Keyboard-based text selection and traversal doesn't work like other native (Cocoa) macOS apps

[skyzyx]

In "standard" (i.e., native) macOS apps, there are specific keyboard controls which are how cursor movement is done on the Mac:

• Command + left/right will go to the beginning/end of the line.
• Option + left/right will move by word.

By extension of those fundamental text controls, this is how text selection is done on the Mac:

• Command + Shift + left/right will select the entire line to the left/right from your starting point.
• Option + Shift + left/right will select the next word to the left/right from your starting point.

I'm doing this in Safari right now. It's a standard Cocoa behavior. Publisher does not follow this convention and it's (bleeping) up my world.

In Publisher:

• Command + left/right is used to move by word.
• Option + left/right doesn’t appear to move the cursor at all.
• There isn't a good way to move to the start/end of a line.

20 years of muscle memory falls to the wayside every time I open Publisher (and many other non-native/non-Cocoa macOS apps). Breaking the standard HIG patterns on the platform is 100% a bug.

Edited November 19, 2021 by skyzyx

[walt.farrell]

Check the Preferences in Publisher, and in the Keyboard Shortcuts section you should find one to use the standard Mac shortcuts.

[Old Bruce]

I have no trouble doing what you are wanting. It may be that I have set the keyboard preferences to us the Apple Defaults.

1 hour ago, skyzyx said:

In "standard" (i.e., native) macOS apps, there are specific keyboard controls which are how cursor movement is done on the Mac:

• ...

 

[skyzyx]

Ah! Good find. It's unfortunate that this is the default, however.

It's a flawed form of thinking when a company puts their brand/patterns/whatever ahead of the standards for the platform. I know lots of companies do it, and all of them are wrong.

[walt.farrell]

7 hours ago, skyzyx said:

It's a flawed form of thinking when a company puts their brand/patterns/whatever ahead of the standards for the platform. I know lots of companies do it, and all of them are wrong.

I think Serif chose to prefer compatibility across the OSes (Windows, Mac) rather than compatibility with one specific OS for everyone. The Mac defaults wouldn't make sense to a user with Windows, and a user switching from Windows to Mac, or using both, might prefer the application work consistently.

[skyzyx]

On 11/21/2021 at 5:27 AM, walt.farrell said:

I think Serif chose to prefer compatibility across the OSes (Windows, Mac) rather than compatibility with one specific OS for everyone. The Mac defaults wouldn't make sense to a user with Windows, and a user switching from Windows to Mac, or using both, might prefer the application work consistently.

Right. I drew the same conclusion. I don't think I agree with this line of thinking, however. Having it as an option? Sure. Having it as the default? Not so much.

There's a commonality I've observed in serial "product managers" who tend to make this decision this way. Being in this field, I've had several conversations with product managers and interaction designers about this exact topic. Because there is so much disagreement on this topic (brand-first vs platform-first), customers have seen (and gotten used to) enough inconsistency that whichever way you go, you will absolutely piss-off someone. But I still fall squarely on the platform-first side of the interaction design debate.

On macOS: Command+S should always save, always. It's a standard platform convention. Command+C and Command+V should always copy and paste. Most people work on a single platform. You learn how to traverse and select text on that platform (as in my case), and it should arguably work the same way across ALL (native) apps. There is a minor (but worth paying attention to) group of people who work cross-platform. Some of those patterns are strong enough to cross the platform barriers (e.g., Ctrl+S, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V), and others are not (e.g., keyboard-driven text selection, multi-selections, behavior of the shift key when Caps Lock is enabled). That's where you will inevitably have differences. But I believe that the majority of users will be inconvenienced by generic "brand-first" controls than will be inconvenienced by generic "platform-first" controls.

I'd love to see the hard data as evidence for this particular decision, but in reality, any data which _may_ exist is entirely proprietary and internal. We’ll likely never know if this decision was based on anything more than a product manager’s whim.