 'Lock Children' all the time... I wish we had a way to do a shortcut for out of that so I don't need to rely finding on top panel.

By the way, this feature cannot be found in any menu also, which pretty unusual. I guess that should at least be placed somewhere in the Layers panel no?

Hi @reminous,

you are not alone with this request. A little longer discussion on this over at the APub forum. Since I posted there and do support this request I thought it might be of interest to bring the topics together 🙂

 

d.

[simonlayfield]

+1 for this.

On a 15" laptop the Lock Children checkbox also tends to get bumped off of the main toolbar in to a collapsed menu so it takes some extra digging to get to it.

A shortcut would be great, or at least for it to be selectable within the Shortcut options.

[loukash]

If you're on Mac:

As long as the checkbox is visible, it can be toggled via very simple AppleScript, provided the main window is not in "separated mode" and there are no panels or other windows floating above:

tell application "System Events"
	tell process "Affinity Designer"
		try
			click checkbox "Lock Children" of window 1
		end try
	end tell
end tell

Other scenarios with floating windows and panels will get more complex in order to target the main "window n", but it's not impossible.
Coincidentally I had to figure out something similar earlier today for switching the waveform view mode in Izotope RX 8 audio editor. It was a p.i.t.a. because they also use nonstandard UI elements but eventually I made it work.

1 hour ago, simonlayfield said:

A shortcut would be great

An AppleScript can be executed e.g. via Keyboard Maestro, or within a Service made in Automator with a shortcut in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services.

1 hour ago, simonlayfield said:

On a 15" laptop the Lock Children checkbox also tends to get bumped off of the main toolbar in to a collapsed menu

I haven't found an easy way to access it via AppleScript yet. The "»" pseudo button appears to be invisible to System Events. (Very, very bad UI design, Serif! Ever heard of accessibility?!)
It should be possible to access it via executing a click at a position relative to the window bounds. But there are several variables, for instance I'm often keeping the Toolbar disabled, enabling it only when needed. So the calculation would be slightly complex for my modest scripting skills…