[Sophie]

If I have a shape selected persistently (e.g. drawing many rectangles in succession), is there a key which will exit that mode?

Thanks

[Joel]

Pressing the 1 key will switch to the Selection Arrow tool.

Hope that helps,

[DerekAsirvadem]

True.

But Escape should work as Escape is intended.

Cheers

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by IncisiveOne

But Escape should work as Escape is intended.

Perhaps you could enlighten us as to how it is intended to work, and who did the intending?

[DerekAsirvadem]

Um, the people who existed and built and sold computers long before you were born. The computer manufacturing companies that worked together and created standards so that people could expect the same function from the same key regardless of which manufacturer they bought the computer from, long before MicroShaft was born, long before they introduced all their non-standard and sub-standard stuff (well, it can't reasonably be called "software", can it ?).

As for enlightening you about how it is intended to work, no, that will require a lot of typing. You can either Google for that or buy the standard. Which is what software developers have to do if they want to write standard-compliant programs.

Put it another way. OmniGraffle is a brilliant program, which is evidently written by serious software engineers (not pizza delivery boys with a certificate from the "MS Institute"), who are obviously quite aware of the various standards that apply to the various parts of the program. With th eresult being that the interacton is truly intuitive. If one of them reads the first 3 posts in this thread (the rest are irrelevant to the issue, merely questions from, and explanations for, the uninitiated), they will immediately identify that it is an error (because the ESC key does some function other than the standard function) and correct it in the next version. The microsofties will argue about intent, meaning, and the price of fish, since they are quite oblivious to standards. We don't waste time fighting standards, we just implement them; we don't waste time justifying errors, we just fix them.

[Brian]

Originally Posted by IncisiveOne

they will immediately identify that it is an error (because the ESC key does some function other than the standard function) and correct it in the next version.

I checked with our UI team - using the escape to end tool selection is an interesting idea. We'll file this as a feature request. Thanks!

There isn't anything in the Human Interface Guidelines that mandates that behavior, though. Pages would be an example of an Apple-authored application that doesn't behave this way. We don't consider this a bug.

[DerekAsirvadem]

Don't worry, as long as it is with the Engineering team. What Pages or any other app does is not relevant; that is not what defines it to be a bug or not. What is in the standards manual is relevant. Last time I coded for Apple (many years ago) it was in the manual; maybe it is not now. However they will know that Esc key and the Escape (from whatever function you are currently in) existed a long time before Apple.

Think about this. Regardless of app.
1 You've just hit Command-s, if it does anything other than SaveFile, it is a bug.
2 Ok, you're in the SaveFile window, you hit Esc, if it does anything other than DismissWindow, it is a bug.
3 You're in a Tool from the ToolBar, double-clicked, so you're drawing multiple objects, you've had enough, now you want to get out of tool mode and drag a handle or three, you hit Esc, if it does anything other than ExitFromTool, it is a bug.
Et
cetera
Make sure they understand the function and the UI standard, it has to be changed such that it dismisses whatever it is doing, in every context, not just one or two contexts.