Some dragging operations (drag selecting or pan/zoom navigating) not responding sometimes

ncic

These have happend a few times now and remedied by restarting the program

Dragging commands affected so far

Drag rectangular selection with the transform tool (V arrow) - Not displaying the blue rectangular selection area and not selecting on drag. Just on direct click.
Unfortunately i havent been able to catch issue 1) for a screen recording.

DURING PRESS HOLD SHORTCUTS

Panning via hold shortcut space for hand tool while having any other tool selected - Hand icon is visible at first but on click and drag the selected tool icon becomes visible and no panning happens
Scrubby zoom via hold shortcut space + alt for zoom tool while having any other tool selected - Zoom icon is visible at first but on click and drag the selected tool icon becomes visible and no zooming happens

Here are two screen recordings where im displaying situations 2) and 3) while having the transform tool (V arrow) activce OR the pencil tool active
I press the space bar for temporary pan tool or the space + alt combo for zoom
I click and drag but no pan or zoom happens. what happens is that the selected tool activates
But selecting the navigation tools hand tool and magnifier tool works correctly. just not in the temporary hold mode.

Video 1 TEMP nav shortcuts while transform tool V active

in these cases, arrow tool (but doesnt draw a blue rectangular selection area but can move objects) activates but no pan/zoom

Video 2 TEMP nav shortcuts while pencil tool active

or the pencil tool a shape is drawn (but the entire tool icon disappears while click dragging) despite having the temporary pan or zoom tool activated by pressing down the keyboard keys

Im on
mac os monterey
macbook pro max m1 64gb ram
both wacom cintiq, intuos and mouse

b77

@ncic said in Some dragging operations (drag selecting or pan/zoom navigating) not responding sometimes:

These have happend a few times now and remedied by restarting the program

If I understand correctly, box selection, panning and zooming work as they should for a while then they fail, even with a simple document like the one in the video?

ncic

@b77
yes this is completely correct for the box selection tool.
the box selection did fail in a simple document after a while and never restored itself to normal until i restarted the app

and almost correct for the pan and zoom.
for the pan and zoom i experienced it under certain conditions.

NOT when selecting the dedicated hand pan or magnifier zoom tools.

BUT through the temporary state of pressing down the hold shortcut keys
space bar for the pan tool
and space bar + alt for zoom
....while another tool is active.

when the mentioned shortcut key(s) are released from hold, the tool selected is reactivated again.
this is what im used to do from illustrator and photoshop and other apps so you never need to leave the active tool when navigating.

but with this bug the press hold shortcut fails to work sometimes.

and yes when the document is as simple as it gets

VectorStyler

@ncic I will try to replicate these, if you have more info on how to reach the broken state, please let me know.

ncic

@VectorStyler

Here is a recording of the transform select V arrow stopping to work

I can select other tools and selections and the choose the V arrow but the other tools are still active.

In this clip you see me first trying to make a box selection with the V arrow but nothing happens.
Then i experiment with selecting other tools and back to arrow V

recording

This happened after i have had the application idle in the background and entered it again after some time.

VectorStyler

@ncic Got it now. The magic wand selection mode is active (in the toolbox).
Select the first one in here (the second is visible in the video).

Boldline

@VectorStyler said in Some dragging operations (drag selecting or pan/zoom navigating) not responding sometimes:

The magic wand selection mode is active (in the toolbox).
Select the first one in here (the second is visible in the video).

Is this something you're still working on a solution for?

VectorStyler

@Boldline There is a task (for later) to allow box selection in magic wand mode also, but it will still act as a magic wand (select by style).
So not for now.

Boldline

@VectorStyler Yes the box selection option for the magic wand will be a cool and useful addition when it gets added.
The issue that @ncic seems to have had and that I've also run into is that when you are finished using the magic wand tool, you have to remember to go back over to the tool bar and swap it back to one of the other selection options. If it remains on the magic wand, then other tools do not function properly and it feels like VS is not working correctly.
Perhaps the best answer for now is to assign a keyboard shortcut to the standard box selection? This way, when finished with the other selection tools, it's easy to hit a key and go back to "normal' selection mode? Or maybe the cursor has an asterisk next to it when in selection modes other than the standard rectangle select? that would at least give some visual feedback that something is different about the selection

Another option could be to reverse the color of the icons for the other selection modes aside from the standard box selection so you can visually see that you are in a mode that needs to be switched back from to use other tools

Boldline

Another idea would be pressing the same key a second time when done with the magic wand. ... so for example, once you are done using the magic wand, you press the "M" key to revert back to the box selection. the same would be true with the lasso and polygonal lasso (though to make this work a key would need to be assigned to the polygonal lasso)

Much the same way we can press "A" twice to flip between the node selection tool and the transform tool.

VectorStyler

@Boldline The shortcuts can be assigned easily, and I can add them to the default sets.

Boldline

@VectorStyler said in Some dragging operations (drag selecting or pan/zoom navigating) not responding sometimes:

@Boldline The shortcuts can be assigned easily, and I can add them to the default sets.

My favorite option of the numerous potential solutions I was brainstorming in the earlier post in this thread would be the option to just press the same key of the current selection tool a second time to revert back to the main box selection tool (like the press "A" twice to flip between the node selection tool and the transform tool ability), but I think it would help if the cursor also had an additional symbol next to it when in those less used selection modes

Boldline

@VectorStyler The magic wand no longer has the keyboard shortcut "M". I don't know if this was intentional or not. My initial thought was that we not get rid the existing keyboard shortcut, but add the ability to press the M key again to get back to the previous selection mode, etc... something like that

VectorStyler

@Boldline said in Some dragging operations (drag selecting or pan/zoom navigating) not responding sometimes:

The magic wand no longer has the keyboard shortcut "M". I don't know if this was intentional or not

Yes it was intentional. I have the impression that sometimes it is pressed inadvertently and when activated, the box selection is not working anymore of course.

Boldline

@VectorStyler said in Some dragging operations (drag selecting or pan/zoom navigating) not responding sometimes:

@Boldline said in Some dragging operations (drag selecting or pan/zoom navigating) not responding sometimes:

The magic wand no longer has the keyboard shortcut "M". I don't know if this was intentional or not

Yes it was intentional. I have the impression that sometimes it is pressed inadvertently and when activated, the box selection is not working anymore of course.

ok I can understand why you took it off for now. I liked having that shortcut there but I also agree that unless there's a solution for an easy return to the box selection, it will leave people confused as to what happened.

VectorStyler

@Boldline Of course, it can be easily added with the shortcut editor.

Boldline

@VectorStyler said in Some dragging operations (drag selecting or pan/zoom navigating) not responding sometimes:

@Boldline Of course, it can be easily added with the shortcut editor.

Yes I understand that I can add it back in myself and short term, I'll probably do that. In Illustrator I'm used to having a designated keyboard shortcut key for the magic wand and I prefer it personally.
I'm still hoping that when a solution to the inability to switch back to the box selection from the magic wand comes along, the magic wand can officially have a keyboard shortcut (along with the other selection tools in that section) to allow for quick switching - much like we discussed today about giving most tools the ability to switch back to the prior by pressing the same key again - in this case the "M" key

ncic

@Boldline @VectorStyler

Great discussion

From a personal perspective i find tools that are in the same toolbar category sharing the same keyboard shortcut toggling between them a bit problematic.
Its ok in less used tools as it has the benefit of saving amount of shortcuts that are taken, but tools one switches between often is where ive found it more problematic.

It introduces greater risk of accidentaly activting the wrong tool and therefore also increases the demand on the user to pay attention to the interface (for instance toolbar icons or cursor icon) or more cognitive load by remembering the amount of shortcut presses done so that the correct tool is selected before an operation.

This is especially demanding where the toolbar item has maybe three to four tools that share the same key.
For example the brush, pencil, color replacemnt and mixer brush in Photoshop are tedious if youre jumping between pencil and brush as you have to count every time to know where you are and to skip over tools to get to where you want.

Alternatively the user could find out by error after using the tool. If its the wrong one, the user has to step back a few steps to redo the correct steps.

Ive also experienced this leakage of focus and energy when using Clip Studio Pro that uses this type of method of sharing a shortcut between different tools in the same category.
I stay away from customizing and apps shortcuts unless i really need too but i found in CSP because of this it became necessary to set more uniqe shortcuts for the tools used to avoid the problem described above.

b77

I updated the sortable shortcuts here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9g01l3la6nv5h1t/AAAF5kWrRhXamcsDlQEOwlh7a?dl=0

Boldline

@ncic said in Some dragging operations (drag selecting or pan/zoom navigating) not responding sometimes:

@Boldline @VectorStyler

Great discussion

From a personal perspective i find tools that are in the same toolbar category sharing the same keyboard shortcut toggling between them a bit problematic.
Its ok in less used tools as it has the benefit of saving amount of shortcuts that are taken, but tools one switches between often is where ive found it more problematic.

It introduces greater risk of accidentaly activting the wrong tool and therefore also increases the demand on the user to pay attention to the interface (for instance toolbar icons or cursor icon) or more cognitive load by remembering the amount of shortcut presses done so that the correct tool is selected before an operation.

This is especially demanding where the toolbar item has maybe three to four tools that share the same key.
For example the brush, pencil, color replacemnt and mixer brush in Photoshop are tedious if youre jumping between pencil and brush as you have to count every time to know where you are and to skip over tools to get to where you want.

Alternatively the user could find out by error after using the tool. If its the wrong one, the user has to step back a few steps to redo the correct steps.

Ive also experienced this leakage of focus and energy when using Clip Studio Pro that uses this type of method of sharing a shortcut between different tools in the same category.
I stay away from customizing and apps shortcuts unless i really need too but i found in CSP because of this it became necessary to set more uniqe shortcuts for the tools used to avoid the problem described above.

I agree with you overall, that would be confusing if they all shared the same key shortcut. I'm not advocating for using the same shortcut key for all tools in a section, but allowing the ability to hit the specific shortcut key a second time to go back to the original tool used located elsewhere in the toolbar completely. So if I'm using the pen tool and then tap on "m", I have the magic wand tool until I click "m" again and I'm back on pen tool.