Losing cursor visibility in Publisher 2.2

[Gafrad]

This may relate to the same issue. Ever since uploading Publisher 2.2 (Mac Ver 13.4), I keep losing control of my cursors. The text "I" beam seems to work but it randomly refuses to show the text highlight shading so it looks like it is not selecting anything. The move tool also seems to be randomly refusing to select objects. Both problems will persist if I continue trying to use them but will disappear if I leave the program for awhile.

[Gafrad]

Since installing 2.2, both the select arrow and the "I" beam randomly lose their controls. A selected image or frame will not show its border or corner boxes. The text cursor will not show the colour highlight for selected text. In both cases, the selected object is still fully functional but invisible. I cannot find a way to replicate the problem and it will come and go at seemingly random intervals. I have not tested other tools enough to discover if this situation permeates the entire program. Using a Mac 13.4.1. This did not occur before uploading version 2.2. It is extremely difficult to work with this situation.

[Bob Terry]

I have the very same problems. 

[Ian the not so great]

Yes similar but different for me. When I open a file it looks fine and as soon as I move to another page the "I" beam disappears forever, spookily as I use a wacom tablet if I guess where I want to amend copy I can do that fine. So I've gone back to v2.1 and all is good.

I'm using an M2 mac mini, using Ventura 13.5.2 (22G91)

 

 

[MikeTO]

I have this problem many times per day, it started late in the beta cycle but hardly anybody else was experiencing it. I hope now that there are quite a few people experiencing it that the trigger for it can be discovered. Sometimes it's merely annoying and zooming in or out will clear the issue, and other times I need to change tools and back or else I can't edit the text.

[SamMark]

I am also having this problem and it is causing it to be unusable. 

[stokerg]

Hi @Gafrad, @Bob Terry, @MikeTOand @SamMark,

We have found that 1 trigger for this issue is using the scroll bars on the right of the UI to scroll between pages but you should find zooming in and out does then bring everything back.  This has been logged with the Developers  

Would you all say using the scroll bar is something you've done before this happened?  If not, if you can give me as much information about your workflow as possible and i'll try to replicate it. 

[Gafrad]

I have been working on single page documents so I have not been scrolling between pages. I have found that Mike's trick of zooming in and out does fix it some of the time. My work is not complicated. I create a half dozen text boxes with various fonts and styles on a page. I fill them with original text (not paste) and edit as appropriate. I also copy a few illustrations (line drawings) into the document and try to resize them. Have you ever tried to resize an image with no handles? The "invisible" selections appear and disappear with no regularity that I can determine. It almost seems like it counts up mouse clicks. The fact that it occurs with both the "Move Tool" and the "Frame Text Tool" suggests that the problem is not in the tool itself. I know there has to be a pattern but I cannot find it. There are only two new things on my computer recently - Publisher 2.2 and that insidious Grammarly that is showing up almost everywhere without my consent. i would send you a screen shot but I just can't take pictures of invisible features.

[Gafrad]

I should have noted. All the documents I am working on were either created in 2.1 or were copied from templates created in 2.1. 

[loukash]

2 hours ago, stokerg said:

We have found that 1 trigger for this issue is using the scroll bars on the right of the UI to scroll between pages but you should find zooming in and out does then bring everything back. 

Also a brief two-finger scroll on a trackpad brings it back.

2 hours ago, stokerg said:

Would you all say using the scroll bar is something you've done before this happened?

I rarely ever use the scrollbar so I haven't even noticed this bug yet.

2 hours ago, Gafrad said:

I have been working on single page documents so I have not been scrolling between pages.

Yep, just by dragging the scrollbar alone on a zoomed-in 1-page layout.

Doesn't seem to affect ADe or APh, only APu and its all three personas.
Also, it's not caused by the page document format itself, as the bug is not present when opening the same document in ADe or APh.

~~~

@stokerg: Thinking of it, could there possibly be some kind of a connection to this report (an issue which I cannot reproduce, by the way)? 

 

[stokerg]

23 minutes ago, loukash said:

@stokerg: Thinking of it, could there possibly be some kind of a connection to this report (an issue which I cannot reproduce, by the way)? 

Possibly but from checking their post history they are on Windows and this bug only applies to MacOS.  It's possible they have changed their operating system and could be using a Mac now.  Hopefully, they come back and confirm which OS they are using  

 

2 hours ago, Gafrad said:

I have been working on single page documents so I have not been scrolling between pages. I have found that Mike's trick of zooming in and out does fix it some of the time. My work is not complicated. I create a half dozen text boxes with various fonts and styles on a page. I fill them with original text (not paste) and edit as appropriate. I also copy a few illustrations (line drawings) into the document and try to resize them. Have you ever tried to resize an image with no handles? The "invisible" selections appear and disappear with no regularity that I can determine. It almost seems like it counts up mouse clicks. The fact that it occurs with both the "Move Tool" and the "Frame Text Tool" suggests that the problem is not in the tool itself. I know there has to be a pattern but I cannot find it. There are only two new things on my computer recently - Publisher 2.2 and that insidious Grammarly that is showing up almost everywhere without my consent. i would send you a screen shot but I just can't take pictures of invisible features.

If you can possibly catch it happening in a screen recording, that would be a big help, as we'd be able to see your workflow and have a better chance of replicating this.  To record your screen on Mac, see here: https://support.apple.com/guide/ipad/ipad08a40f3b/ipados

[MikeTO]

@stokerg I find this one hard to capture on a screen recording because that changes apps and solves the problem but I'll try it again.

I do think there is more than one flavour of this. I use the scrollbars a lot so at least some of my issues may be the trigger you've found.

But I know I've had it happen after using Preflight. I will double click an issue in Preflight and jump to the page but be unable to place the cursor in a frame.

I know the symptom is completely different, but there's another issue with double-clicking issues in Preflight I just can't get nailed down. If double-clicking a result in Preflight takes you to a different page and the Pages panel is not open, then opening the pages panel might show the wrong page selected. I don't know if it's showing the previous page, a previous previous page, or some other page, but the selected page can be dozens of pages off from what it should be. Typing on the current page arrived at by Preflight won't fix Pages, I have to change pages, do something on it, and then Pages will snap to the right page. This happens to me a few times every day but I've never nailed down the sequence. I'll report this other issue in its own thread if I can ever figure it out but I'm mentioning it here in case Preflight's jump to page feature is missing a couple of steps, and fixing one fixes the other.

I'll keep looking for the main issue.

[stokerg]

28 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

I do think there is more than one flavour of this.

Yup so do I.  It's just finding out the trigger and then we get it logged with the Developers  

29 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

I know the symptom is completely different, but there's another issue with double-clicking issues in Preflight I just can't get nailed down. If double-clicking a result in Preflight takes you to a different page and the Pages panel is not open, then opening the pages panel might show the wrong page selected. I don't know if it's showing the previous page, a previous previous page, or some other page, but the selected page can be dozens of pages off from what it should be. Typing on the current page arrived at by Preflight won't fix Pages, I have to change pages, do something on it, and then Pages will snap to the right page. This happens to me a few times every day but I've never nailed down the sequence. I'll report this other issue in its own thread if I can ever figure it out but I'm mentioning it here in case Preflight's jump to page feature is missing a couple of steps, and fixing one fixes the other.

Could very well be related, although in my quick test, I couldn't replicate it, but I'll keep trying and if you do find out the cause or recipe to reproduce it, just make a new post and tag me and I'll pick it up  

[Dan C]

Welcome to the Affinity Forums @Ian the not so great & sorry to hear you're having trouble!

As your original post was in a Windows OS thread, I have split this post and merged them here instead, within a macOS Bug thread for this issue.

I understand @stokerg is investigating this issue to log it with our developers and therefore may have further questions for you.

If you wish to be notified of further replies here, I'd recommend selecting the 'Follow' option at the top right of the thread.

I hope this helps

[SamMark]

For me it does appear to be linked to scrolling between pages. Zooming in and out definitely fixes it temporarily. 

[Hangman]

9 hours ago, stokerg said:

We have found that 1 trigger for this issue is using the scroll bars on the right of the UI to scroll between pages but you should find zooming in and out does then bring everything back.  This has been logged with the Developers  

100% a trigger on macOS Monterey 12.6.8...

7 hours ago, loukash said:

Yep, just by dragging the scrollbar alone on a zoomed-in 1-page layout.

Agree...

 

7 hours ago, loukash said:

Doesn't seem to affect ADe or APh, only APu and its all three personas.

Would have to respectively disagree, for me it affects all three personas...

 

7 hours ago, loukash said:

Also, it's not caused by the page document format itself, as the bug is not present when opening the same document in ADe or APh.

Agree...

[loukash]

4 minutes ago, Hangman said:

for me it affects all three personas...

That's what I meant: all three personas of APu are affected. But not the standalone APh and ADe.

[Gafrad]

I just replicated the scroll bar trigger but it happened with the horizontal scroll bar on a single page.

[Hangman]

35 minutes ago, loukash said:

That's what I meant: all three personas of APu are affected. But not the standalone APh and ADe.

Apologies, totally misread that… 

[Jill Wolcott]

Jumping in because I have been losing my mind over this!  Triggered by the horizontal scroll!  I often do facing page layout so lots of horizontal scrolling. Happens in both facing and non-facing pages.

Seriously I have lost a couple of hours trying to figure this out and am so grateful to have a work around, but this is major bad for functionality.

 

[frindley]

21 hours ago, stokerg said:

Hi @Gafrad, @Bob Terry, @MikeTOand @SamMark,

We have found that 1 trigger for this issue is using the scroll bars on the right of the UI to scroll between pages but you should find zooming in and out does then bring everything back.  This has been logged with the Developers  

Would you all say using the scroll bar is something you've done before this happened?  If not, if you can give me as much information about your workflow as possible and i'll try to replicate it. 

@stokerg
Yes! In addition to losing cursor visibility, I've also noticed the following immediately after I use either the horizontal or vertical scroll bar:
• If I have View > Show Text Flow checked, then the visible frames disappear 
• the frame and handles of any text box or object I try to select with the Move tool are invisible. (I know that the selection is happening, because the object shows as selected in the layers panel, I can move the "selected" item with the arrow keys or by dragging the mouse, and the cursor changes accordingly if I hover over where I know the frame handles to be.)
   
I can get cursor and frame/handles to show by: zooming in/out as you suggest, OR by randomly scrolling using the vertical scroll wheel on my mouse. I've been doing the latter since it's much less disruptive than changing the view size.

[Catshill]

The white cursor problem or the cursor going invisible in Windows can be fixed by selecting the “beam_r” cursor from the Mouse settings on Windows.

[stokerg]

Hi @Ian the not so great,

Can you just confirm if you are also using the scrollbars to navigate between pages when this happens?  If not, can you give me as much information about your workflow as possible and I'll see if I can replicate this from your workflow  

@GafradWhen this happens for you when you aren't using the scrollbars, what font are you working with?  As there was a bug raised here when using Myriad Pro and it could very well apply to other fonts.  

[Jill Wolcott]

Thanks for the wheel on mouse tip.  That is much easier than zooming.  If it is any help, I am not using Myriad Pro, I use Kabel.

[jmwellborn]

@stokerg  I am not using the scroll bars, but am having the problem while simply trying to make text corrections on a single page in Publisher 2.2.0.  I have tried this both with the latest update, then back to the Beta 2.2.0.1994.  I have been making editing corrections to a 22 page document and several times per page I have to use CMD +1 then CMD +0 to get either the Move Tool or the Text Frame Tool to function. After a few corrections on a page, I will have to repeat the manoeuvre again on the same page.

 

I also had to change my shortcut for the Delete key to CMD + DELETE key (not the key next to the end key) in order to get anything to delete, after all of the other fiddling.

Here is a very short video, in case it will help in any way.  This didn't happen with Publisher 2.2.1, which I used to create and edit several documents including the one in the video.  The only difference is that I created the original documents, and edited them several times, using Big Sur, and now I am on Ventura 13.6.