Designer: Leading Can't Be Changed by Keyboard if Other Than Auto

[_Th]

In Designer 2.6.2, text leading cannot be adjusted with the keyboard shortcuts (ALT up/down arrow) once a value has been set manually.

In other words, if you replace the leading from whatever the default is, say "(12.4)" to "15", ALT up/down no longer changes the leading.

Pressing ALT up/down, the History panel adds "Increase leading" or "Decrease leading" each time, though the value does not change.  Applies to Frame Text as well as Artistic text.

If the default Auto value has not been overridden, the keyboard shortcuts work as expected.

The keyboard shortcuts work as expected in Photo and Publisher.

Windows 11 24H2 / AD 2.6.2 and Beta 2.6.2.3228
(Searched but did not find this specific issue; hopefully this hasn't been reported before and I missed it...)

[MikeTO]

FWIW this works correctly in 2.6.2 on macOS so perhaps it's an issue specific to Windows?

[_Th]

12 hours ago, MikeTO said:

FWIW this works correctly in 2.6.2 on macOS so perhaps it's an issue specific to Windows?

Thanks, Mike. Sounds like it. I don't remember seeing it before, and it drove me crazy on recent project. Hope this one gets corrected quickly.

[NathanC]

Hi @_Th,

This is working as expected on Windows for me, I've followed the steps below:

1. New Doc and text frame
2. Inserted + expanded filler text
3. Highlighted text and Manually entered '15' into the Leading value and pressed enter to commit, which sets the value and changes leading mode to 'Exactly'
4. ALT + up/down changes the leading, and also logs the event in the history panel.

Have I perhaps missed something? If you could provide a screen recording, that would be helpful since I can't duplicate this.

Many thanks

[_Th]

Thanks @NathanC for your reply and the attempt to replicate this. Here's a screen recording showing the issue.

As you can see, in both Artistic Text and Frame Text modes, the keyboard shortcuts, ALT + up/down, change the leading when it's in the default/auto state. After entering a leading value manually, the keyboard shortcuts no longer change the leading value even though the history panel records it being changed.

The result is the same with filler text or manually-typed text, with hardware acceleration on or off. Windows 11 24H2, all updates including KB5054979
 

 

 

[NathanC]

Many thanks for the screen recording @_Th as this has helped clarify the problem.

The ALT + Up/down shortcut will changing the paragraph Leading found in the Paragraph panel. In your screen recording, you've set a leading override value via the Character panel. Setting a leading override value applies a local override to the selected text, and will ignore any paragraph leading changes.

If you open the Paragraph panel at the same time, you'll see that the paragraph leading value is changing when you use the shortcut, it's just being ignored since a leading override has been set on the highlighted text.

[_Th]

Thanks, @NathanC.

So this is a misunderstanding on my part of how Affinity handles leading. Muscle memory from decades of Adobe strikes again.

Now if only there was a keyboard shortcut to access that particular field/value, or even the last accessed value in any panel.