Text frames, visual keyboard, unusable

[NotMyFault]

Hi,

this has been reported before but I could find a report having a tag and still alive.

1. if touching a text frame, visual keyboard does not open reliably in Designer or Photo. you have to dance between e.g. move tool and click again. Extremely annoying 
   Only publisher shows a control to manually open the visual keyboard. 
    
2. once visual keyboard opens, a crazy show of zooming / shifting takes place because 1/2 of display is covered by keyboard. But I have arranged the position of my document and text already, any zoom or shift is superfluous.
3. if you try to zoom the text while visual keyboard is open, hell breaks loose. You can’t move the visible portion or change zoom level.
4. it is next to impossible to touch behind the last letter in a text frame, if you want to delete it. Most often some other layers get selected.
5. While the text frame is active, you can’t use the pencil to resize at the handles. Instead it is misinterpreted as handwritten stuff.
6. we just need cursor symbols in the visual keyboard. 

working with visual keyboard is a pain. I used a BT keyboard until it died after 2 years and don’t want to spend 350 bucks again.

[loukash]

1. works for me reliably, until I use the pencil
2. from what I can say, only when the selection is very close to the middle
3. works for me, using two-fingers-pinch
4. works for me, but this is generally a bit fiddly on iPad or iPhone, even with my "baby" fingers; for precise placement the pencil is more useful here
5. yeah, but I guess there are some limits on the system level, hence I mostly use fingers instead, and leave the pencil just for drawing and painting
6. they are on the "Switch Keyboard"; I haven't seen them on the global keyboard in any app yet
   Or what exactly do you mean by "visual keyboard"?

This is Affinity v2.4.2 (!) on iPadOS 17.7.2, both for a reason. iPad 8th gen.
Also, most of the time I keep the magnetic Logitech Combo Touch keyboard attached. It has a built-in trackpad which is mediocre if you compare it to the razorsharp MacBook trackpads of the past decades, but usable in case of "emergency", and "shockingly", Affinity apps also have a few issues with it.

[NotMyFault]

1 hour ago, loukash said:

Also, most of the time I keep the magnetic Logitech Combo Touch keyboard attached.

This Logitech thingy died 2 months  out of warranty. And weighted more than the iPad. Or 2 iPads. Or 2 bricks from the wall. 

[loukash]

1 hour ago, NotMyFault said:

This Logitech thingy

I'm aware I'm repeating myself, but… 

3 hours ago, loukash said:

works for me

 

It was a good option at the time we bought the iPad, and so far it didn't disappoint. Frankly, we've added the "thingy" so that my wife can easily use it as a "laptop" for Teh Interwebz, not with graphic design in mind. I only bought the Pencil as a goodie after buying the Affinity universal license upgrade.
(Can't say the same about a Logitech Harmony TV remote: Some keys like volume up/down or channel up/down have already died, despite regular cleaning of all the contacts. Luckily it's programmable via USB, so – concidentally just about 20 minutes ago – I have simply reprogrammed it to some previously unused keys. The good thing is that it still works fine with our Philips TV which is now over 15 years old.)

1 hour ago, NotMyFault said:

And weighted more than the iPad. Or 2 iPads. Or 2 bricks from the wall. 

Yeah, it is quite heavy.
On the other hand, our iPad is still in nice condition, despite multiple "unexpected floor contacts" (to put it mildly). So it serves its purpose well.

[NathanC]

Hi @NotMyFault,

On the basis that you're referring to the on-screen keyboard (OSK) when you reference the visual keyboard, I tested the following points with a Pencil 2 active and no external/magic keyboard connected:

1. Works for me, even with a pencil active. If I had a word highlighted which was misspelt, I'd have to pencil tap twice to close the spelling recommendations and then deselect the frame, but it was otherwise opening and closing reliably.
2. I only observed a display shift if the text area I selected was slightly off-screen or was going to be off-screen when the keyboard opened. If this shift theoretically didn't occur, the text area I wanted to edit wouldn't be visible, it would be hidden by the OSK. I didn't observe any zoom changes when checking the navigator before and after.
3. Zooming with the OSK active worked as expected. If you have a text caret positioned within a frame, the zoom will 'Snap' to keep the text caret in focus.
4. This worked as expected, but it can require some precision to place the caret exactly where I wanted, but I didn't find it any more difficult than placing the caret anywhere else within the same text frame.
5. In the Apple Pencil section of iPad settings, disable 'Scribble', as this feature is taking priority here.

This was tested on a 13-inch iPad Pro, so there was a lot of space to work with, so I'm not sure how much of a difference that made but it would be helpful to see some screen recordings.

[NotMyFault]

1 minute ago, NathanC said:

This was tested on a 13-inch iPad Pro, so there was a lot of space to work with, so I'm not sure how much of a difference that made but it would be helpful to see some screen recordings.

I‘m using the 10.5 / 11 inch iPads and these are essentially unusable with Affinity apps, despising having almost same number of pixels, especially compared to older non-retina iPads.

[NotMyFault]

The video below shows issue to select a word or place curser to words in the middle of the screen, above the keyboard

 

[NotMyFault]

• Another video showing the zoom issue. While recording I noticed that having the cursor active in a text frame may causes the issue. Affinity always puts the area around the curser back into center of upper half of screen. You can’t zoom anywhere else, without first switching to a different tool.
•