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Custom Increments for Kerning by keyboard shortcut


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5 hours ago, shields.up said:

keyboard shortcut for kerning by increments of 10%

You mean Text>Spacing>Tighten/Loosen a.k.a. Tracking?
I, for one, consider this a feature, not necessarily an omission.

If I need "surgical" tools, I go to Characters panel > Positioning and Transform > click inside the Tracking field and use Arrow Up/Down to change in 1‰ steps.

But yeah, why not. Having options is usually a Good Thing™.
I just don't think something like that will land anywhere near the top of Serif's to-do-list.

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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34 minutes ago, loukash said:

You mean Text>Spacing>Tighten/Loosen a.k.a. Tracking?

No, Text > Spacing adjusts Kerning, not Tracking.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
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1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

Text > Spacing adjusts Kerning, not Tracking.

Technically yes.

But hover over the corresponding Characters panel > Positioning and Transform field, and that label says "Tracking".

Yeah, so much for consistency. ;)

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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8 minutes ago, loukash said:

Technically yes.

But hover over the corresponding Characters panel > Positioning and Transform field, and that label says "Tracking".

Yeah, so much for consistency. ;)

No. Tracking is a different field. After using Text > Spacing, here's the field that has changed:

image.png.feb60960e3a7b57a2042f4133a62aeca.png

Tracking is the field below that one, and it remains unchanged at 0%.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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8 hours ago, shields.up said:

Super surprised today to discover you can only use the keyboard shortcut for kerning by increments of 10% — for certain types of work, that's enormous. A custom increment option would be really helpful! Has this been mentioned on any roadmap or acknowledged as a feature request before? 

What shortcut does that?

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
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9 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

No. Tracking is a different field.

Ah, fair enough, my bad.

9 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

After using Text > Spacing, here's the field that has changed:

Alright, I just figured out that Text>Spacing is contextual. (I haven't noticed many such details yet, because likely of all the Designer bugs I'm still ending up finishing so many tasks in Illfrustrator CS5. Oh well…)

So:

  • if you select a word, Text>Spacing affects Tracking
  • if you place a cursor, Text>Spacing affects Kerning

Now, having that all cleared, this concept still applies:

3 hours ago, loukash said:

If I need "surgical" tools, I go to Characters panel > Positioning and Transform > click inside the Kerning/Tracking field and use Arrow Up/Down to change in 1‰ steps.

Voilà. :)

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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15 minutes ago, Jowday said:

What shortcut does that?

Not sure what the default shortcut was, if any, but since many years I'm consistently changing this functionality to Command-Option-Arrow Left/Right in every app that is capable of this, e.g. all Mac apps that use the NSText framework and have the Format>Font>Kern>Tighten/Loosen menu command.

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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1 hour ago, loukash said:

So:

  • if you select a word, Text>Spacing affects Tracking
  • if you place a cursor, Text>Spacing affects Kerning

Interesting. Thanks; I had not known that.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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1 hour ago, Jowday said:

What shortcut does that?

The default shortcuts (on Windows) are:

  • Text > Spacing > Tighten: Alt+Left
  • Text > Spacing > Loosen: Alt+Right

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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For what it's worth…

Just checked in Illustrator CS5, and its keyboard shortcut can increase/decrease only in 20 unit steps.
So… I'm actually pretty fine with having two shorctut modes in Designer, one for 10 units, and one for 50 units.

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

Alt+Left

Ah, yeah. Same as Illustrator. So annoying on Mac because that's elsewhere the systemwide standard for Move Cursor Word Left/Right. InDesign lets you override it, Illustrator doesn't (or didn't: don't know about current versions).

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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  • 2 months later...
  • 2 years later...
On 1/18/2021 at 5:54 AM, loukash said:

Ah, yeah. Same as Illustrator. So annoying on Mac because that's elsewhere the systemwide standard for Move Cursor Word Left/Right. InDesign lets you override it, Illustrator doesn't (or didn't: don't know about current versions).

This is a rare case where Affinity actually makes it easier than Adobe. They have a pre-made set of shortcuts called 'Apple Defaults'. (Go to Preferences > Shortcuts and you'll find two buttons next to each other, 'Apple Defaults' and 'Serif Defaults' (which is more like Adobe).

Unfortunately, they messed up the very shortcut this thread is about. When you switch to Apple Defaults, you'll find that Command-Option-<- actually increases kerning (or tracking if you have text selected) and Command-Option--> decreases it. 🤦‍♂️ But that's not too hard to fix by overriding the Text > Spacing shortcuts.

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On 1/17/2021 at 6:10 PM, shields.up said:

Super surprised today to discover you can only use the keyboard shortcut for kerning by increments of 10% — for certain types of work, that's enormous. A custom increment option would be really helpful! Has this been mentioned on any roadmap or acknowledged as a feature request before? 

Totally agree. The first thing I do with a new copy of InDesign is customise preferences, including the keyboard increments. I use 5 for kerning/tracking, and that shortcut gets a lot of use. But with Affinity, we're stuck with what their engineers thought was a good number. 🫤

 

On 1/17/2021 at 11:47 PM, loukash said:

I just don't think something like that will land anywhere near the top of Serif's to-do-list.

Fixed that for you. 😉 It's a shame, because the shortcut really does save time when you use it over and over… and we're talking about the ability to change the value of a single variable in the code. This would not be a difficult or time consuming feature for them to add.

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9 hours ago, Kal said:

This is a rare case where Affinity actually makes it easier than Adobe.

Um, what?!
I see it exactly the other way around: there are rare cases where Adobe makes their app monsters "easier" to use/configure than Serif, but most of the times it's about missing features or still unresolved bugs on Affinity side. 
But else, I don't miss the clunky Adobe interface at all.

9 hours ago, Kal said:

Fixed that for you.

Fair enough. The tool shortcuts bugs concerning "[" and "]" – i.e. replacing them with available direct key characters on non-English Mac keyboards – still hasn't been fully fixed although reported years ago, incl. by yours truly. :/ 

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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