I think Zoom is meant, as you can see in the screenshot (since I use the ReDesign plugin, my toolbox looks a little different).
Hello @Elizabeth_Manser, and welcome to the forum!
It’s a shame you waited so long to ask for assistance with your problem. And although I’ve been trying to help other users on this forum for almost a year and a half, this is the first time I’ve heard of the difficulties you describe. So I’m also a bit surprised that it’s supposed to be a bug that’s been known for a long time, which doesn’t mean it’s any different than you’re describing.
While we are on the subject of description, I must confess to having difficulty understanding your description of the error. It is difficult for someone whose native language is not English to fathom the important parts.
Is this an inconvenience that has been happening to you for a long time, or have you been able to discover and know from old bug reports of these difficulties you have, and if so, where did you find this? Do you have a link to it for us? And how do you know that no one has tried to fix it? The way you describe it, you seem to know more. And it would drive me crazy if this happened to me.
So, if I understand it correctly, the Zoom-Tool/magnifying glass icon appears regardless of the tool you are working with at the time. Once it’s active you can’t activate any other tool such as the eyedropper tool, the various selection tools (Freehand Selection Tool, Rectangular Selection Tool, etc.), Bezier Curve Tool and you have to restart Krita to use Krita again, right? Can’t you get rid of it by pressing the Escape key (or the Mac equivalent of this key)? Have you tried using the shortcuts for Zoom? So CTRL + 0, CTRL + +, CTRL + -?
Now comes the most difficult passage for me. You seem to have tried disabling/enabling Canvas Graphics Acceleration. This is a common way that often eliminates common errors in macOS. Or do you mean something completely different with “Canvas Grid Acceleration”? (I’ve never owned a Mac.) The conglomerate of terms “or discrete something-or-other” just puzzles me, what did you mean by that? It seems to me that you wrote this text under a lot of tension and anger, something I can understand to a certain extent, especially if I would lose a lot of work because of the blockage and have to restart Krita being unable to save. Would it be possible for you to describe your problem to us again in peace and if possible in detail? There is little more that can be done with the terms you have chosen than to guess.
We also need a screenshot of your complete uncropped Krita program window as you have it set up for your work with Krita. And we also need to see the Tool Options docker (bring it to the front, please) so that it is visible at full size. Also, if you have by chance a screenshot of it when Krita is trapped in this state that could/would be very helpful/important too, please post such a screenshot as well. Furthermore, please tell us which version of Krita you use.
With all that said, I can’t promise you that we will find a solution to your issue, but without an understandable description and one or better two screenshots, it should be almost impossible to find a solution.
Michelist