Why is the default cursor the Frame Text Tool cursor? (split)

[Macster108]

I have a frustration and perhaps others do as well. I am by no means a professional publisher and am pretty much limited to a club newsletter that I assemble each week. My frustration comes from the default cursor being the Frame Text Tool. While I do place a lot of text, I also work with images and illustrations and it would be nice if one of the the two following options could be put in place...

A) set the default cursor to the Move Tool or

B) provide a means within Preferences to set which of the two the User prefers as the default.

Thanks for all you do to make the Affinity suite the Best out there.

[walt.farrell]

What OS are you using, @Macster108?

And can you explain more about what you mean about the "default cursor"? Perhaps provide some screenshots or a screen recording?

Are you talking about using the Place function, and the kinds of files that are offered to you in the file-chooser dialog?

[Oufti]

Since a few months working daily with Aff Publisher, I still have not taken time to try to understand why some tools become suddenly selected (*)… So at moments, like @Macster108, if I forget to look at the cursor shape, I find myself creating an empty text frame whereas I was about to do something absolutely different. Happily, then a quick cmd-Z makes all well again.

(*) Actually, Text frame tool appears to be selected when moving the cursor outside a text frame after having done some editing within it – i.e. after double clicking inside a text frame.
The same happens with the Node tool after double clicking on a shape or a curve to edit it. 
It's quite logical…
Thank you for giving me this opportunity to deepen my comprehension of this software.  

But what I've learned soon, that I find extremely useful, is that in Publisher a double-click outside the page, or the object, resets immediately to the Move tool.
Now I compulsively do that, like the smith hitting the anvil with his hammer until it sounds clear…

Hope this can help a little. 

— BTW, what I also find very easy is to double tap with two fingers on my trackpad to toggle between current and 100% zoom views (also in other apps, so possibly macOS only…)

[MikeTO]

12 hours ago, Oufti said:

Since a few months working daily with Aff Publisher, I still have not taken time to try to understand why some tools become suddenly selected

Publisher can switch tools automatically:

• Double-click a blank area of the page to switch to the Move tool
• Double-click a text frame to switch to the Text tool
• Double-click a path to switch to the Node tool
• Double-click a table to switch to the Table tool

One thing that confuses some users new to Affinity is that multiple tools can share a shortcut, such as T for Frame Text, Art Text, and Table. Pressing T repeatedly will cycle the tools. To prevent this, you can customize the shortcuts so each has a unique letter (or remove it from the ones you don't use) or you can select "Settings/Preferences > Tools > Use Shift modifier to cycle tools" to require that you must press Shift when pressing the tool's shortcut to cycle between them. i.e., Shift+T to cycle between the three text tools.

Some other double-click tool and shape shortcuts while I'm thinking about it:

• Double-click a shape with the Frame Text tool to convert it to a text frame
• Double-click an object with a child layer (such as a picture frame with a picture in it or a shape inside a group) to select the child layer
• Double-click a rotation handle to reset rotation to 0 - or when the rotation pointer is visible, double-click at any corner handle
• Double-click near a sheared object's size handle when the shear pointer is visible to undo the shear
• Double-click any red handle for one of the shapes (e.g., pie, star) to reset it to its default position
• Double-click a transformed origin point to reset it to the centre of the object
• Double-click a size handle for a distorted picture to restore its original aspect ratio
• Double-click a size handle for a rectangle to make it a square, for an ellipse to make it a circle, etc - it gives shapes 1:1 aspect ratio
• Double-click the View tool (hand icon) to zoom to fit
• Double-click the Zoom tool to set zoom to 100%
• Double-click a text frame's bottom centre handle to size the frame to fit its text, if there is less text than will fit in the frame
• Double-click a guide to open Guide Settings

There are many more for the panels, such as double-click a thumbnail in Pages to display the page and zoom to fit and double-click a layer thumbnail in Layers to zoom to selection, but these are the tool and shape ones.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, MikeTO said:

Double-click a shape with the Frame Text tool to convert it to a text frame

That is just a single-click on Windows. When the mouse moves over the shape, you get the Shape Text cursor (polygon with T) and a single click converts the object.

 

[MikeTO]

33 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

That is just a single-click on Windows. When the mouse moves over the shape, you get the Shape Text cursor (polygon with T) and a single click converts the object.

It's a single click on Mac, too, my mistake. Thanks.

[Sharon B]

I too have a frustration. I'm watching a video on data merging and the person doing the demonstration has just a "regular" arrow cursor and is able to highlight the text and textbox in order to link that to a field to be data merged.  I'm new to Publisher 2 and don't see any way to change from the text frame tool to a "regular" arrow cursor. Without being able to change my cursor, I don't see how I'll be able to highlight the field I need to merge. Or can you tell me how I can highlight the text/textbox in order to link that with the data in the file I wish to merge with?

[Sharon B]

Seems I figured it out. I just have to be in the textbox, then double click on the data field in my input file and it creates the data merge field.

Thanks and I hope this helps someone else