195909 - Re-implement visual selection

Status: NEW

(Core :: Layout: Text and Fonts, enhancement)

Description

[Lina Kemmel]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0)
Build Identifier: 

Refer to the bug 76190.
I wonder if re-implementation of visual selection should be announced as bug fix for some old build that 
enables visual selection (say, Mozilla/5.0 Gecko/20020604), or as an enhancement to the current build.
Can anyone (maybe Simon?) help me make right decision?


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

I think the current build is the place to go, if you want to get any kind of QA
and feedback, and not have to deal with merge conflicts.

Comment 2

[Lina Kemmel]

Attachment: Enable visual selection

Thanks, Simon.

Attached patch enables visual selection.

Asking for review.

Comment 3

[Lina Kemmel]

Please ignore the first 2 lines of the attached patch.

The genaral idea of the fix is to determine document content displayed between selection start and end 
points. It's also supposed to fix word (double click) selection. Since the patch is pretty large, I 
think it would be better if I respond to specific reviewers' questions, rather than provide full 
description of the changes.

Comment 4

[Lina Kemmel]

smontagu or mkaply, can you please confirm this bug and recommend r/sr?

Comment 5

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

Comment on attachment 116433 [details] [diff] [review]
Enable visual selection

Assigning to myself for review and kin for super-review.

Comment 6

[Prognathous]

Is there any progress with reviewing this patch?

Lina Kemmel, does the visual selection handling implemented in this patch comply
with Matitiahu Allouche's suggested revisions to Israeli Standard 5194?

Prog.

Comment 7

[Lina Kemmel]

Prog, it should comply with Mati's recommendations, but I doubt if attachment 
116433 [details] [diff] [review] still matches the trunk code.

Comment 8

[Prognathous]

Somewhat related to Bug 167288 which deals with Visual vs. Logical caret
movement, this bug raises the issue of Visual vs. Logical text selection.

Should this bug be platform-specific as well? Personally, I'm rather indifferent
to logical caret movement, but I find logical selection to be annoying most of
the time - regardless of platform. Alternative opinions?

Prog.

Comment 9

[Eyal Rozenberg]

Yes, here's my alternative opinion. First of all, I believe caret motion and
selection should, i.e. be either both logical or both visual (what happens when
you hold down shift and move the caret?). Regardless of that, I hate visual
selection and visual caret movement with a passion. Like I said here:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=167288#c4

There should be a logical/visual boolean pref, and I think it should control
both movement and selection.

Comment 10

[Uri Bernstein]

My opinion:
I agree with Prognathous that logical selection is annoying, and I agree with
Eyal that selection and movement should work the same way.
To summarize, my preference is visual movement + visual selection.

Comment 11

[Prognathous]

The only way to please everyone is to use the platform convention by default and
(maybe) to offer hidden prefs for changing this behavior to one's own personal
preference.

One thing for sure, the current scheme of visual-caret-movement and
logical-selection is annoyingly inconsistent.

Prog.

Comment 12

[Uri Bernstein]

(In reply to comment #11)

One problem is that on OS X "visual-caret-movement and logical-selection" *is*
the  platform convention (at least for 10.3. I haven't tried Tiger yet).

I'm very much in favor of developing all options (including visual selection,
which, as far as I know, is not the convention on any platform), and letting
users choose through hidden prefs (or extensions). I don't have strong opinions
regarding what the defaults should be.

Comment 13

[Hendrik Maryns]

See also bug 373319.  The current practice on Linux is visual caret movement and logical selection, which is a PITA for people that do not write/read rtl text.  The current hidden prefs do not allow me to solve this satisfactorily.

Comment 14

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

See also bug 167288. Maybe define two new prefs: logical vs. visual selection, and logical vs. visual arrow movement? (I'd prefer both to be "logical" but I can understand that other people may have other likings.)

Comment 15

[Hendrik Maryns]

Anything going here?  It is still the same with latest FF.