F-Keys for text styles can be assigned, but don't work

[Peter Werner]

I can assign F1 through F16 for paragraph styles, but pressing the corresponding key with a text cursor in a text frame has no effect. Assigning other shortcuts, say, Ctrl+Y, works as expected.

Tested with German keyboard layout on English language setting of Publisher, USB keyboard connected to MacBook. OS is 10.11.6 (El Capitan).

Curiously, pressing any F-keys hides the transform controls and frame/column outlines temporarily until the mouse pointer is moved.

If this has to do with certain F-keys being taken over by OS shortcuts like launching Dashboard etc., I would expect Publisher to check for that and display a corresponding warning when assigning the shortcut. 

[Old Bruce]

Ditto on Mojave. Other things can have the Function Keys set as shortcuts ie through Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts so it is just the Paragraph Styles exhibiting this bad behaviour.

[Pauls]

I've logged an issue to see why the function keys are not working

[garrettm30]

Just a quick guess: does the intended action work if you hold the "fn" key along with the desired f key?

As a test, I tried to assign F1 to File->Reveal in Finder. Normally, F1 on my keyboard reduces the brightness of the screen. I had to use the fn key along with the F1 key to make the assignment. However, once I did that, pressing fn-F1 did work.

[Peter Werner]

I'm using an external (Apple) keyboard that does not have an Fn key.

Pressing the Fn key on the built-in laptop keyboard does not change the behaviour I described, neither in conjunction with the F-keys on the external USB keyboard, nor using the F-keys on the built-in laptop keyboard.

Further investigation shows that furthermore, the shortcut input control in the text style editor dialog box doesn't accept F14 and F15 since these seem to automatically be tied to adjusting screen brightness on the laptop screen. Holding the Fn keys has no effect on this behaviour. I think if all of this was a case of system shortcuts taking precedence, they would just carry out their system function when pressed instead of nothing happening, as they do in case of F14 and F15.

By the way, I've come across another oddity: Assigning F16 shows a warning that the shortcut is already mapped to "Zoom Out". Turns out this shortcut actually works for zooming out the document, but in the keyboard shortcuts editor in preferences, only Cmd+- is listed for Zoom Out. Maybe this has to do with the shortcut editor only allowing being able to handle one (probably the first) shortcut per command.

[Aleksandar Kovač]

The same problem on High Sierra, Affinity Publisher Beta 1.7.2.442. F keys are assigned as keyboard shortcuts for Paragraph styles but the shortcuts are not working.

Wired Apple keyboard, with System preferences setting 'Keyboard/Keyboard/Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys' checked.

Note: This post added to this thread here rather than in beta forum, for practicality. If necessary, I will post this to beta, too.

Edit: Actually there seems to be more to this. I can add shortcuts that might be counterproductive. E.g. SHIFT+D. With this style shortcut user is able to apply text style to selected text frame but when applying it to a paragraph directly it results in selected paragraph text being replaced with a humble letter D. And it would not be in paragraph style the shortcut was assigned to.