Publisher: Suddenly not able to drag to rearrange layers in panel

[Bebebebenny]

Well, the subject says it.

Since upgrading to 2.0.4, I have experienced the layer panel suddenly not responding to drags -- I can't rearrange layers by dragging but must use move back/move forward buttons. (Which also excludes me from dragging stuff into groups or into clipping groups)

Is this a known problem and how do I get out of it?

Thanks,

/B.

[GarryP]

I’ve never heard of this happening.
Would you be able to share a video of what’s on your screen so we can see it happening for ourselves?

Have you tried re-launching the application?
Have you tried re-booting the machine?
Which OS are you using?

Does this happen with every document?
Does this only happen in Publisher, or are other Affinity applications affected?

What sort of pointing device are you using? Mouse, trackpad, pen, etc.?
Have you tried a different pointing device?

[Bebebebenny]

In reverse order: 

It happened both with a mouse and a trackpad.
I'm on Ventura, on a formerly top-spec, now outdated, 2019 MacBook Pro.
I only experienced it in Publisher but it was the same for all currently open documents.

Restarting the app solved the issue, so it's about something locking up something when doing something.
Those things always reappear, so we'll probably see it again, either on my machine or someone else's.
But for now, it's working well again. 

PS. I did consider creating a video but realized it wouldn't really show anything — the mouse hovers stuff in the layers panel, then moves without anything happening. So... the visual help to see the problem would be quite slim... 😆

[GarryP]

It’s good to know the a re-launch got things working again but it sounds like a strange thing to happen in the first place.

If it happens again (fingers crossed that it doesn’t) then a video may show us something even if we can’t see the layers being dragged about.
For instance, if you can show us that you can drag layers over the canvas, and drag panels around the workspace, and drag sliders back and forth, and drag on the scrollbars, then we can see that it’s probably something that’s specific to the Layers Panel.

[Bebebebenny]

Well, for potential future reference, I can tell you that:
* panels could be dragged.
* layers could be click-to-selected (and they would change colors to reflect it, so the panel was not dead)
* hiding layers with the dot worked, as did clicking FX for layers with effects, and also expanding/collapsing

The only thing I could not do was to GRAB a layer. I see now in my current, well-behaving session that there is never an actual response from the cursor at grab-time (suggestion: display the grab cursor when initiating a grab, so as to know that we have entered grab state) so whether a grab-start was in fact invisibly performed I can't say for sure.
But: The ghost layer that's supposed to appear and travel with the cursor (and does so now that everything is working) did not appear while the problem persisted. (Nor did an insertion point appear between layers, so I was not dragging an invisible/ghost-less layer either — indicating quite clearly to me that the layers did not move when trying to drag them.)

I'll make video if it happens again, but that's about what you'll be able to see. 😄

[GarryP]

Let’s just hope it doesn’t happen again.