Text tracking slider malfunctioning in Affinity Designer 2

[dimasddim]

Hey there! I’ve noticed a bit of a hiccup with the text tracking slider in Affinity Designer 2. It seems to be acting up and not working as expected. This isn’t a constant issue, but it does happen quite often. In fact, most of the time, it doesn’t work at all.

This isn’t a new problem either. I’ve been experiencing this since V1. Tried restarting both the program and my laptop to see if that would fix it, but no luck there.

For reference, I’m on Windows 11 22H2 and Affinity Designer 2.2.0. I haven’t tried reinstalling the program yet, but that might be my next step if this continues. Hope this helps!

[GarryP]

If I have interpreted what’s in your video correctly, you are saying that dragging from the icon of the Tracking and Baseline settings in the Character Panel does not allow you to change the values in those settings as it does with the other settings.

Would that be a correct interpretation?

If so, I’ve just tried it on my Windows 10 machine and it’s working okay for me – see attached video.
However, it doesn’t work for me on the Kerning setting – end of video – but I don’t know if that’s expected for some reason. 
Edit: Please ignore the above line – the 'reason' was my own stupidity, see posts below.

You might need to give us some machine specs and/or a document that we can try it on.
Someone with more technical knowledge will probably be along to ask you about specific technical things.

Edited October 10, 2023 by GarryP
Added clarification.

[walt.farrell]

23 minutes ago, GarryP said:

However, it doesn’t work for me on the Kerning setting – end of video – but I don’t know if that’s expected for some reason.

Don't you have to have the text cursor between two letters for Kerning?

[GarryP]

Spot on as usual Walt; when the text insertion point is between two characters the drag-to-change-value mechanism works as with the other settings.
I’ve amended my earlier post to try and avoid further confusion.

[dimasddim]

@GarryP Yes Garry, that's exacty what I mean. Weirdly, it worked the last time I opened the program, then suddenly it stopped working.
So I tried to reproduce it in Publisher 2, but it work just fine. Sure I could provide my machine specs:

Processor    AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS with Radeon Graphics            3.00 GHz
Installed RAM    16,0 GB (15,4 GB usable)
Edition    Windows 11 Home Single Language
Version        22H2
OS build    22621.2361
Experience    Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.22674.1000.0

Do I need to send the logs?
 

[dimasddim]

Update:

Copied the text from Publisher 2 to Designer 2 seems solved the issue, drag tracking work again.
Hmmmm.. interesting.

[Dan C]

Hi @dimasddim,

Thanks for your report!

I have tested this here using Windows 10 and I'm not seeing the same issue - either with Artistic or Text Frame text objects, I'm able to click and drag to adjust the Tracking value, both with the text selected or with the text caret simply placed in the object.
Though I do find that if the text caret is placed after the end of the word, adjusting the tracking value does not change the appearance of the text:

 

However I cannot see a text caret present in your initial video, so I'm not 100% certain if this was the behaviour you were experiencing - though it could explain the reason it now appears to be working for you.

If you are able to create a new document in Designer that replicates this issue again, please save the file and upload it here so that we can test further