#1235 One-click worth of delay in executing commands
Hi,
I am using Skim 1.4.32 (106) on a MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports), running HighSierra 10.13.3 (17D47).
I am not sure if this is the same problem reported in #1157, and in any case I suspect that the fault lies with Apple's PDFKit, but I wanted to confirm, and see if there is any workaround.
The problem I have is this: when I select a text, and try to run some command on it (e.g. underline, highlight, make a note anchored to the selection) by a shortcut—either a keyboard shortcut, or a finger gesture I assign to it with BetterTouchTool (ver. 2.340 (719), which is the latest stable release)—often it happens that Skim does not execute it just then, but only at my next click. Since a click after some text is selected cancels that selection, this means that I cannot underline, highlight, etc. the selection.
I've not so far been able to figure out exactly what triggers this, but it happens quite often (and makes annotating considerably more cumbersome). When this happens, I either have to call up a contextual menu or select a pull-down menu from the menu bar, and run the mouse pointer over some of its items (without selecting any); this resolves the problem, and I can select a text and annotate it again—at least for another while, when the problem recurrs.
I hope I am explaining the phenomenon clearly. Is this known to happen? If so, might there be a way around this?
I think this might have started to happen since I updated the OS to Sierra (hence my suspicion that the fault lies with Apple). But much more recently (perhaps after 10.13.3), another phenomenon that might be related started to happen. Previously, when I select a text and underline or highlight it, the text remains selected, so that I can then go on to make a note anchored to the same selected text. Now I cannot do this. When I underline a text, the selection goes to the underline just made, and if I then try to make an anchored note, it gets anchored to the line, not the text underlined (so that the subject box in the anchor note dialogue is blank, rather than being filled with the selected text); if I want to make a note anchored to the text I juts underlined (or highlighted, etc.), I have to select it again.
I am sorry to be verbose; I hope you can cast some light on this. Skim remains one of the best PDF-related apps ever made!
All good things,
Yuuki Ohta
I have no idea. We just execute the command when we receive the proper action or event handler. The way those are delivered to us is determined by the systrem. We have no influence over that. I don't see any problems myself, so I cannot test anything out. Are you sure you have a problem with the built-in shortcuts? I wonder if the problem doesn't lie with BetterTouchTool, which must catch events before we handle them, and perhaps it's not doing that correctly, in combination with your hardware. BTW, I do see some problems in general with click actions on the newer MacBook Pro I have, where some button types need two clicks to execute a simple click, perhaps this is related. Anyway, if the actions aren't executed, it woiuld mean we don't receive events in time. And this is something we have no control over, and therefore cannot fix, nor work around (any workaround could only work after that time). So the problem lies either in your system frameworks, or your patching of them (through BetterTouchTool).