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Custom keyboard shortcuts do not work AT ALL for Studio Presets (AD/AP/APub)


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Hi guys,

I was trying to replicate the keyboard shortcut system I used in Adobe CC to reset my Workspaces, as my dual monitor setup hasn't worked nicely with Affinity for some years now (and also started acting up with CC as well, mind you; interestingly, the Studio panel reshuffling after waking from sleep appears to be fixed either in these last versions or in Big Sur, which is nice and may even obviate my personal need for all of this) and I thought I had gotten it working.

Basically, my workflow consisted on adding Studio Presets for all personas, both in Separated Mode and normal mode, then manually reapplying each Preset in View > Studio Presets > [my preset] and finally adding keyboard shortcuts for them (without applying them first the Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts panel doesn't recognise them straight away) and saving my own Keyboard Shortcut preset in ~/Library/Application Support/Affinity Designer (for good measure I also tried saving it directly in my home folder, but to no avail, so it's not a permissions issue).

The thing is, whenever I restart my applications (any of them, as this bug is reproducible in Publisher and Photo as well), if I move one of my Studio panels and attempt to apply my custom Studio Preset using said shortcut, it won't work. However, if I manually select said Studio Preset from the menu, all subsequent attempts at doing so using its keyboard shortcut will indeed work.

Also, before manually selecting those Presets from the menu, it won't even appear on the Keyboard Shortcut customisation panel, much like it happened right after creating them.

Maybe Affinity apps aren't just scanning for dynamically-generated menu items after creating new Presets and on application launch, as they probably should?

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Hi JGD,

Thanks for letting us know - this is something I noticed a whole back and have passed on to development, as it does differ quite a bit when compared to the Windows version.  The Windows version will list Studio Preset 1-9 in the shortcuts list which are applied to the first 9 (sorted alphabetically) items in the preset list.

Looking into your post I did notice a memory leak when attempting to scroll the list of shortcuts after adding one, so I've also passed that over to development as well.

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On 11/23/2020 at 10:35 AM, Sean P said:

Hi JGD,

Thanks for letting us know - this is something I noticed a whole back and have passed on to development, as it does differ quite a bit when compared to the Windows version.  The Windows version will list Studio Preset 1-9 in the shortcuts list which are applied to the first 9 (sorted alphabetically) items in the preset list.

Looking into your post I did notice a memory leak when attempting to scroll the list of shortcuts after adding one, so I've also passed that over to development as well.

Hi Sean!

I've tested this again and it's still not completely fixed, but progressing in the right direction. The shortcuts are still not recognised after launching the app, but I only have to open the Window > Studio Presets submenu; from the moment my preset and the corresponding shortcut are visible, the shortcut works.

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  • 2 months later...

Hi. I wanted to report a regression on this bug. As of 1.9.0 GM, the trick described above no longer works.

What's worse, now, when I go to the Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts panel, the custom shortcuts I created for my studio presets are just gone. Not even reloading the keyboard shortcut preset will make them work (they will appear on the preferences dialog, but not on the menu itself). Oh, and while attempting to take a screenshot of it, upon clicking the Close button, I got AD to SBOD on me and bring my entire system to a crawl, just great.

You really have to look into this. Adobe got this right, and so should you. I know, maybe this is a macOS issue or whatever, but please, figure some workaround or something… This should work just transparently. Thanks.

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See? AD is a) not loading my custom keyboard shortcut set on launch:

296834019_Capturadeecr2021-02-03s18_56_51.thumb.png.966a018968fcf6c7c009afde8454e460.png

… which means that b) I have to manually load my set for them to even appear:

1912552656_Capturadeecr2021-02-03s18_57_03.thumb.png.4d760f0db1ca09b0b187142aaa988b03.png

… but c) that still doesn't make them appear on the menu:

972644247_Capturadeecr2021-02-03s18_57_13.thumb.png.70b78f1c98157939bccc3122a022c577.png

These discrepancies are, IMHO, a big no-no in UX. This is a serious bug and should never happen. There are at least three reasonable assumptions on functionality – presets should load automatically, loading presets manually should always work and states should be consistent all across the UI – being broken here…

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Oh, I should add that it seems that I've cheated, and that this functionality doesn't work at all on its own.

It just so happens that I had added those shortcuts in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts for the Betas and it worked okay-ish, suffering from all the bugs I mentioned but still usable after being coaxed through the first use. Go figure!

2033057830_Screenshot2021-02-03at19_28_53.thumb.png.8ec4c710804b3c8bada5ac658d36e45c.png

I will try these system shortcuts on the GM releases with your defaults just to see if it still works.

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Yep, mystery solved! It did work, and I also tried resetting AD to its keyboard shortcut defaults, and it still works. So it was macOS itself that was propping up this all along, to the best of its ability.

The verdict is in: Affinity's custom keyboard shortcut system DOES NOT WORK for custom Studio Preset menu items. Period. They will appear in that box, but it's just for show in that dialog. If the user doesn't add them in System Preferences in the first place they won't actually work, and adding them in Affinity apps doesn't make any functional difference. Please look into this and fix it…

While I'm at it, please try to fix this on BOTH sides, namely the issues I mentioned, which are still a valid concern. It is GREAT that Affinity apps seem to honour shortcuts set at system-level (I haven't looked into it, but now I'm curious to see if those actually work properly for static, non-dynamically-generated menu items; Edit: they do!), like most other Mac apps, but at least try to make those work consistently, all the time.

You see, some amateur and prosumer users, who may have no need for very extensive and portable keyboard shortcut set presets, may prefer setting the few ones they do need in System Preferences instead.

Also, Apple's own built-in system does have an advantage over yours, in that those shortcuts are universal and not persona-specific (I should also add that having Separated Mode as some sort of a set of sub-personas makes it unnecessarily confusing, IMHO), thus making for a much quicker and easier setup for those items that are indeed common to all personas, in fact.

That would actually benefit professional users like myself, as I'd much rather do, for menu items such as this one, a 1-step operation * 3 in System Preferences for the entire suite than a 6-step one for AD and APub, and a 10-step one for AP (5 personas * 2 modes = 10 custom shortcuts for the same command, phew!) using your custom system, even if it meant that said shortcut wasn't added to your super-duper portable keyboard shortcut set file (I know my few, most important keyboard shortcuts by heart, and setting them up in a new computer or macOS install is a breeze anyway). Having both systems work and coexist peacefully is, therefore, a must for all users.

2051161950_Screenshot2021-02-03at19_35.39(2).thumb.png.5702bd60de51ab2c300fbb7fa13ec86c.png

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