I believe this to be a bug

[MikeFromMesa]

A short time ago I started a thread about the problems I was having trying to record a macro. While I was able to work around the issue and now have the proper macro I believe that the problem at that base of the thread is a bug.

 

If a user selects a layer and then uses the Mask Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel to add that mask to that layer APB adds the mask properly but then de-selects the layer involved. Since the layer is now deselected any attempt to do something else, like select another layer, runs into the problem that APB does not know what layer is the current layer.

 

Am I right in assuming that adding a mask to a layer should not deselect the layer? If so, this is a bug.

[kirkt]

A mask in AP is a child element of a layer in the layer stack.  If you click on a layer to target it (to tell AP that you want to add a mask to it, for example) and then you add a mask, the mask becomes a child of the parent layer.  What is sort of ambiguous in the AP layer stack is that when you perform this operation, the parent layer appears to become unselected (i.e., it is no longer highlighted) - what actually happens is that the mask is now selected (active, targeted) but it is not highlighted in the layer stack, so it is not explicitly clear what is active after you add the mask (child) to the layer (parent).  However, when you add the mask, it appears that the dev decided that the mask should, by default, get focus because you presumably want to edit the mask you just added - hence it gets selected as soon as it is created.

 

When you are recording a macro, after you have added the mask, you must select the parent layer (click on it) to return focus to that layer (the dialog will come up asking if you want to select the parent of the mask, implying that the mask is currently selected) - yes you do.  Once you have done that and the parent layer is active, you can select another layer and the dialog will come up asking you which layer specifically you would like to select (in relative or absolute terms, as usual).  So there is one extra step to navigate your way back to the parent level of the layer stack.  I assume this helps AP keep track of where you are in the layer stack for purposes of working out logic in the macro.

 

Think of the layer as a directory in a file system and the mask as a file in the directory.  To navigate from the file level to the directory level, you need to ".." your way up one level in the hierarchy to return to the folder level of the file tree.

 

The "bug" may be that the mask (child) does not get highlighted to indicate explicitly that it is the targeted (active, selected) element in the stack after you add it.  

 

kirk

[MikeFromMesa]

> When you are recording a macro, after you have added the mask, you must select the parent layer (click on it) to return focus to that layer

 

​Yes. This is what I discovered when trying to create the macro. If, after adding the mask, I tried to select a layer other than the parent of the mask APB sometimes got completely lost and presented a dialog box with no enabled selections and thus no way to properly reply. The only way out of the problem was to select the parent layer of the mask and then to select the next layer I wanted.

 

> The "bug" may be that the mask (child) does not get highlighted when you add it to indicate explicitly that it is the targeted (active, selected) element in the stack.

 

I do not know what was in the minds of the developers when they coded this part of AP but what struck me is that if you do this "live" (that is, while not recording a macro) there is no issue. APB just allows you to select whatever layer you wish to work on next. But if you are recording a macro you have to tell APB where it is supposed to be. In all of my other attempts to create macros the recording process has been identical to the "live" process with this scenario being the only one I have seen where things work differently.

 

​When I posted the "bug" report I tried to explain that I considered the fact that the active layer seems to lose focus when the mask is added. If the focus is on the mask child layer, then I am not sure why it is not highlighted. It it is on the parent layer the same question applies. Why is it not highlighted and, in fact, why is no layer highlighted? When working with layers most (although not all) changes leave a layer highlighted so the real question is whether or not adding a mask is supposed to leave no layer selected and that was the reason I posted with the subject that I believed this to be a bug rather than saying it was a bug.

 

If one of the moderators or developers post telling me that this was the way they intended APB to work then I will assume it is not a bug but I thought the question deserved to be asked.