Moving around with PageUp or PageDown?

[Ditlev Petersen]

The idea behind the working space in Affinity is different from that in PagePlus. But is there a reason for the PageUp and PageDown not moving to the next page or pair of pages? I have just realised that Ctrl + PageDown seems to do the trick, so I will get used to this. But why is this so?

[thomaso]

The idea behind is ... to learn? As a macbook user me was not given yet your ability to move pages with ctrl- or cmd-key + arrow key within APub. So I agree to this wish and feel jealous. Until it gets solved I simply swipe instead type to move pages around. And wonder why, too, of cause.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, Ditlev Petersen said:

I have just realised that Ctrl + PageDown seems to do the trick, so I will get used to this.

Feel free to change the default shortcuts via the Preferences dialog. You can change them to simply PageUp and PageDown if you'd like (but I have no idea why Serif chose the shortcuts they did).

[walt.farrell]

10 minutes ago, thomaso said:

As a macbook user me was not given yet your ability to move pages with ctrl- or cmd-key + arrow key within APub. So I agree to this wish and feel jealous.

For you, Document > Previous Page and Document > Next Page don't show as having any shortcuts? Can you set some via the Preferences dialog for Keyboard Shortcuts?

[thomaso]

27 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

For you, Document > Previous Page and Document > Next Page don't show as having any shortcuts? Can you set some via the Preferences dialog for Keyboard Shortcuts?

They do. But on a macbook (or any laptop?), the keyboard is slim and has no page-up/down-keys:

[walt.farrell]

4 minutes ago, thomaso said:

They do. But on a macbook (or any laptop?), the keyboard is slim and has no page-up/down-keys.

My Windows laptop has PageUp and PageDown. I haven't seen any Windows keyboards that don't have them.

You, too, can change your shortcut keys, of course, and find some that work for your keyboard

[thomaso]

1 minute ago, walt.farrell said:

You, too, can change your shortcut keys, of course, and find some that work for your keyboard

I don't see a need for this in this matter. But me is not the Topic Opener.

I prefer to change default shortcuts only if they are really useful or necessary – to stay compatible when hopping the computer. For example, in each version of InDesign, I alter the shortcut for "paste at original position" into cmd-V - compared to ID's default option-shift-cmd-V. – Fortunately not required in APub (though it does not allow me to simply carry my app-preferences with me, like InDesign enables me to do by its obvious and known preference file names.)

[Ditlev Petersen]

22 hours ago, thomaso said:

The idea behind is ... to learn? As a macbook user me was not given yet your ability to move pages with ctrl- or cmd-key + arrow key within APub. So I agree to this wish and feel jealous. Until it gets solved I simply swipe instead type to move pages around. And wonder why, too, of cause.

Learning keeps the brain young. 

[Steps]

On 12/20/2018 at 10:44 PM, Ditlev Petersen said:

Learning keeps the brain young. 

From a UX perspective it's a bad idea to change things users already now. This is a unnecessary pitfall.

I don't think you would see it your way when the next application sets Ctrl-R & Ctrl-O for copy & paste instead of the learned Ctrl-C & Ctrl-V.

I agree with you that the default keyboard shortcut should be changed to simply PageUp & PageDown.

What these keys to per default is not what I would expect or see a need for.

Thanks @walt.farrell for poiting out where to find that setting.

[Ditlev Petersen]

I did fix the keys to be just PageUp and PageDown. On the next start Publisher informed that an error had occured loading settings. The keys were then reset to Ctrl+PageUp etc. Interesting

[Ditlev Petersen]

I have tried to change the keys once more. No problems so far. I've upgraded to the latest version. So maybe it works now. 

[photoshop1.0]

I'll be honest: the fact that standard Page Up & Page Down keys do not work in Publisher just stinks. Every single app that I have ever used knows what to do with those keys. But not Publisher.

I have gone into Publisher's Preferences, and the Key Commands section appears to be extremely limited. If there is a way to assign Page Up and Page Down keys it is not self-evident (another pitfall). What I am seeing are a grand total of 8 commands which can be customized. One of them is "Quit", another is for the "About..." window. Furthermore, the Key Commands section does not have a search function within it (which one might expect would unearth hidden key commands that are not initially visible).

I'm sorry, but this lack of basic functionality — that even free Adobe Reader has — is shocking.

[Wosven]

Hi,

For a strange reason, those assigned are ctrl+PageUp/PageDown.

[photoshop1.0]

15 minutes ago, Wosven said:

Hi,

For a strange reason, those assigned are ctrl+PageUp/PageDown.

Even stranger is that those shortcuts are not shown in my copy of Publisher 1.8.3. But, even if they were visible, adding ctrl+ still would not make any sense. Hopefully, Serif is watching these forums and will consider switching to the industry standard (allowing Page Up and Page Down keys to work as they were intended).

[Wosven]

[walt.farrell]

46 minutes ago, photoshop1.0 said:

I have gone into Publisher's Preferences, and the Key Commands section appears to be extremely limited. If there is a way to assign Page Up and Page Down keys it is not self-evident (another pitfall). What I am seeing are a grand total of 8 commands which can be customized. One of them is "Quit", another is for the "About..." window. Furthermore, the Key Commands section does not have a search function within it (which one might expect would unearth hidden key commands that are not initially visible).

Hint: Start by looking in the menus, and finding what you want.

For example, in the Document menu you'll find the commands for navigating through the document. On Windows, they're Previous Page (Ctrl+PageUp, by default) and Next Page (Ctrl+PageDn, by default).

Next, if you want something different as a keyboard shortcut, go to Preferences, Keyboard Shortcuts, Publisher, and the menu item you used (Document):

(As @Wosven showed.)

Also: I'm not sure that that Affinity Publisher section of shortcuts you have is. The Windows version doesn't seem to have that, and I'm not sure why.

 

[photoshop1.0]

3 minutes ago, Wosven said:

Thank you. That helps.

However, this brings me back to one of my points, which is that the key commands are buried (there is no search function to unearth those that you cannot see, from what I can tell). So, unless I am missing something, one has to manually look through all the key commands until the right one is found. A pain.

Serif: let's please get a search function in place for this (if one is not there already for key commands).

[photoshop1.0]

52 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Hint: Start by looking in the menus, and finding what you want.

Yes, of course, And, I certainly would have done that, had I not been trying to use a longstanding industry standard function which is invariably assigned by most other software to keys that physically exist on one's keyboard (the Page Up and Page Down keys).

Publisher is the first desktop publishing or word processing software, that I have encountered, which requires me to waste time fussing with Preferences just to get the Page Up and Page Down keys to work as expected.

[Jowday]

On 12/19/2018 at 10:37 PM, Ditlev Petersen said:

The idea behind the working space in Affinity is different from that in PagePlus. But is there a reason for the PageUp and PageDown not moving to the next page or pair of pages? I have just realised that Ctrl + PageDown seems to do the trick, so I will get used to this. But why is this so?

PageDown actually means "screen down" in many programs. Next physical page or spread is often a key combo with PageDown. Of course it is confusing.

Serif may try to easy the transition for potential professional customers coming from InDesign, Microsoft Word and others. In Word, fx, I am quite happy with PageDown for "screen down" and CTRL + PageDown for physical page down. I almost always want "screen down" in Word. Another behavior in other programs will make sense locally but frustrate muscle memory.

In the end I think the most important thing is consistent behavior across all programs. The human race turned its back on logic many years ago.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, photoshop1.0 said:

However, this brings me back to one of my points, which is that the key commands are buried (there is no search function to unearth those that you cannot see, from what I can tell). So, unless I am missing something, one has to manually look through all the key commands until the right one is found. A pain.

Serif: let's please get a search function in place for this (if one is not there already for key commands).

The shortcuts are sorted according to the app's main menu + submenus, (just the last, the Misc shortcut section, is sorted alphabetically).

So if you know a specific command you are looking for in the prefs then you just need to follow the order of the menus. In case you know/remember a command but don't know where it is placed in the menus you can use the Help which will open for a menu command as search term its according menu and highlights it.

[walt.farrell]

2 minutes ago, thomaso said:

In case you know/remember a command but don't know in where it is placed in the menus you can use the Help which will open for a menu command as search term its according menu and highlight it.

That's a Mac only capability, I believe, provided by the OS, not the application. On Windows the user has to look through the menus to find the entries.

[Chris99]

Hey Serif, any chance of making Page Up and Page Down work? You know, as if your devs had ever pressed a pageUp or pageDn key? Sure, apologists will argue that I simply need to change the shortcuts or learn abnormal ways of working, but apologists gonna be apologists. No-one ever pressed a pageUp/Dn key and thought, oh yeah, what I really need to do is press the Ctrl button at the same time. That's just nuts.

On the same subject, could you make the function actually work properly, so that no matter where my cursor is or what tool I'm currently using, it actually operates? At the moment I can only pageUp/Dn by first clicking outside the document. It's like even when I've found where you've hidden the controls, you still don't want me to use them. This broken behaviour of an industry-standard function reminds me of your bizarre cropping and selection-masking functions in Designer and Photo.

Your applications are great and generally a real pleasure to use and in a world dominated by the likes of Adobe I applaud everything you are doing. But it really doesn't help when you break the simple stuff!!

Thanks