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Selecting first character also selects bullet


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It seems impossible to select the first character in a paragraph with a bullet style without also selecting the bullet (same problem for numbered lists).

669814210_ScreenShot2019-08-06at9_31_22AM.png.c6ebf654f9646a08da342b590d887b21.png

How is it possible to apply a formatting change to the first character without also affecting the bullet? As a workaround, one could insert a zero-width space before the first character, but why should this be necessary?

The ability to select the bullet may on occasion be desired, so that is not a bad thing, but it should also be possible to select the first character without selecting the bullet.

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The only way around this that I've found is to create and apply a character style to the bullet through the Text Style panel. Then you can change the formatting of the text or apply a character style to the following text without affecting the bullet. I agree, though, that it can be a frustration!

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1 hour ago, DesignStationYT said:

The only way around this that I've found is to create and apply a character style to the bullet through the Text Style panel. Then you can change the formatting of the text or apply a character style to the following text without affecting the bullet. I agree, though, that it can be a frustration!

The character style can be referenced in the paragraph style for the bullet c.style. Then one doesn't need to apply it manually.

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The hint to assign a bullet style via Paragraph Panel > Bullets and Numbering > Style is useful anyway when working with bullets – but does not solve nor is it a workaround for this topics issue.

Even with a bullet style assigned there is a limitation by UI to format the first letter only: Though font face and size seem to work the font color affects the bullet, too. Cause you also can't select the bullet (without the first letter) you can't correct the color of the bullet, too.

Unless you workaround with a space, that way bullet and first letter are forced to have the same color:

1884871032_bulletlistfirstletter.jpg.29eed8570535cb168b19d7d5a645b0a5.jpg

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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2 hours ago, thomaso said:

Even with a bullet style assigned there is a limitation by UI to format the first letter only: Though font face and size seem to work the font color affects the bullet, too. Cause you also can't select the bullet (without the first letter) you can't correct the color of the bullet, too.

All you need to do is specify the color (fill) in the character style you specify for the bullet, along with the font, etc.

image.png.28618ab5e3f0aa1550f2a2ddb2400498.png

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
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3 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

All you need to do (...)

... sounds to me a bit like going 2 steps forward + 1 step backwards to be able to go 1 step only:

  1. I have a frame with black text
  2. To color 1 letter, I have to color 2
  3. + set the color of the unwanted separately

Though, indeed it can work, I agree to Paul: "I can't think of any reason why it would be by design."

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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3 hours ago, Jon P said:

Thanks, I've reproduced and logged this, I can't think of any reason why it would be by design.

It's by design. There are two issues here. The first is that the bullet has to get its formatting from somewhere, and it gets it from the first character in the paragraph. You can then override this by specifying a character style with the bullet format. Other apps work in a similar way. In InDesign, for example, if you change the first character of a bullet paragraph to red, the bullet will become red too. Usually it's what you want.

The second issue is whether when first character is selected, the bullet should be selected too. Currently in Affinity it is. That's partly to reflect the above formatting logic, and partly because when it wasn't highlighted, we found some users kept selecting until it was, which included the characters from the previous paragraph. However, this highlighting is different to other apps and seems to confuse some people, so we'll change it in a future release.

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27 minutes ago, garrettm30 said:

Would it be worth considering to allow the bullet to be individually selected? 

The bullet is generated from the paragraph formatting, so doesn't really exist to be selected. That's why it has no formatting of its own; only formatting it gets from the first character of the paragraph, or specified by a character style in the paragraph formatting itself.

I believe the main difference with InDesign is that when InDesign takes the formatting from the first character, it ignore any formatting that comes from its character style. So if you change the first character to be red directly, you get a red bullet, but if you apply a character style that makes the first character red, then the bullet does not become red. This isn't possible with our implementation.

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2 minutes ago, Dave Harris said:

...I believe the main difference with InDesign is that when InDesign takes the formatting from the first character, it ...

Technically, ID takes the formatting from the p.style format itself.

Q handling is different/independent of the p.style/c.style.

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11 hours ago, Dave Harris said:

However, this highlighting is different to other apps and seems to confuse some people, so we'll change it in a future release.

Not the highlighting is confusing but the inability to select either bullet or first character.
If you change the highlighting only then the confusion might increase for those who don't know that they have selected more than highlighted.

Usually there is a hierarchy of 3 formatting levels:
1. paragraph style
1.1 character style
1.1.1 manually individual style

This workflow in 1.1.1 gets interrupted with auto-bullets in 1.1.
The fact that 1.1.1 does work for individual font face + size but not for color makes it more confusing.
The developing goal should not be to eliminate the confusion by reducing users abilities.

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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10 hours ago, thomaso said:

The fact that 1.1.1 does work for individual font face + size but not for color makes it more confusing.

It works for color in Affinity, too, exactly the same as for font face and size. If you select the first character and change any of those, you affect the bullet unless you override it by a character style for the bullet.

It just works differently from InDesign.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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On 8/7/2019 at 7:53 AM, Dave Harris said:

this highlighting is different to other apps and seems to confuse some people, so we'll change it in a future release

I can confirm that the highlighting is now as expected as of beta 1.7.2.458, and I consider this issue resolved. Thank you.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 8/6/2019 at 9:44 AM, garrettm30 said:

How is it possible to apply a formatting change to the first character without also affecting the bullet?

Actually, in 1.7.2, I'm back to this same dilemma. I am working in a numbered list, where I want the number to be bold and the first word to be italic. Something like this:

1. First word is bold italic.

In my paragraph style, I have the list number set to a character style. Then I try to format the first word, either manually or by applying its own character style, but that overrides the style applied to the list numbering, so that I get this:

1. First word is bold italic.

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Never mind: I solved it. I had to explicitly define my bold style to not be italic.

I have made that mistake multiple times in Publisher. I think something is different than what I am used to with InDesign regarding undefined attributes in styles. I don't think Publisher's approach is wrong, but it is taking me longer to get used to it than I expected.

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  • 4 months later...

Sorry, to warm this up. But it is hard for me to believe that anyone could argue that this is an intended behavior and makes sense. If I have a bullet list with several paragraphs and some words are highlighted by color or even background color, then some bullets are different than others just because I had to highlight the first word in some list item? So for example some bullets are black, then the next one is red with yellow background, then black again (see image)... Really?

To avoid this by defining a character style for the bullets, where I disable the colors, is really 2 steps forward and 1 back. Isn't the solution easy enough? Just take the paragraph style for the bullet, not the character style (or local formatting) of the first letter. If there is a need to format the bullet differently, then you may define a character style for the bullets (still ensuring that all bullets are formatted the same). That is what IMHO is going 1 step ahead, and if you need to, go another 1.

To be honest, this struggles me some time now and I was really hoping the new (beta 1.8.535) version would have fixed this. Nope :-(

bullets.png

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Thanks for the hint. But I usually use a character style, where I set the colors to empty, for the bullets. But this is not about finding a workaround, this is about what should be the default behavior. And in this case it feels ... wrong.

I say "in this case", because the reason I changed to Affinity is that I again and again was puzzled how good they took an existing feature (e.g. we all know from Illustrator) and thought it bottom up and then it worked just wow (best example is the snapping for me, it is just so good). But in this case (and a few other cases) it feels actually worse.

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  • 1 month later...
On 1/27/2020 at 11:41 AM, DieterW said:

[…]And in this case it feels ... wrong.

That reflects my feelings, but maybe for slightly different reasons. Yes, other apps also take the bullet style from the first word, but I think they also are wrong. A list is a compilation of items that are basically "created equal" and thus should have the same bullet.

I think AP should ignore the character style of the first word and only apply the paragraph style to the bullet. If, for some reason, you want to break the flow of the list and highlight an item by giving it a different bullet style/glyph the only clean way to do that is to define a second bullet style, derived from the previous bullet style and assigning it a formatting that does what you want. Lists with individually changing bullet formats look, IMHO, just amateurish, and to use a workaround to get a clean looks seems weird to me. Just my 2ct, but I think the designers took the wrong decision here.

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