TextField and TextArea don't behave natively

[5Mixer]

Expected Behavior

• Control + arrow keys should move cursor word by word
• Control + a should select all text
• Control + c should copy to the clip board
• Control + v should paste from the clip board

Current Behavior

• Control + arrow keys move cursor by single character
• Control + a does nothing
• Control + c does nothing on HTML5 and segfaults on linux (though I believe the segfault is Kha and not HaxeUI)
• Control + v does nothing

Steps to Reproduce (for bugs)

1. Use a HaxeUI app with a TextField
2. Try keyboard combos shown in 'expected behaviour'

Test app / minimal test case

Kha HaxeUI skeleton with <textfield placeholder="Test" width="100%">
should be sufficient.

Context

Search box for searching assets in application does not behave as expected.

Your Environment

• Version used: git
• Environment name and version (e.g. Chrome 39, node.js 5.4): hxcpp / Kha git
• Operating System and version (desktop or mobile): Arch Linux
• Link to your project: Closed Source

[5Mixer]

Noticed another non-native quirk:
If long text is written in a textfield (that is, text longer than the width of the text field), input behaves as expected. Backspace behaves as expected, deleting characters before the cursor, until the start of the visible line is reached (that is, no characters are visible in the field, but more characters exist before where the cursor is).

Holding backspace visually does nothing at that point (when it is expected to show more text being removed), but after a period 'cuts' to a full line of text. I need to investigate this more so I can tell you more precisely how this is working. Edit: It seems like textfields normally work by fixing the rightmost character to the right of the textfield when the text is longer than the field width (keep in mind things like moving to the middle of the string are possible though).

Emulating native behavior is tricky, and certainly feels strange as a user when it doesn't work quite right. I'll have finished the bulk of my exams in a week and will hopefully be able to contribute some code, at least for Control+A etc.

[ianharrigan]

Nice one, ill have a stab at these soon (weekend probably - maybe sooner)

[5Mixer]

No worries. I've created a fork and have gotten started. I have Control+A working.

Just noting another issue I found and will try to fix: Clicking 'shift' removes a selection. Natively, tapping shift and not moving the caret does nothing.

The issue is caused by

switch (code) {
    case Shift:
        _selectionInfo.start.row = _caretInfo.row;
        _selectionInfo.start.column = _caretInfo.column;
        _selectionInfo.end.row = _caretInfo.row;
        _selectionInfo.end.column = _caretInfo.column;
        _shift = true;

in onKeyDown.

Edit: Adding a simple if (!hasSelection) surrounding that shift reset code fixed the problem.

I wonder if the movement code Up/Down/Left/Right can be cleaned. I'll have a think about it.

[ianharrigan]

Do we think this is closable now?

[5Mixer]

The initial problems are fixed, but text components don't yet behave natively.

• Clicking and dragging doesn't create a selection, it only moves the caret.
• Double and triple clicking doesn't select the word and paragraph - this feels less important than being able to select with the mouse, but is certainly standard native behaviour.
• There is a bit of a hack in using Kha's scheduler to mitigate an issue with caret placement when inserted text starts to overflow outside component. It's functional, but if possible it would be good to diagnose and fix the underlying issue.

These are the immediate things I see, obviously all only tangential to the keyboard based improvements I initially proposed. As I said in Discord, I'm happy to try and work on these in a couple of days, or open these in a new issue. Thanks!