Text frame "greedy" selection

[jimdoria]

I've been living with this one for a while but it's consistently annoying and I'm hoping that maybe I've been missing something.

I have Designer documents with a lot of text frames inside (on top of) of rectangles & a few other shapes (think word balloons). The rectangles etc. are almost universally larger than the text frames.

Inevitably when I try to select a rectangle that is close to a text frame, the text frame "steals" the click and becomes selected.

I am definitely clicking outside the boundary of the text frame, and inside the rectangle. If I zoom in super close, I'm able to accurately click on the rectangle and select it. But at a normal working zoom level, I can easily see the difference between the edges of frame and rectangle, they are clearly separated, but it's very hard to select a rectangle and not a text frame. I've tried clicking above the text frame and below it, to the sides, at the very outside corner of the rectangle... none of that works.

Adding inconvenience to annoyance, once the greedy text frame steals my click I am suddenly using the text frame tool, not the select tool, and I have to escape, backup and re-select the select tool.

Is there some setting I have set wrong that is causing this? Is there some way I can stop it from happening? Is it a bug? I'd love to figure out the fix for this. Thanks!

[firstdefence]

Have you tried holding down Cmd or (Ctrl on Windows) as you select the rectangle?

[MikeTO]

By living this with one for a while, you just mean in v2, right?

There has been a change from v1 to v2 and I agree it doesn't feel right. In v1, the "hit zone", the clickable area, was just slightly larger than the bounding box of the text frame or artistic text. (Apps normally use a hit zone slightly larger than the object to avoid users missing the target.) In v2, the hit zone for text frames and artistic text also includes the text, from the top of the cap height to the bottom of the descender, and including the advancement of the left-most and right-most characters. The highlighted area when you select text is what v2 is including in the hit zone.

So the hit zone in v2 is a tiny bit larger on the left and right but considerably larger on the top, as shown in this screenshot. Note that another text object hit zone issue was fixed in 2.0.3 but this other problem persists.

[MikeTO]

1 minute ago, N.P.M. said:

V1 or V2 ?
Seems to be fixed in the V2.0.3 version

A related issue was fixed in 2.0.3 but the issue with the hit zone including the text area is not.

[loukash]

This one: forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/search/&tags=AFP-5621

[jimdoria]

@MikeTO I've been having this problem since 1.X but it does seem more pronounced in 2.X. Definitely was there in the earlier version though. Even at high zoom levels and clicking well outside the bounding box.

[jimdoria]

Thanks for the leads everybody. The Alt-click trick @loukash pointed out on another thread seems like a decent workaround. Wish I'd discovered it sooner!

[DylanGG]

The new BETA's still don't address this. I really hope this is fixed soon, it's a big downgrade compared to V1.