Affinity Shortcuts > Any App > Edit has 2 rows for Emoji & Symbols

[mikeswarts]

Here is what I'm seeing. Hope it helps.

 

[mikeswarts]

I know what's happening here, but it's still a little weird. In this context, it should just say "Undo" and "Redo", in my opinion.

[mikeswarts]

Am I missing something or is there no shortcut to get back to the primary app Persona (in this case Publisher)?

Answer: I was missing something. I didn't realize that I just needed to switch the app context from Publisher to something else.

 

[MEB]

Hi @affinitydesignerfan,
Regarding this last post, you have to set the first dropdown to Photo or Designer to be able to access the shortcut for Publisher Persona.
I'm checking the other two.

[mikeswarts]

Also, I love that I can save my own keyboard shortcut preferences to standardize my experience across my devices, but is there (or could there be) a way to save/load ALL app preferences?

[mikeswarts]

On mac, scrollbars tat are configured in System Preferences to "When scrolling" can be a pain in Affinity apps, as shown below. In my opinion, Affinity should either ignore the system settings and always show scrollbars or it should make room to interact with the toggle that gets obscured. Do either of these options seem workable?

[thomaso]

On 3/24/2021 at 4:44 PM, affinitydesignerfan said:

is there (or could there be) a way to save/load ALL app preferences?

What "ALL" do you mean? The customizable preferences are (auto-)saved in different files, stored in different folders. Their detailed paths depend on platform and OS version. To restore them to a specific state you would need to replace these files with the according ones (e.g. from a backup). A few object properties can get saved manually via Edit > Defaults > Sync / Save.

Not all settings are preferences / not all preferences are customizable and seem to deny user access, e.g. a custom export setting of "Area" (the type of document items) doesn't appear as editable preference, – different to "Pages" (the range of page numbers) which gets reminded by the app during a session.

[loukash]

On 3/24/2021 at 4:44 PM, affinitydesignerfan said:

I can save my own keyboard shortcut preferences to standardize my experience across my devices

It's still a literally painful (as in: many click and keystrokes necessary) experience in Publisher, if you have already set up your custom shortcuts for Designer and Photo apps respectively, and now you want to sync those shortcuts with APu's Designer and Photo personae. Same for the respective Studio Presets and customized toolbars.

In other words, the much promoted "Studio Link" feature is still only a half step there.

On 3/24/2021 at 5:21 PM, affinitydesignerfan said:

configured in System Preferences to "When scrolling" 

Ever since this silly MacOS "feature" was introduced a decade or so ago, this is always among the first things that I turn off when setting up a new MacOS installation or user account.

[thomaso]

32 minutes ago, loukash said:

in Publisher, if you have already set up your custom shortcuts for Designer and Photo apps respectively, and now you want to sync those shortcuts with APu's Designer and Photo personae.

?  Have you checked the "Apply to all" option in the shortcut preference window? I seems to concern personae, not apps as I initially thought/hoped. I never unchecked it, and my few custom shortcuts do work across personae (I have set them in the APub persona only) – unless they have different menu paths, as e.g. the Resource Manager (… its differing positions in personae menus are strange but another subject).

Differences in menu layouts might be a reason why it isn't offered yet to transfer custom shortcuts between apps. However, it would be already a little more user friendly if such custom preferences are saved in a file format the user can edit with a text editor, especially as long there is no search option to find specific commands within the preference window.

[loukash]

53 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Have you checked the "Apply to all" option in the shortcut preference window?

That's not what I mean.
I understand what this does, and that's essentially OK, even though it has a few quirks on its own.

53 minutes ago, thomaso said:

I seems to concern personae, not apps as I initially thought/hoped.

Exactly.

53 minutes ago, thomaso said:

I never unchecked it

It can create conflicts between certain slightly overlapping but technically different commands in personae, like Edit>Duplicate (Pu/De) vs Layer>Duplicate and Layer>Duplicate Selection (Ph). I had to uncheck it temporarily to solve the conflict so that the shortcuts match my logic. (As in: "perhaps it's just me, but I do know what I'm doing, thankyouverymuch" )

53 minutes ago, thomaso said:

the Resource Manager (… its differing positions in personae menus are strange but another subject).

Yep, we're getting off topic…

53 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Differences in menu layouts might be a reason why it isn't offered yet to transfer custom shortcuts between apps.

As far as I can tell, there are virtually no differences in menus, tools, toolbars etc. whatsoever between the ADe & APh personae in APu, and the corresponding primary personae in the ADe & APh apps. The correct and easy solution for interchangeable settings would be preset export/import per persona, not monolithically per app.

53 minutes ago, thomaso said:

it would be already a little more user friendly if such custom preferences are saved in a file format the user can edit with a text editor, especially as long there is no search option to find specific commands within the preference window.

Well, on Mac you can always override common menu items via System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts > All Applications. Been there done that many times. (Those can be a p.i.t.a. to exchange between apps or Mac accounts as well, but it's manageable per copy & paste via plist files if you know which ones to look for. Then you just copy the whole NSUserKeyEquivalents XML key from one plist to the other. If I knew how to program a cocoa app I would have released one long ago.)

(We're getting mighty off topic. Sorry, @affinitydesignerfan!)

[mikeswarts]

Another bug (?) in Keyboard Shortcuts:

The keyboard shortcut in Publisher for Documents > Delete Pages... doesn't work (or else I don't know what I'm doing).

[thomaso]

9 minutes ago, affinitydesignerfan said:

The keyboard shortcut in Publisher for Documents > Delete Pages... doesn't work (or else I don't know what I'm doing).

What shortcut did you assign? What happens if you use it?
I just assigned ctrl D as shortcut and it works to open the dialog window of "Delete Pages…" as expected.

[mikeswarts]

You're right. The issue is with the shortcut itself. I had command+delete.

To be honest, what I actually want is to be able to delete pages that I select in the Pages studio using the keyboard.

[Old Bruce]

29 minutes ago, affinitydesignerfan said:

To be honest, what I actually want is to be able to delete pages that I select in the Pages studio using the keyboard.

I agree with that, the dialog box needs to be accessed after it shows up and it doesn't automatically have the selected pages in it, just the active spread's first page and a default of two pages.

[thomaso]

4 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

40 minutes ago, affinitydesignerfan said:

To be honest, what I actually want is to be able to delete pages that I select in the Pages studio using the keyboard.

I agree with that, the dialog box needs to be accessed after it shows up and it doesn't automatically have the selected pages in it, just the active spread's first page and a default of two pages.

What behavior do you expect? It sounds you would want the command of the Pages Panel "Delete Selected Pages" in the main menu/with shortcut, – right?
If yes, with what advantage, since you select the pages in the panel via mouse/cursor: why not just clicking the icon there, too?

[mikeswarts]

24 minutes ago, thomaso said:

What behavior do you expect? It sounds you would want the command of the Pages Panel "Delete Selected Pages" in the main menu/with shortcut, – right?
If yes, with what advantage, since you select the pages in the panel via mouse/cursor: why not just clicking the icon there, too?

The short answer to your principal question is yes—I would like that menu item.

Of course I know exactly what you mean when you doubt the value of deleting something with a keyboard that was selected with a mouse, but starting a process with a mouse doesn't necessarily imply the mouse is best to complete the process. Selecting an option from a context menu or clicking a nearby icon may only take a second or two with the mouse, but tapping delete is measured in milliseconds. The time saved is not the issue at all. These seconds, even repeated numerous times, don't add up to anything much.

However, the brain is conditioned to be lazy and it is therefore natural for me to select a page/spread and press delete. When my natural inclination doesn't work, the resultant feeling is ever-so-slightly jarring, which takes me out of doing mode and puts me into troubleshooting mode. It's also a matter of consistency. I predict many users delete layers from the Layers panel in precisely the same way (i.e. click+press delete), and that behavior is accepted.

Software problems like this always seem incredibly trivial and, compared to any number of things I could readily name, are. But, I think we should agree that in general it is at least preferable to "pave the cowpaths" and not break the user's intuitive flow.

I want to point out that my posts here are always done with a gracious heart. Making software of this class is supremely difficult and I am overjoyed that Serif has done such a remarkable job overall. My only aim is to potentially help in a small way to make the software 1/10,000th of a percent better.

[thomaso]

33 minutes ago, affinitydesignerfan said:

milliseconds. The time saved is not the issue at all. These seconds, even repeated numerous times, don't add up to any substantial amount of time. HOWEVER, the brain is conditioned to be lazy and it is therefore natural for me to select a page/spread and press delete. When my natural inclination doesn't work,

This appears to be not just a missing menu command but rather being caused by the way this panel works: Note, there are 2 selection states. While a "gray selection" doesn't allow to delete (icon is grayed-out) it requires the brownish selection to enable delete. (milliseconds? :•)

  > 

Now I personally would expect (maybe you, too) that the default keyboard Delete Key would work (which would neither require a menu entry nor a shortcut). Currently this option is not enabled "by design", probably to avoid a selection of a possibly selected object in the layout + Layers Panel. The Delete Key also doesn't work in the Layout and the Swatches Panel – where I would expect it to work, too. (In particular in the Swatches panel deleting items appears extremely cumbersome: it requires opening a menu first and  even doesn't allow to delete more than 1 at a time.)

I wish it would work at least if no layout-item is selected. And/or, for more avoiding misuse, while the cursor still hovers over the according panel.

[mikeswarts]

20 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Now I personally would expect (maybe you, too) that the default keyboard Delete Key would work (which would neither require a menu entry nor a shortcut). Currently this option is disabled "by design", probably to avoid a selection of a possibly selected object in the layout + Layers Panel.

That's a really good point. I don't really need the keyboard shortcut/menu item. I just want the delete key to work.

Standard procedure to prevent accidents is to throw a warning dialog. In that case, I'd like an "I know what I'm doing" version (say, command+delete) that deletes without said warning.

[mikeswarts]

Also, I'm thinking more about the different page/spread selection states. It does seem deficient in some way. What you're calling the brownish selection state (mine's blue FWR) shouldn't be possible while a layer is simultaneously selected. If you choose a layer, it should deselect pages/spreads and vice-versa. That way the delete action only has one unambiguous object. Do you agree?

[mikeswarts]

I'm beginning to notice more issues with the Pages panel. Let's start with these:

1. Not seeing a way to cut/copy selected pages or spreads to paste into another AFPublisher file? I think that would be useful
2. Reordering pages when you have many is painful and in my experience buggy when dragging a spread long distances

[thomaso]

1 minute ago, affinitydesignerfan said:

throw a warning dialog. In that case, I'd like an "I know what I'm doing" version (say, command+delete) that deletes without said warning.

In case of a dialog window please with the option to disable this warning generally. (compare the macOS empty trash option)

3 minutes ago, affinitydesignerfan said:

Also, I'm thinking more about the different modes of page/spread selection. It does seem deficient in some way. What you're calling the brown selection (mine's blue FWR) shouldn't be possible while a layer is simultaneously selected. If you choose a layer, it should deselect pages/spreads and vice-versa. Do you agree?

No agree. Layer vs. Page sounds too exclusively to me. Again it appears more complex: Why do we need the gray page icon? It indicates the "Current Page" which is, for any reason, different to the one which is displayed in the layout window. This gray selection is used for print/export as being currently selected by default if you choose Area > Current Page.

[mikeswarts]

7 minutes ago, thomaso said:

No agree. Layer vs. Page sounds too exclusively to me.

Not sure I understand. Both are objects that can be manipulated: Deleted, duplicated, reordered, cut and pasted (ideally), etc. If both can be selected, then which selection counts? Considering the position of the mouse cursor as you mentioned previously seems strange.

Quote

Why do we need the gray page icon? It indicates the "Current Page" which is, for any reason, different to the one which is displayed in the layout window.

The gray selection state confuses me too. Not sure what that's trying to achieve, really.

[thomaso]

2 minutes ago, affinitydesignerfan said:

I'm beginning to notice more issues with the Pages panel. Let's start with these:

1. Not seeing a way to cut/copy selected pages or spreads to paste into another AFPublisher file? I think that would be useful
2. Reordering pages when you have many is painful and in my experience buggy when dragging a spread long distances

It gets more and more a topic for the Feature Request forum … not for Bugs

[mikeswarts]

Just now, thomaso said:

It gets more and more a topic for the Feature Request forum … not for Bugs

Agreed. And further and further away from "Affinity Shortcuts > Any App > Edit has 2 rows for Emoji & Symbols" 😂