635872 - double click on a word should select only the word, not wrapping white-space characters

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: DOM: Selection, defect)

Description

[Giorgio]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.0b12pre) Gecko/20110220 Firefox/4.0b12pre
Build Identifier: 

hi, if you double click any word in a document will be selected the word and the nearest adjacent white space character on its right

this is bad, i think, because in the editor component (midas) user will be able to produce html like this:

--
      my <b>word </b>is badly highlighted
--

with a white-space before </b>

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[(mostly gone) XtC4UaLL [:xtc4uall]]

Does toggling "layout.word_select.eat_space_to_next_word" to "true" in "about:config" help?

Comment 2

[Giorgio]

helps, so it must be set to true by default, at least in contentEditable areas

thank you

Comment 3

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

The default setting here is the default OS setting for the behavior.  It differs between different operating systems.

Last I checked, Windows has the behavior you're seeing in general, no?

Comment 4

[Giorgio]

no sorry, on windows the default is true (not as I say on comment #2)

the default should be false

Comment 5

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

I meant the default windows behavior _outside_ Gecko is the same as our behavior with that pref set to true.  Which is why the pref is set to true on Windows!

Comment 6

[Giorgio]

yes I've understood this,

this value should be overriden by default in firefox builds, no?

or at least overriden only when contentEditable is active

Comment 7

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

No, why?  Following the platform behavior is the right thing to do here, imo.

Comment 8

[Giorgio]

ok, but midas can be an exception
in fact msword selects the whitespace
libreoffice/openoffice does not
and they are both on windows

since the output is html a cleaner markup would be nice

Comment 9

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Openoffice is a port; it's not using Windows text controls or the built-in Windows text-editing facilities.

I don't think we should be violating basic UI expectations just to work around Midas issues.