The Great "Ignore Modifier" Mystery

[Aleksandar Kovač]

In Preferences/Keyboard shortcuts in all Affinity apps there is 'Ignore Modifier' checkbox. What does it actually do? Help documentation defines it: Ignore Modifier—Lets you create shortcuts using a single letter designation instead of using keyboard modifiers. A mystery. So, I tried to discern it's effect on one of the commands. In orange are marked results I find unexpected.

With 'Ignore Modifier' ON

• 'P' is assigned as 'P'. (that is uppercase 'P'; why unexpected? Please see the reference below to @walt.farrell's experiment),
• 'shift+P' is assigned as '⇧P' (again, refer to Mr. Walt's experiment; furhermore, here, 'shift' is not considered a modifier?),
• '⌘+P' is assigned as 'P' (I guess ⌘ is ignored somehow, but to what purpose?),
• 'alt+P' is assigned as 'π' (I guess 'alt' is ignored, resulting in conventional π),
• 'ctrl+P' is assigned as empty (!) but with an option to remove it. (see image below, is this normal?).

With 'Ignore Modifier' OFF

• 'P' is assigned as 'P'. (I understand this is something 'Ignore Modifier' should make possible but here it is, working fine with 'Ignore Modifier' OFF),
• 'shift+P' is assigned as '⇧P',
• '⌘+P' is assigned as '⌘P',
• 'alt+P' is assigned as '⌥P',
• 'ctrl+P' is assigned as '⌃P'.

'Fn' key is skipped here since I own Logitech keyboard, not Apple.

Now, referring to Mr. @walt.farrell 's experiment where pressing key labelled 'P' with 'Ignore Modifier' ON assigns 'p' (lowercase P), while 'shift+P' assigns 'P' (uppercase P):

In all things 'Affinity' I trust Mr. Walt first... So, is it possible that my shortcuts preferences file is borked? Or is there a finer idea underpinning 'Ignore Modifier' checkbox that my measly braincells fail to grasp?

Am I alone in this?

[walt.farrell]

You may, of course, be seeing a difference between how things work on Mac and on Windows. But for what it's worth, I just checked in the 1.10.5 beta and things still work as I described in that other topic. So, with Ignore Modifier on, a lower-case character such as p is assigned as p in the keyboard shortcuts, and an upper-case character such as shift+P is assigned as P.

It is also possible there are some bugs. For example:

• With Ignore Modifer off, I cannot assign a keyboard shortcut of a to Edit in Photo, because Designer says it conflicts with the Node Tool shortcut (A).
• With Ignore Modifier on, I can assign a to Edit in Photo and Shift+a (displayed as A) to Edit in Publisher, with no complaints about any conflicts.

[Aleksandar Kovač]

Thank you very much for checking. May I ask if, with 'Ignore Modifier' ON you are able to assign e.g. 'ctrl+A' to a command? As shown on the image in the first post, all I get is a seemingly empty input box with an X (delete shortcut) icon. I feel this could be a bug, but since I do not understand 'Ignore Modifier' fully, I cannot say for sure yet.

[walt.farrell]

9 minutes ago, Aleksandar Kovač said:

May I ask if, with 'Ignore Modifier' ON you are able to assign e.g. 'ctrl+A' to a command?

I can assign Ctrl+a, and it displays that way.

Due to conflicts with other programs I have running, I can't try Ctrl+Shift+a. But if I assign something like Ctrl+Shift+p it displays as Ctrl+P.

(It also does not complain about a conflict with the existing Ctrl+Shift+P shortcut.)

[Aleksandar Kovač]

Thank you very much once more for testing this and the variants thereof. It seems Windows implementation is more consistent, although lack of conflict you describe is unexpected in my opinion. On Mac (assuming it is operating OK) when 'Ignore Modifier' is on any combination using 'ctrl' results with empty input box as described above and the shortcut assigned does not work.

With that information, I believe this amounts to a bug for the following reasons:

• incongruity between platforms is detrimental for user,
• empty shortcut input box when assigning a shortcut with 'ctrl' when 'Ignore Modifier' is on is unexpected, nonfunctional,
• unclear effect of turning it on after assigning shortcuts while off, and vice versa,
• is it a mode, a helper while assigning shortcuts, or perhaps just a petulant message to all the modifier keys everywhere in the world?

Dear Affinitios, Affinitesses et al., could you look into this 'Ignore Modifier' mistery, please? This potentially powerful option is underdocumented and (I believe) incoherent. Perhaps examples or tables or any other explanatory tools would be helpful to harness it's power.

Thank you.

[Lee D]

On 2/14/2022 at 8:05 AM, Aleksandar Kovač said:

On Mac (assuming it is operating OK) when 'Ignore Modifier' is on any combination using 'ctrl' results with empty input box as described above and the shortcut assigned does not work.

I've confirmed this and have logged it with the developers to investigate further so it hopefully mirrors how the Windows version displays.