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Keyboard shortcuts: interrogations/confusions/questions!…


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Hi, I was looking for a simple and faster way than the slider to modify the thickness of a vector line with a keyboard command.

I searched through the AD main menus and found nothing.

I then looked in the Settings…, then in the Shortcuts and I found a series of settings for access to multiple functions. Nice surprise, it’s perfect!…

For each vector shape creation tool, there is a shortcut to increase or decrease shape parameters.

These shortcuts are based on the character [ and ], which on macOS (french) are accessible only with the 3 keys Shift + Option + ( for the opening bracket and with the 3 keys Shift + Option + ) for the closing bracket (see screenshot below).
Question 1: whatever the tool selected, typing a shortcut on the keyboard including the bracket characters [ or ] causes the sound alert to ring and has no effect on the selection!…

image.thumb.png.12d806879ad5870a190c357bf278a304.png

I wanted to make sure that the command worked by changing the shortcut and that is indeed the case, the function is operational on the selection. Perfect !…
Question 2: what is the logic chosen in the value of the increment steps?… This escapes me. Is there a way to define this increment step?…

I then wanted to redefine the original shortcut by typing Shift + Option + (, but this was not taken into account by the software. I then had to click on the Serif Default button in order to return to factory settings. I'm surprised no warning appeared for this all-important erase function.

I also saw that there were two options, Increase Stroke Weight and Increase Stroke Weight (Absolute).
Question 3: What is the difference between the two options?…

I also discovered a keyboard shortcut to remove the background from a vector object, but

There you go, if you can enlighten me on these questions… Thank you in advance. 🙂

 

NB: I find that the online help on the web is a model of its kind. It's perfect. In addition, searching for functions in French often yields very few results. While you can do a search in English on Google for example which links to Serif's online help and just change (bottom left) the language (for me French): it's just perfect and really very convenient. Thanks !…

Mac Mini M1 16Go – macOS 13.6.4

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Hi @sansnom,

On 2/23/2024 at 1:52 PM, sansnom said:

Question 1: whatever the tool selected, typing a shortcut on the keyboard including the bracket characters [ or ] causes the sound alert to ring and has no effect on the selection!…

Based on the pre-existing modifiers required to invoke the bracket keys when the keyboard input is set to french I think you'll need to amend the shortcut(s) to be Shift + Opt + ( and Shift + Opt + ) to allow for the increments to work, and if you wanted to use the absolute value shortcuts this would need to be re-assigned to something completely different, as you can't invoke the Shift modifier twice. This is an issue that's logged internally with the developers as the bracket keys as the default size shortcuts evidently causes problems on keyboards of different languages.

 

On 2/23/2024 at 1:52 PM, sansnom said:

Question 2: what is the logic chosen in the value of the increment steps?… This escapes me. Is there a way to define this increment step?…

The width increment steps appear to change dynamically dependant on the current slider width, allowing for more finite control at smaller stroke widths and larger steps at higher values. I'm not aware of a way to change this logic unfortunately.

 

On 2/23/2024 at 1:52 PM, sansnom said:

I also saw that there were two options, Increase Stroke Weight and Increase Stroke Weight (Absolute).
Question 3: What is the difference between the two options?…

The difference isn't always immediately apparent as by default the stroke width value is shown in points, but it limits the stroke width increment steps to only increase the width by whole values. In Preferences > User Interface if you turn off 'Show Lines in Points' and then set your document UOM to Pixels and then use the Increase/Decrease Stroke weight (Absolute) shortcut you should then see it only increases the weight by whole pixels, while if you increase the width using the standard shortcut this will introduce decimal (partial) pixel values.

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