Schoolboy Circle Question
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Control+Click for the context menu is a Mac convention from the days when Macs only included single-button mice.
A mouse with one button simplifies things a bit in that you don't need to swap them if you use it left-handed and you don't need to wonder which button to use for a given task, but it also means that if you want something like context menus, you need some other way to access them, so the control key was selected for that purpose.
Currently Macs tend to ship with mice that have multiple buttons (if you can call them that on the "Magic" mouse) but the shortcut method of accessing a context menu persists for the benefit of users who became accustomed to it before that became the norm.
Windows has always used multi-button mice so this was never really a thing there.
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@fde101 One important aspect: it can be configured away, by changing the "Contextual Menu With Click" modifier key in preferences.
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@b77 said in Schoolboy Circle Question:
@Igull You need to press the Ctrl key after you click to start the ellipse.
Ahhhh, there we have the answer
That's about the only issue I have with VS - having to press a modifier key after clicking, I can't seem to get my head around that after 30-odd years of not doing that I really do wish that was a preference LOL Thanks
Neil
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that just sounds too messy, especially when you don't know the size, or are actually using the circle to measure something - good to know though, thanks !
Neil
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@fde101 said in Schoolboy Circle Question:
Control+Click for the context menu is a Mac convention from the days when Macs only included single-button mice.
LOL, as someone who used to condone single button mice (mouses
) way back in the days of the Apple Lisa, I have long since changed my opinion and today currently use a Logitech wireless mouse with n-million buttons, bells and whistles - a wonderful input device Neil
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@Igull said in Schoolboy Circle Question:
That's about the only issue I have with VS - having to press a modifier key after clicking, I can't seem to get my head around that after 30-odd years of not doing that
I really do wish that was a preference LOL As @VectorStyler pointed out above, you can configure this: if you go into Preferences -> Modifier Keys, there is an option for "Contextual Menu with Click". This is Control by default; set it to "None" to disable the use of the modifier key for opening the context menu, which enables you to use the control key before clicking. I have found that you do need to quit and reopen VectorStyler for that particular preference to take effect (not sure if that is intentional or a bug? Either way it does work after you quit and restart the app).
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thanks for the info
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@VectorStyler Maybe that's why Option is used for this in AI instead of Ctrl, to avoid the unneeded contextual menu?
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@b77 said in Schoolboy Circle Question:
@VectorStyler Maybe that's why Option is used for this in AI instead of Ctrl, to avoid the unneeded contextual menu?
Could be. The problem is that modifier key assignments are a bit crowded right now, and unless something is dropped it is hard to rearrange.
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@VectorStyler said in Schoolboy Circle Question:
@fde101 One important aspect: it can be configured away, by changing the "Contextual Menu With Click" modifier key in preferences.
Unfortunately trackpad users are stuck with no access to a context menu with this setting.
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@b77 said in Schoolboy Circle Question:
Unfortunately trackpad users are stuck with no access to a context menu with this setting
This is why the before / after mouse press differentiation of modifiers allows for covering more use cases.
