Text cursor in not visible

[Pilate]

In the screencast there's three lines of text in different setups.  None show a cursor when one enters into the text edit mode.  This is aggravating.  What's the problem here?

 

There's also an issue with the text tool still being active and getting a V added to a line instead of returning to the move tool.

 

 

[v_kyr]

Which tool AD or AP and on which OS version?

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There's also an issue with the text tool still being active and getting a V added to a line instead of returning to the move tool.

How should it distinguish a tool change then when in text input mode here? - If it would in that text input state change instead to the move tool, you would never be able to insert a "v" character then. So it's pretty logical that in text input mode/state it won't jump to the move tool when pressing "v".

[Pilate]

I think the problem is without a flashing text cursor or the text input symbol showing it's not apparent whether or not one's in an input mode.  Also I would expect the text tool to operate within the selected text box rather than

 

[v_kyr]

Which of the Affinity tools do you use and under which operating system? - On the Mac I can't reproduce that invisable text cursor and on Win it might be happen under certain conditions and then probably would need a Affinity software reset.

[Pilate]

I'm on a Mac desktop and perhaps a reset is in order.  I've been trying to make a vid to illustrate but there's no way to indicate keystrokes being made (and not having any efffect)

 

Hitting the escape key is not consistently working - that is any number of hits will not get me out of the framed text mode - and then hitting the V will!

[Pilate]

If you watch the tools on the left you'll see the text tool remaining active while the escape key is being hit.  Then the V key and viola!  I'm in the move tool.  But in the earlier vid you can see the letter v entered in a text box...   I'm not getting this.

 

[v_kyr]

I'm actually not on my Mac and instead on a Win computer, but there under Win when I check with an actual Designer tryout version it behaves Ok so far. Meaning if you are in text edit mode inserting some text and press ESC then the text tool is still selected, but as far as you then press V the move tool gets activated and selected.

Usually on the Mac things do behave even better here as under Win, so the only thing I can imagine is, that on OSX/MacOS some other third party tool which may deal with mouse or keyboard enhancements (like offereing additional mouse/keyboard controls or shortcuts etc.) might then influence the cursor and keyboard behavior. Do you use any such third party tools on your Mac? - If yes try to disable those temporary and see if it makes any difference on behavior then.

[R C-R]

9 hours ago, Pilate said:

If you watch the tools on the left you'll see the text tool remaining active while the escape key is being hit.  Then the V key and viola!  I'm in the move tool.  But in the earlier vid you can see the letter v entered in a text box...   I'm not getting this.

As mentioned earlier, if you are in text entry mode then pressing the V key will (not too surprisingly, I hope) enter the v character in the text at the insertion point. You are in text entry mode if you see the blinking insertion point cursor or any text is highlighted. I don't know why you don't get the blinking text insertion point cursor but from your videos it looks like when you go into text entry mode an entire word or more is being selected (highlighted).

 

The behavior of the escape key for text entry is a bit complicated because it depends on several factors:

• If you are in text entry mode and any text is selected (highlighted) then pressing ESC will just deselect the text & (should) place the blinking insertion point cursor at the last point in the text before the text was selected.

• If you are in text entry mode but no text is selected then pressing ESC should take you out of text entry mode but it will not change from the Frame (or Artistic) Text Tool to the Move tool. To do that, tap the V key (which works because you are no longer in text entry mode).

 

So for example, if text is highlighted the keyboard sequence ESC + ESC should exit text entry mode so the next keypress will be interpreted as a keyboard shortcut for selecting a tool (like V for the Move Tool) or whatever else you have assigned to that keyboard shortcut. If no text is highlighted you just have to press ESC once to exit text entry mode.

 

For Macs there is one other complicating factor that you may occasionally run into, which has to do with entering accented characters directly from the keyboard. As explained here, there are two ways to do this. The first is with the accent menu, accessed by holding down the keys that have accented character variations. This works as expected in text entry mode in Affinity, except for one thing: with the accent menu visible, pressing ESC should dismiss the menu, use the unaccented character form, & remain in text entry mode. At least on my Mac running High Sierra that doesn't happen -- the unaccented character is used as expected but the accent menu is not dismissed and it exits text entry mode, which I believe is a bug.

 

The second way to enter accented characters from the keyboard is to use the so-called "dead key" feature. The linked Apple article explains how to use the Keyboard Viewer to see the dead keys when the appropriate modifier key (usually the Option key) is held down. If you type one of these 'dead keys' you should see the corresponding accent mark appear in the text field, but it will be highlighted in a pale yellow to indicate that the next character you type will replace the accent mark with the accented character if that character has that accented form, otherwise the accent mark will remain & be followed by the next character. As above, pressing ESC after entering a dead key should (I think) exit dead key mode while leaving you in text entry mode but like with the accent menu text entry mode is exited instead.

[Pilate]

4 hours ago, R C-R said:

it looks like when you go into text entry mode an entire word or more is being selected (highlighted).

That's the difficulty with using a screencast - there's no way to indicate what if any keys are being pressed.  I only highlighted text to show I was in fact in the text box.  If you watch you'll see that single letters were beign deleted despite no cursor showing.  The essential problem here is the faulty cursor display.  I suppose I'll delete and reinstall the app to see if that solves the problem.

 

4 hours ago, R C-R said:

o for example, if text is highlighted the keyboard sequence ESC + ESC should exit text entry mode

That's what I'm ttrying to communicate - that's not happening.

[Pilate]

Okay, after removing and reinstalling both Designer and Photo it turns out the font is causing the cursor to not diplay.  Damn!  

 

Also, with the cursor displaying (with other fonts) it's easier to understand what's happening.  At this point I'm thinking I'd prefer the escape key to ultimately default back to the move tool after more than two hits rather than remaining in the text tool.  Why is that the case?

[lepr]

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[Barbara_w]

i experienced a similar behaviour from the mouse over cursor.

as soon as i put the cursor over the textbox it disappeared. when leaving the mouse unmoved the cursor showed with a delay of 2-3 seconds. this is not really working for a constant workflow. very annoying.

my collegue suggested to turn off the touchpad on my laptop since i work on a laptop. this solved my problem.

maybe this is helpful to someone!

Best wishes.