1168867 - Size of new Gecko selection carets doesn't take font inflation into account

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Text Selection, defect)

Description

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

Attachment: example of selection carets being too small after font inflation

The size of the new Gecko selection carets (from bug 988143) seems to scale with the current zoom level. In conjunction with font inflation, this leads to an unwanted side effect: When font inflation kicks in and bumps up the font size, the text becomes readable, but the selection carets remain at their old size and are consequently somewhat too small - see attached example.

Comment 1

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

Just noticed: This behaviour only happens if just "touchcaret.enabled" and "selectioncaret.enabled" are set to true, as per https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/mobile-firefox-dev/2015-May/001197.html.

If I also enable "layout.accessiblecaret.enabled", the selection carets are displayed at a sensible size. If the ultimate plan is to have all three options enabled by the default, I guess this bug isn't needed after all.

Comment 2

[Ting-Yu Lin [:TYLin] (PDT, UTC-7)]

The caret size is retained only on AccessibleCaret, not on TouchCaret or SelectionCarets. 

AccessibleCaret provides the same functionality as the combination of TouchCaret and SelectionCarets. To avoid any event handling conflict, TouchCaret and SelectionCarets will be disabled when AccessibleCarets are enabled [1]. The ultimate goal is to enable AccessibleCaret and to disable TouchCaret and SelectionCarets.

[1] https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/layout/base/nsPresShell.cpp?from=nsPresShell.cpp#899

Comment 3

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

Not sure why this was made dependent on fennec-apz, so removing dependency. Feel free to re-add it with an explanation of the connection.

Comment 4

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

We need to discuss this again.

Comment 5

[:Margaret Leibovic]

I don't see a bug filed about the handles zooming with the page zoom, but it seems to me that this is just a symptom of that core problem. Capella, is there a bug filed for that somewhere?

I think that the handles should always be the same size, regardless of zoom level or font inflation, and that size should be an appropriately-sized tappable area.

Comment 6

[:Margaret Leibovic]

(In reply to Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) from comment #4)
> We need to discuss this again.

What did you want to discuss? This is an issue held on Nightly, so we decided to reset to Nightly+

Comment 7

[Mark Capella [:capella]]

I don't believe there's a bug/request to modify Gecko caret sizing behaviour for the Android, nor for the base FF/OS, implementation.

Comment 8

[Ting-Yu Lin [:TYLin] (PDT, UTC-7)]

Bug 1068525 is the one for keeping the caret handles always be the same size for the new AccessibleCaret, and I've enabled the the AccessibleCaret on B2G by default in bug 1172382. So B2G doesn't have this issue.

Comment 9

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

(In reply to :Margaret Leibovic from comment #6)
> (In reply to Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) from comment #4)
> > We need to discuss this again.
> 
> What did you want to discuss? This is an issue held on Nightly, so we
> decided to reset to Nightly+

This was made Nightly+ becase we assumed it was blocked by the Gecko APZ work, but it is not. And now we need to figure out the relationship of AccessibleCaret, TouchCaret and SelectionCarets.

Comment 10

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

The new implementation on Nightly is displaying the carets at the same size regardless of zoom level or font inflation, so I guess this is no longer relevant.