Keyboard shortcuts and special characters issue

[ericoverton]

Hi y'all, new user having a little trouble in Publisher with keyboard shortcuts. I normally use ALT + the arrow keys to adjust kerning, tracking, leading, etc. When I do this in Publisher, it will insert special characters - which is especially annoying if I have a line of text selected. For example, ALT + >>> will print a Ü. 

I'm guessing this has something to do with Window's alt codes for special characters, and my arrow keys are being read as number inputs. Toggling Num Lock on my keyboard doesn't seem to have any effect. 

It seems like there could be one of three solutions from my perspective:

1) A setting or preference needs to be adjusted inside of publisher. I tried googling and searching but couldn't find anything.

2) I need to disable the alt key shortcuts in Windows. I never use them, so it's not a problem. However, I couldn't really find a way to do this without installing Autohotkey or adjusting the registry files (nerd stuff I'd rather not dig into).

3) I should try a different keyboard - not an option at the moment. 

Just wondering if anyone else has encountered this behavior and what the fix was. Thanks!

Edited July 20, 2023 by ericoverton

[v_kyr]

See ...

• APub Keyboard Shortcuts
• APub Customizing Keyboard Shortcuts

[ericoverton]

Thanks for responding! Unfortunately the links you provided aren't very helpful for my situation. Your first link is a list of keyboard shortcuts, which I have a good grasp on coming from the Adobe world.

The second link shows how to customize shortcuts - which I admit is a potential solution. However, I work across a few other apps that use the ALT + Arrow keys for tracking and I'd rather not learn a new behavior just for Publisher. 

[v_kyr]

34 minutes ago, ericoverton said:

However, I work across a few other apps that use the ALT + Arrow keys for tracking and I'd rather not learn a new behavior just for Publisher. 

That's finally up to you what you make usage of here and what not, also what you customize to your needs or not!

[ericoverton]

Hey brother, no offense but I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding my question, or why this behavior is bothering me. Also, generally just sending a link with no context is just bad troubleshooting! But maybe I can try to explain this another way:

Based on the the keyboard shortcuts in affinity publisher, holding alt and pressing one of the arrow keys should adjust the tracking or kerning based on what's selected. Since this is in affinity's support pages and documents, I'm assuming this is the expected behavior. 

However, when I invoke that shortcut, Windows butts in and will print a special character. If I have text selected, that text is deleted and removed with the character (this is normal behavior for most apps). 

This tells me that my keyboard, windows, or affinity is not doing their job correctly. In Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, and After Effects, the alt and arrow shortcut has the same behavior, WITHOUT printing a special character. 

I totally agree, I could just change the shortcut and walk away! But since I use other applications with this shortcut with no issue, and because the shortcut is in the affinity support docs, I think there's a better solution out there! 

[v_kyr]

54 minutes ago, ericoverton said:

However, when I invoke that shortcut, Windows butts in and will print a special character. If I have text selected, that text is deleted and removed with the character (this is normal behavior for most apps).

The point here might be how you've selected text then, if you really selected the text box contents text (via a text tool the blue selection of whole text lines/chars parts) then that's AFAI can tell the expected behavior. Instead you would probably have to try to select instead the whole text boundaries box (via the Move tool) to apply what you are after.

So this here ...

... versus that here ...

54 minutes ago, ericoverton said:

This tells me that my keyboard, windows, or affinity is not doing their job correctly. In Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, and After Effects, the alt and arrow shortcut has the same behavior, WITHOUT printing a special character. 

Try first what I told above about the text surrounding bounding box selection in contrast to real inner text part selections. - Other than that what sort of Win keyboard do you use, something specific other than usual here?

Also for Win systems the right ALt-Gr key might behave differently than the left common Alt-key one here (at least and as I recall for/on german Win keyboards).