Pen tool - delete last segment

syllie

I've been experimenting a bit further with the pen tool. I am not sure if the experienced behaviour is intentional (by design) or not.

Whenever a sequence of nodes is placed, the second last is automatically selected. Upon hitting backspace or delete the selected node is deleted. This means not the last segment is removed, but just the node previously placed - resulting in a deformation of the path. Also, upon repeated presses of delete - history panel shows the key press is detected but as nothing is selected on the path, no action occurs.

I would have expected that the LAST placed node has selection, and upon pressing delete, only the last segment would be deleted. I tried to capture this behaviour:

second to last node is automatically selected resulting in deformation of path instead of removal of last segment on pressing delete

For the next key press, things are depending on design. I will do yet another compare to other applications: personally I like how Inkscape solved it (select the 'new' last node as active so that repeated presses just walk back through the path creation). Affinity does lose selection after deletion of the last placed node and simply deletes the whole path.

Boldline

@syllie I like that you are including the history panel in the video - I will start doing that as well.
I tried the same procedure you did and had the same result

VectorStyler

@syllie Thanks for the description. This looks like a bug, I added it to the backlog.

syllie

Hi - I see a fix has been applied on this in RC1. The behaviour is still a bit odd:

First delete key press: delete last node (expected). Action is recorded in history.
Second delete key press: nothing happens. Action is not recorded in history.
Third delete key press: whole path is deleted. TWO delete actions are recorded in history.

Also - if you test this on Win10 with the history window open on top of the canvas, and you move with the pen tool over the panel, the pen tool cursor changes to either horizontal or vertical resizing pointer.

VectorStyler

@syllie Added to the backlog, will investigate more.

VectorStyler

@syllie The new build fixes the delete issue (will not delete object while in pen tool, stops deleting after the last node is deleted).
Also: the windows cursor issue should be fixed now

syllie

@vectoradmin Hi - just checking this out, but the pen tool seems to be totally broken now. I can not draw a continous line by just clicking one spot after another, nor can I draw a continuous curve. I attempted to record current behaviour on win10
pen tool broken demonstration

VectorStyler

@syllie That cursor is from the Pencil tool. The Pen tool is in the same group (second from last).

syllie

@vectoradmin Jeez - so sorry about that. It was quite late over here and apparently I had an absolute dumb moment. It is all working as expected! Thanks for the fix!