Tool/Settings Glitch? Help Please

[Australopithicus]

Dear fellow Affinity users,

I have inadvertently locked myself out of action. Would some kind user tell me what is wrong and how to fix it.

Symptoms:

• Using type tool, cursor has become an ‘/’ and not an I beam. The tool will not highlight text when dragged over a word. Look at the left type margin in line with ‘School Days’ and you may see the oblique. Pressing‘Return’ makes the / move down and it responds logically to keyboard space bar. However I want to highlight text which does not happen.
I enclose screenshots for settings:

 

[Dan C]

Hi @Australopithicus,

Sorry to hear you're having trouble!

3 hours ago, Australopithicus said:

Using type tool, cursor has become an ‘/’ and not an I beam

I can see in your screenshot you have Arial set to Italic, which is why the text cursor is slanted currently.

3 hours ago, Australopithicus said:

The tool will not highlight text when dragged over a word

However I'm not 100% certain what may be blocking the selection of text by click & dragging - are you able to provide a copy of your .afpub file here so I can investigate this further?

If you'd like a private upload link for this file, please let me know

[Pšenda]

4 hours ago, Australopithicus said:

However I want to highlight text which does not happen.

It is locked layer, or text in Master Pages?

[Dan C]

Thanks Psenda, the frame being locked or on a master page should not affect the ability to highlight text, though I had noticed this in OPs screenshots  

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, Dan C said:

I can see in your screenshot you have Arial set to Italic, which is why the text cursor is slanted currently.

Why is it that the cursor slants when the font is set to italic but not bolded when it is set to bold, or underlined when set to that? This seems inconsistent & potentially confusing.

 

3 hours ago, Dan C said:

... the frame being locked or on a master page should not affect the ability to highlight text...

Not only can it be highlighted, the highlighted text can be deleted or edited. That seems wrong, or at least at cross purposes to locking the layer.

[Dan C]

8 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Why is it that the cursor slants when the font is set to italic but not bolded when it is set to bold, or underlined when set to that? This seems inconsistent & potentially confusing.

This is the default behaviour of other industry standard text applications, such as Word - as for the exact reasoning behind this, I'm not personally certain, my apologies.

8 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Not only can it be highlighted, the highlighted text can be deleted or edited. That seems wrong, or at least at cross purposes to locking the layer.

This has been raised previously and our devs have confirmed this is the intended/expected behaviour of Locked Layers in Affinity, though I do appreciate some users expect different behaviour 

[R C-R]

6 minutes ago, Dan C said:

This is the default behaviour of other industry standard text applications, such as Word

OK, but that does not necessarily make it the best or least confusing behavior.

Same thing applies to the way the lock works for text in a locked layer. At least, it seems really weird that you can edit text that came from a master layer in a document page without having to use the Edit Detached option like you would for any other layer type besides text. That surely will confuse some users who expect editing the text on the document page to either apply to the master page or require using the detatched option to avoid that.

Besides, if you edit this text on a document page like in page 2 of this Locked text.afpub example so it becomes longer than will fit in the master page frame, because its frame size is locked, you can't adjust that without using Edit Detached.

Basically, the behavior the developers expect is different from what many users are likely to expect, which from a user-friendliness standpoint is not good.

[Australopithicus]

OK folks,

Thank you for you observations. This is getting Messy!

1. Font choice is Zapf Calligraphic 10.5 /12.5!

2. Click cursor near ‘School Days’ and font dialogue box switches to Arial ! The text was originally created in Word using Arial and after importing I have changed font selection as you can see from the text.

3. Clicking on the Zapf text should make text box change back to Zapf but this is not happening.

4. Other pages in book behave as expected and the text can be highlighted so there seems to be a locking function o for page 7 only. It is not to do with Layers as I have selected ‘unlock all layers’.

4. If I have locked Zapf setting in text frame I do not know how to unlock it.

Any idea’s?

 

 

[Australopithicus]

Hi Dan,

I am happy to send the file.

 

John Biography copy.afpub

[Australopithicus]

I am in Australia and it is 2.45 AM so please excuse me if I do not respond to your communications immediately. I have the Serif Publisher Workbook so if there is a page reference you can refer me regarding text frame locking. There is no reference in the Workbook Index for text frame locking.

Text frame dialogue box enclosed.

[Pšenda]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

Why is it that the cursor slants when the font is set to italic but not bolded when it is set to bold, or underlined when set to that? This seems inconsistent & potentially confusing.

In my opinion, the purpose of changing the cursor is not to indicate the selected font type (italic, bold, underlined, ...), but the possibility of an unambiguous and easily identifiable placement of the cursor at a specific position in the text.

Here it is clear, that the cursor lies between the second and third characters.
 

And this is what it would look like if the cursor remained unchanged.

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

In my opinion, the purpose of changing the cursor is not to indicate the selected font type (italic, bold, underlined, ...), but the possibility of an unambiguous and easily identifiable placement of the cursor at a specific position in the text.

Thanks. That seems reasonable.

[Pšenda]

29 minutes ago, Australopithicus said:

I am happy to send the file.

The problem is in the order of the layers. The Master Page layer is above your text box, so it captures the selection with the cursor.

Swap the layers, and the selection will work.
 

Edited June 9, 2022 by Pšenda

[Australopithicus]

Good point well made.

In this case, I was caught out. I assumed my text font was Zapf Calligraphic 801 regular. You can see the setting is not Arial.

I want to reposition the title ‘School Days’ and found the cursor I beam would not highlight the text. Unknowingly I realise now clicking near the title makes text revert to imported style of Arial. I did not notice the change when I sent screen shots.

I find this behaviour most odd. One would expect that any reference to Arial would have been deleted when Zapf was specified in the character settings of the text dialogue box.

What, I wonder, did Serif have in mind with this detail? Is it intentional? Is it an oversight?

[Australopithicus]

Hi Psenda,

Good work! How do I access that dialogue box you are showing. I have yet to find it

[Pšenda]

1 minute ago, Australopithicus said:

How do I access that dialogue box you are showing. I have yet to find it

You mean Layers Panel? Menu View, Studio, Layers Panel.

[Old Bruce]

You should make use of Paragraph Styles, so far all I can see is you are overriding a couple of styles. The problem with the Zapf is that you are applying it using a Character Style whereas it's use would be better set in a Paragraph Style for headings. Use Space Before and or Space After in the Spacing section to set the distance between paragraphs, don't use multiple returns.

Another thing is you are quite heavy with the Line Return. This is breaking paragraphs and will be obvious if you change the font.

[Australopithicus]

Well done Psenda! I found layers under Studio and dragging into a new layer order worked. My Hero!

I have no idea how the layer order is configured so will research to understand how it all works.

I Thank everyone for their input and the time you have spent.

Best Wishes to all.

 

[Australopithicus]

Hi Bruce,

Yes, I take your point about using styles. I found styles a bit tricky as the method differs somewhat from InDesign. I agree with you and will nevertheless use Paragraph styles.

The returns are principally aesthetic typographic decisions. I use unjustified right text. Affinity creates word breaks which are unacceptable to me so I manually adjust.

Thank you for bringing these points to my attention. I would prefer global control of setting and styles is the way to go.

Best Wishes,

 

 

[R C-R]

10 minutes ago, Australopithicus said:

The returns are principally aesthetic typographic decisions.

Have you considered instead using line breaks from the Text > Insert > Breaks menu (or using the shortcut for that)?

[Australopithicus]

Hi R C-R,

No. I recognized setting a number of characters for hyphenation or a word break would be difficult. Sometimes it would work, other times I would modify manually anyway. I figured I may as well do it all manually as I would only be addressing the worst line breaks in the paragraphs. Sometimes I edit text to improve the line break. With the authors permission of course.

Perhaps I am being unfair to the program facility. My intention is to use unjustified type to reduce the incidence of hyphenations and bad word breaks and accept a free-form line termination as a consequence.

However there is an aesthetic factor as the ragged right edge can be ugly and I adjust setting to improve the result by inserting word breaks where necessary to achieve a balanced appearance. This is a lot of work few are prepared to undertake. I would love to establish a formulae to automate more of the process.

If you have experience with inserting text breaks by another method which you think is helpful I would be happy to learn what you do.

Please tell me how you use Text>Insert >Breaks.

 

[R C-R]

23 minutes ago, Australopithicus said:

No. I recognized setting a number of characters for hyphenation or a word break would be difficult.

I am not sure what you mean. I am suggesting using line breaks, not 'word breaks' (whatever that is supposed to mean).

A line break is somewhat like a return but while a return starts a new paragraph, a line break does not.

[Australopithicus]

Yes, I understand you R C-R.

A line break is executed by holding down Shift key when hitting Return.

I apologise for confusing you as I was thinking of Old Bruces remark “Another thing is you are quite heavy with the Line Return.” This is breaking paragraphs and will be obvious if you change the font. That was influencing my response. Word breaks in my experience, refer to hyphenation choices or turn over of complete words at the end of a line in order to improve the appearance of a paragraph or to help avoid an Orphan or Widow.

[Paquettegi]

Australopithicus, I am not sure if you got a solution for the issue of being unable to highlight the area on page 7, I wasn't able to reorder the master - So I ended up removing the master on pages 6 & 7 and then reapplying the master to pages 6 & 7 again and if self corrected because the master was listed below everything else in the layers panel. Good luck with your project.

Edited June 10, 2022 by Paquettegi

[Australopithicus]

Thank you for taking time to respond Paquettegi.

Looking back at the post you will see Pšenda solved the problem with the Layer order.