Unruly cursor

[Phil Deakins]

This bug can be annoying. When editing a post, I place the cursor in the line where I want to type something, and I type it, only to find that some or all of what I typed has been added to the end of the existing text, and not in the place where I put the cursor.

By putting the cursor, I mean that I move the mouse pointer to the spot in the text where I want to type, and click so that the text cursor is where I want it.

I haven't studied it to find any particular patters, but I can say that it happens at least most of the time, and maybe all of the time.

[Klytyna]

...Pressing backspace to correct a mistyped word at the end of your reply deletes the quoted post at the beginning, hitting enter for a new line puts it at the start of the firsat paragraph, hitting enter for a new line appears to do nothing, etc., etc., etc.

The editor is fubar, only pattern I've seen for it borking is that it's more likely to bork when replying to a quoted message, and it's way more likely to bork if one of those trendy new flash popups appears, "thingy liked a post in" "soandso quoted you in" "whatstheirname has replied to this thread" etc.

 

[Tommy Linden]

If this is a bug that you all can replicate, please get a JIRA going so we can take a more in depth look at it with IPS.

[Phil Deakins]

We can't delete post so I may leave several here, but I'm doing some testing.

It didn't do it for me in this test, but it occured 10 minutes ago in another post. I think the best thing to do is post a screenshot when it happens again. Im pretty sure that there is always a smilie at the end of the content when it happens to me, and the cursor jumps to after the smilie. So I'll leave a smilie here and come back later to edit the post

 

Edited April 12, 2017 by Phil Deakins

[Phil Deakins]

On 08/04/2017 at 0:27 PM, Klytyna said:

.Pressing backspace to correct a mistyped word at the end of your reply deletes the quoted post at the beginning

Let's see if I can repeat this. It didn't happen after just a few words, so I'll continue writing until I have at least two lines of text. I might even make it as far as three line. For Tommy's benefit (and to help me write several lines):- a long long time ago, here in the UK we had a Prime Minister called Harold McMillan. Around the same time one of our top footballers was called Malcolm McDonald. Both of them acquired the nickname SuperMac. Many years later, I thought, why not 'SuperPhil', so, as humour, I referred to myself as that. It disappeared a long time ago, except for one nephew who still refers me as SuperPhil. You, SuperTom, are the most recent recipient of the nickname

After typing all that, and using the Backspace button to correct a typo at the end of it, the quoted part at the beginning wasn't deleted. I can't reproduce the effect.

Edited April 12, 2017 by Phil Deakins

[Klytyna]

8 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

Let's see if I can repeat this. It didn't happen after just a few words, so I'll continue writing until I have at least two lines of text. I might even make it as far as three line. For Tommy's benefit (and to help me write several lines):- a long long time ago, here in the UK we had a Prime Minister called Harold McMillan. Around the same time one of our top footballers was called Malcolm McDonald. Both of them acquired the nickname SuperMac. Many years later, I thought, why not 'SuperPhil', so, as humour, I referred to myself as that. It disappeared a long time ago, except for one nephew who still refers me as SuperPhil. You, SuperTom, are the most recent recipient of the nickname

After typing all that, and using the Backspace button to correct a typo at the end of it, the quoted part at the beginning wasn't deleted. I can't reproduce the effect.

Para 1 Hmm strange but true... Soya beans contain compounds which are very similar to female human hormones, and some studies suggest that consumption of large amounts of soya by-product could cause genital shrinkage in males and infertility problems, 

 

 

Para 4 AND attempting to start a 4th paragraph puts me back at the beginning of the second para thats actually the failed 3rd para... editor is definately borked 6 ways from sunday. Para 3 AND hey presto after ending this paragraph with a cr/lf, its moved the cursor to the start of the paragraph, and erased the bolded text at thew beginning of Para 2 ("Para 2 Does this new para thing work? Yes it does!") and left me typing the 3rd paragraph as the replacement for the beginning of the 2nd. Just paused to wonder about the dam,n smilies, moved the mouse up and started drag selecting all the text after the smiley from the end backtowards the beginning. First thing I noticed is, as soon as the mouse cursor was over the smiley ALL of your quote was highlited/selected, moving past it, only the correct parts selected, mouse back over the smiley, all selected again. There is definately something freaky about the way the quote code reracts to that emoticon. In addition it's canceled the bold modifier on my text. The Bold icon's still 'on' on the toolbar, but look unbolded text since i went to check smiley bugs. Attempting to toggle bold back on at this point highlights the bolded part of this paragraph and then unbolds/rebolds it, but i cannot resume bold type here, lets try a new paragraph.
 

[Klytyna]

OK... Smilies in quoted posts seem to do bad things
 

[Phil Deakins]

Right. This concerns the problem I reported in my original post. I was just writing a post in another thread, and the unruly cursor occured, so I took a screenshot:-

Notice the word 'continued' after the smilie. It shouldn't be there. I was changing a bit in that same line by typing the words, "still you continued to use theirs". The first words were inserted ok because that's where I'd put the cursor, but the next word, 'continued', was put at the end of the line, after the smilie, and all I did was continue to type. As I suggested in an earlier post, it only occurs when there's a smilie at the end.

With a bit of luck, now that we've got an actual post where it occured, writing the same post, perhaps without the quote, will reproduce the bug.

That's an example of the 'unruly cursor' bug that I reported.

Edited April 12, 2017 by Phil Deakins

[Klytyna]

1 hour ago, Phil Deakins said:

We can't delete post so I may leave several here, but I'm doing some testing.

It didn't do it for me in this test, but it occured 10 minutes ago in another post.

 

Para 1 -  lets try a multi paragraph post again with a smiley quote so far so good, lets try a second paragraph.

Para 2 - yay that worked ok, now lets throw caution to the wind and mouse over the smiley of doom... ok mousing over seems safe, lets try para 3.

Para 3 - this time i'll select some of the quoted text and delete it then requote, to make a split quote. Starting at the end again click/drag text select kills 'bold but leaves the bold indicator on the editor toolbar enabled, and again just selecting the smiley auto selects the whole quoted text, now lets try a new paragraph.number 4 Para 4, new line is broken... removing part of original quote now. and attempt to requote rest of the post, failes, lets try quoting a different post.

55 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

Let's see if I can repeat this. It didn't happen after just a few words, so I'll continue writing until I have at least two lines of text. I might even make it as far as three line. For Tommy's benefit (and to help me write several lines):- a long long time ago, here in the UK we had a Prime Minister called Harold McMillan. Around the same time one of our top footballers was called Malcolm McDonald. Both of them acquired the nickname SuperMac. Many years later, I thought, why not 'SuperPhil', so, as humour, I referred to myself as that. It disappeared a long time ago, except for one nephew who still refers me as SuperPhil. You, SuperTom, are the most recent recipient of the nickname

After typing all that, and using the Backspace button to correct a typo at the end of it, the quoted part at the beginning wasn't deleted. I can't reproduce the effect.

para 5 well now i can turn bold on again, and the new line worked but... theres another smiley, so lets select the smiley, then see what happens and then we'll try para 6

para 6 starts in the wrong place, cursors jumped again, Phil is right, smilies cause cursor position and formatting errors, here we are post smiley select starting para 6 halfway through para 5, the editor is completely borked.. Selecting the smiley selects all the quoted text and kills bold again, 3rd time s the charm, repeatable and predictable, and now for para 6
 

[Phil Deakins]

We're getting there   But, unfortunately, it's not something that SuperTom can deal with. It's the programing itself that's bugged. Probably the best they can do is report it back to the creators, but my guess is that they already know, and have known for long enough. All we can do it grin and bear it.

[Klytyna]

2 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

We're getting there   But, unfortunately, it's not something that SuperTom can deal with. It's the programing itself that's bugged. Probably the best they can do is report it back to the creators, but my guess is that they already know, and have known for long enough. All we can do it grin and bear it.

I see you grinning there, Smiley of Doom, but I'm not selecting you this time!

I think I've figured the backspace deleting the quote thing too, if i'd snipped a long quote, and that did the 'bork to beginning of paragraph on newline' thing then pressing backspace to remove a letter or couple of letters i'd realised were mistyped without looking at the screen would mean backspacing from the START of the paragraph, and if that was the first,

I backspace over the end of the quote block and poof, its gone, it's all the same bug, editing quoted text with smilies in borks cursor placement and text formatting.
 

[Qie Niangao]

17 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

We're getting there  

I wonder if whatever you guys are seeing is specific to browser or platform. Like if you're using, say, IE on Windows 7 as opposed to Safari on a Mac or Opera on Gentoo or whatever. Admittedly, I don't understand the steps that are supposed to recreate any of these problems, but I haven't encountered them -- in Chrome on Windows 10. (Nor in Chrome on Android, but I haven't done a huge amount of editing to post from there.)

I tried some superficial sniffing around IPS's public self-help forum (such as it is) but didn't find anything germane.

[Phil Deakins]

@Klytyna Yep. We just have to grin, or should I say smile, and bear it. Maybe the creators of this software will fix it soon, or maybe not. Either way, it is what it is, and I don't think that anything can be done at the LL end.

Edited April 12, 2017 by Phil Deakins

[Phil Deakins]

@Qie Niangao I use Firefox on Windows 10.

If I can reproduce the unruly cursor by recreating the post I pictured above, then I'll try MS's current browser, whatever it's called - not IE - to see if it does it with that.

[Arwen Serpente]

Phil, by any chance does the unruly cursor issue affect anything else other than the forums?  I've had the issue a couple of times - windows 10 stops recognizing my mouse driver and the cursor becomes unruly when typing.  In my case, uninstalling and reinstalling the mouse driver solved it.

[Phil Deakins]

No, Arwen, it doesn't. It's only this forum that it occurs in, and it occurs with quite some frequency (several times today, for instance, and I haven't written many posts), but only when there's a smilie in what I'm writing. Also, it only happens when I'm changing some text, or maybe adding some, before the smilie. It never occurs when I'm altering text that comes after the smilie.

[Pamela Galli]

So the take away is not to use emoticons if we have this problem? Or just not at the end?

Edited April 12, 2017 by Pamela Galli

[Klytyna]

48 minutes ago, Pamela Galli said:

So the take away is not to use emoticons I'd we have this problem? Or just not at the end?

More specifically... don't try to edit a quoted post to [snip] sections etc. if the quoted post contains an emoticon, unless you've finished responding and formatting your response into paragraphs etc., OR, unless you are willing to immediately reedit your post after posting to fix the wall of jumbled paragraphs afterwards., best in fact NEVER to put your mouse pointer in the "quoted" text at all.
 

[Phil Deakins]

I haven't noticed that it only occurs when a post has a quote in it, but I'm going to take special notice of it now.

I think the best way to deal with it is ignore it and clean after it as necessary

[Phil Deakins]

Just a bit more...

I'm pretty sure that the problem I posted about in the OP only occurs when changing some text that is before the smilie, and not if the text is after the smilie. Even then, it may only occur when the smilie is at the end of the text. It may happen if it's at the end of a paragraph ( block of text), or only happen if it's at the end of the whole text. I don't know. What I do know is that the cursor jumps, mid-typing, to immediately after the smilie. That's where the text always appears after the jump. I've never seen the misplaced text anywhere but immediately after a smilie.