Behavior of editable-field widget

Behavior of editable-field widget

[Yuan Fu]

AFAIK The editable widget let you insert anywhere in the field. In a
GUI, cursor (point) sticks to the beginning of the field or the end of
the existing text like

      +---------------------------------------------+
      ||                                            |
      +---------------------------------------------+

and

      +---------------------------------------------+
      |SOME TEXT|                                   |
      +---------------------------------------------+

Where the “|” represents the cursor.

I think this behavior is not hard to implement with some text
properties. Is there any reason behind the current behavior?


P.S. In GUI’s one normally click on the editable field to
activate/select it before he/she can edit anything. Could we
mimic that behavior in widgets? I.e., click/hit enter before
one can edit the field.

Yuan

Re: Behavior of editable-field widget

[Stefan Monnier]

> I think this behavior is not hard to implement with some text
> properties.

You're probably right.

> Is there any reason behind the current behavior?

My guess is that it's simply because it was written at a time where the
`display` text-property didn't exist yet, and nobody bothered to update
it to take advantage of it.


        Stefan

Re: Behavior of editable-field widget

[Yuan Fu]

In fact, this cursor-fixing feature probably should be bundled together
with “hit enter to activate editable field in order to edit”. Because
otherwise the editable field could trap the point unexpectedly. Since
people move around Emacs by moving the point, confusions like “why I
can’t move the point?” can be very annoying. (It’s not a problem in GUI
because the cursor is never trapped.)

Yuan