Affinity Designer: In multi-view editing, the most zoomed out view dictates the selection tolerances of all views

[Caius Nocturne]

Initial stuff

1. Using Affinity Designer.
2. Using the latest version as of time of writing (2.1.1 from Affinity Store).
3. Can be reproduced.
4. Happens for both new and existing documents.

Software details

• Windows 11 Home (22H2 - 22621.1992)
• OpenCL HW acceleration on
  • Issue is unaffected by whether this is on or off.

Some hardware details

• My computer has 3 Monitors, one of which is a screen tablet (Huion Kamvas 16 2021). All of them are 1920 x 1080 resolution, and all are set to a system UI scale of 100%.
  • The same issue occurs whether or not the Huion Kamvas tablet is connected.
  • The issue doesn't require multiple monitors to reproduce.
  • The same issue occurs whether selecting geometry with the tablet's stylus or a relatively standard trackball.
• Ryzen 3600, Radeon RX 570 8GB, 16GB Memory.

 

How to reproduce:

1. Make an Artboard and put some vector geometry in it.
2. Make a new view for a file (Menu bar > View > New View)
3. Break out the tab for the new view (<Untitled>:1) out from the main window. It doesn't have to be in a new display.
4. Zoom out <Untitled>:1.
5. Go back to <Untitled> and try to reliably select geometry on it, with either the Node Tool or Move Tool.

 

It seems to happen on any view as long as one view is zoomed out.

I also tried reversing the views - making the zoomed out one the original view and the 'new view' (<file>:1) the editing view, and the same results happen. I also tried selecting on the non-editing window while the main editing window is zoomed out and had the same results.

So it seems like no matter what, if one of the separate views is zoomed out, the selection tolerances of all views are behaving as if it's zoomed out. And the selection tolerances progressively get worse the more zoomed out the zoomed out view is.

 

The zoomed out view needs to be in a separate window

If the zoomed out view is in the main editing window in another tab, then this behaviour doesn't seem to happen, it happens only when the views are in separate windows. This separate window can be minimised, on the same display, or in a different display.

 

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I recently got a screen tablet so as an icon designer, I wanted to try to do multi-view editing where one screen shows a zoomed out view for pixel previews and my screen tablet has the zoomed in view for detailed editing, but this turned out not to be possible because of this bug.

This is also a problem in Affinity Designer 1, which I could also reproduce in the exact same way. I know you're not accepting bug reports on V1, but i thought it would possibly be helpful information since it seems to be a holdover issue.

I've decided to attach two videos - one of me recreating this from scratch in a desktop recording of two monitors above and below each other. The recording software wasn't capturing cursors for some reason so I decided to also record a video of myself recreating the selection issue on my screen tablet, with the two windows side by side. It should be relatively obvious in this one how I am not able to select the object next to the other one when one of the views is zoomed out.

[Dan C]

Hi @Dzuk,

Thanks for your report!

I can confirm that I've been able to replicate this here - it appears as though after creating a duplicate floating view, when zooming in the original view, the selection hitboxes will be reset, ie they are dependant on the most recent views zoom level - rather than the highest zoom level.

I have reported this to our developers to be resolved in a future update.

I hope this helps

 

[Caius Nocturne]

@Dan C Thanks! I've tried making sure the zoomed in one is the last updated view but its still not working 100% - the Node Tool isn't snapping to grids properly. Once I close the zoomed out view, it starts working fine.

[Dan C]

Thanks for letting me know, I've updated the development log to include this information so that it can be resolved in a future update