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How to force mouse to always return to the "Move" tool when an empty space is clicked


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I'm having a lot of throughput inefficiency when working with both Affinity Publisher and Affinity Photo. I use a lot of textboxes backed up by the Callout Rounded Rectangle (these are self-contained instances—no flowing to another textbox). A great deal of this work involves editing the contents of a text box, resizing the callout rectangle and/or moving both into the desired position in a graphic.

My problem is that if I edit a textbox, when I finish, it wants to create new textboxes instead of allowing me to easily click on another object to manipulate it. I've seen it try to impose a new textbox on an existing one instead of selecting that one to edit. To make things worse, when I click in an empty space, I'm often presented with a Node tool cursor instead of the Move tool, which is simply inexplicable. So there is a lot of unnecessary use of either the [Esc] key or the [V] shortcut just to get to what I consider the "starting" point: an active selection pointer I can use on the next item of interest. Of course, trying the [V] shortcut when a textbox still has focus leaves my text littered with "v" characters that I may not notice. So I have to do at least two steps to get out of editing a textbox and move on.

Is there a setting that will allow me to dependably click on a empty spot (i.e., select no object) and always get the Move pointer? Thanks!

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17 minutes ago, JCarls said:

A great deal of this work involves editing the contents of a text box, resizing the callout rectangle and/or moving both into the desired position in a graphic.

My problem is that if I edit a textbox, when I finish, it wants to create new textboxes instead of allowing me to easily click on another object to manipulate it.

Assuming all Callout Rectangles are converted to text frames: When I click with the text cursor on a different callout shape then I can …

… edit the text by typing
… edit the shape by click-drag a bounding box node (cursor auto-turns to double arrows when hovering)
… move the object by click-drag a bounding box edge (cursor auto-turns to cross-arrows when hovering)

So I don't really understand what you are missing. Personally I avoid using callout shapes as text frames because of their limitations/confusion regarding text alignment which always refers to the bounding box (tip / tail included), not to the text area only.

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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Thanks for the replies. Double-clicking the empty space seems to work so far. I was very much accustomed to a single click to release selected items. I'm still not sure what is triggering the Node tool, though, but I keep seeing that cursor appear unexpectedly. That seems unlikely to be used under normal circumstances, but maybe I'm not doing the kind of work where it would.

Note that I only use separate text frames and rectangles (separate layers), never combining them (grouping, yes). However, I sometimes convert a rectangle accidentally and I've learned to just delete those and start over—there doesn't seem to be any intuitively way to edit them. I still don't know what causes this hybrid.

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11 hours ago, JCarls said:

instead of allowing me to easily click on another object to manipulate it.

5 hours ago, JCarls said:

Double-clicking the empty space seems to work so far.

This sounds unclear to me. Are you looking for a way to switch directly between objects ("to manipulate it") or for a way to have no object selected ("Double-clicking the empty space seems to work") respectively to switch from the Text Tool to the Move Tool ("return to the "Move" tool").

5 hours ago, JCarls said:

(grouping, yes)

Note, if the Move Tool is selected but no object then it requires a double-click to enter a group to select one if its nested layers.

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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7 hours ago, N.P.M. said:

I think the shortkeys for tools should allow modifier keys.
One could then use, say alt+v ,to go directly to the movetool without first getting out of texteditmode

On Macs at least, using the Alt/Option key with a normal character key in a text entry field typically enters a text character, so for example Alt/Option + V enters a "√" character. Other Alt/Option + a character key combos include å∫ç∂´ƒ©˙ˆ∆˚¬µ˜øπ & so on (for US English keyboards).

So using Alt/Option + a character key to exit text entry mode would conflict with this system wide feature of the macOS.

Don't know about Windows though.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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19 hours ago, JCarls said:

Is there a setting that will allow me to dependably click on a empty spot (i.e., select no object) and always get the Move pointer? Thanks!

For what it is worth I hit the escape key to get out of any selection I may have in the text, then I hit it again to actually, positively exit the text frame and then I hit V to select the move tool. I do this often enough I have it set up on my Wacom tablet.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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9 hours ago, thomaso said:

This sounds unclear to me. Are you looking for a way to switch directly between objects ("to manipulate it") or for a way to have no object selected ("Double-clicking the empty space seems to work") respectively to switch from the Text Tool to the Move Tool ("return to the "Move" tool").

Note, if the Move Tool is selected but no object then it requires a double-click to enter a group to select one if its nested layers.

It was to simply clear the text tool so that I could select another object (of any kind) to manipulate or edit. The problem was really a dissonance in user interfaces:

What I expected (from using other software):

  1. Click or double-click on an object, activating whatever editing mode/tool is associated with it. Or, graphically select or Click + Ctrl-Click, etc. to select multiple objects for positioning (or editing shared properties).
  2. Click on another object (immediately deselecting the previous object) activating its editing mode, or click on an empty space to release all selected objects.

What I was experiencing:

  1. I would double-click a text box and edit the contents.
  2. If I clicked in an empty space, a new text box was created because for some reason, the software stayed in textbox mode (or perhaps depending on what object I clicked in #1, I would get a Node tool instead).

As others have suggested, I now realize I need to double-click in an empty space to both deselect an object and cancel the editing mode. I think the essential problem is that the system is set so that the editing mode of any edited object is "sticky" and does not exit when the object is deselected. That seems counterintuitive; it only makes sense if you had just created a new textbox and might want to either create more or simply cancel the implicit "auto-add" mode. It doesn't make sense when editing existing objects, because it assumes it knows what you want to do next.

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