bug#69941: 30.0.50; Faulty fontification of radio button widgets

[Stephen Berman via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors" <bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>]

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On Sun, 24 Mar 2024 19:45:20 +0100 Stephen Berman <stephen.berman@gmx.net> wrote:

> On Sat, 23 Mar 2024 17:49:53 -0300 Mauro Aranda <maurooaranda@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Stephen Berman <stephen.berman@gmx.net> writes:
>>
>>> 5. Tab back to "Activate" and press RET, again restoring the initial
>>> state.  Now tab to radio button "Two" and press RET.
>>> => The fontification is the same as in step 4: radio button "Two" has
>>> the widget-inactive face but radio button "One" has the default (active)
>>> face, though it is again inactive.  Repeatedly pressing either of the
>>> radio buttons (after activating them), does not change the fontification
>>> of "One" again.
>>>
>>>
>>> The faulty fontification of radio button "One" also obtains if there is
>>> just one radio button instead of two, and if there are more than two
>>> radio buttons, it is only the first one that displays the odd
>>> fontification (admittedly, I've only test up to three radio buttons).
>>>
>>> I've tried to debug this and found that the problem seems to be due to
>>> the sexp (set-marker-insertion-type from t) near the end of
>>> widget-default-create, which advances the marker specified by the
>>> widget's :from property.  Changing t to nil fixes the faulty
>>> fontification of the first radio button.
>>>
>>> I investigated the history of this code, and while the value t for the
>>> marker insertion type was used in the initial commit, it was changed to
>>> nil in commit e0f956935, with the message "Insert new text at the :from
>>> marker _after_ the marker, not before it."  But 18 days later it was
>>> changed back to t in commit 3bff434b8, that also added "Document need to
>>> put some text before the %v escape in :format string" of editable-field
>>> widgets.  (I looked at the bug-gnu-emacs and emacs-devel mailing list
>>> archives but found nothing relevant at the time just prior to these
>>> commits.)
>>
>> I'm pretty sure it makes sense for user-editable widgets that the
>> value for insertion-type be t.
>
> Yes, if my understanding is correct, it's just radio-button-choice
> widgets that need (the effect of) insertion type nil (at least for
> setting the widget-inactive face), see below.
>
>>> So evidently the advancing marker insertion type is needed for at least
>>> some widgets, though it seems to be problematic for radio buttons.  So I
>>> tried to conditionalize the choice of t or nil on the type of the
>>> widget.  I used (not (eq 'radio-button (widget-type widget))), since the
>>> argument `widget' of widget-default-create is, according to Edebug,
>>> indeed radio-button, so negating the eq sexp returns nil, which I had
>>> found to be the value of the marker insertion type that fixes the
>>> fontification (however, I couldn't think of a way of limiting the
>>> conditioning to only the first radio button, but in my testing so far
>>> that lack doesn't appear to make a difference).
>>
>> I'm not sure if the right target is the radio-button widget.  It could
>> be the radio-button-choice widget.  Did you try to conditionalize the code
>> against the radio-button-choice widget?
>
> I didn't, because I got hung up on the radio-button widget, since in
> Edebug that is what I saw and (mistakenly) took to be the current widget
> when widget-inactive face is set.  But the resulting marker insertion
> type discrepancy is really proof that I was looking at the wrong widget
> type (as I already realized in my comments cited below, but I didn't
> think to simply try it with radio-button-choice until now, so thanks for
> pointing me in the right direction!).  And indeed, with
> radio-button-choice, negating the eq test DTRT, i.e., using (not (eq
> 'radio-button-choice (widget-type widget))) as the condtion results in
> the correct fontification.  Since this sexp gives the
> radio-button-choice widget's :from property the marker insertion type
> nil, there is no discrepancy between using that sexp and directly using
> nil, so changing my patch to use that condition would be in improvement.
> Alternatively, ...
>
>>> But in fact, using the negation of the value of the eq sexp results in
>>> the same faulty fontification, while omitting the negation (as in the
>>> attached patch), which yields the advancing insertion type t, gives the
>>> correct fontification, just like using nil does.  This makes no sense to
>>> me, yet it is reliably reproducible.  The only possible explanation that
>>> occurs to me is that the bug is triggered elsewhere in the Emacs code
>>> and somehow using the sexp that evaluates to t as the marker insertion
>>> type affects that code, while using t itself does not (or rather, has
>>> the opposite effect); but how that could be and where the culpable code
>>> is, I don't know (as a guess, perhaps in the C code that adds faces, but
>>> I don't know how to debug that).  If anyone knows or has an idea what's
>>> going on here, please communicate it.  In the meantime I will continue
>>> to use the widget library with the patch to see whether it has unwanted
>>> consequences.
>>
>> I don't know much about that code in Emacs.  If we find some hack that
>> works maybe we can use that until someone figures it out.  But again,
>> given your analysis, I'd like to find out if using the condition on the
>> radio-button-choice widget works as expected.  And of course, the hack
>> shouldn't be added to the widget-default-create, which should remain
>> type agnostic.
>
> ... since the issue is fontification with the widget-inactive face,
> perhaps a better location for the condition is widget-specify-inactive,
> as in the attached patch.  It's still a hack though, since
> widget-specify-inactive is also type-agnostic by design.  But if the
> issue really is confined to radio-button-choice widget's, I guess any
> solution will have to refer to that type.  However, between adding the
> condition to widget-specify-inactive or to widget-default-create, I'm
> not sure which is less hacky: since the patch to widget-default-create
> effectively undoes the result of setting the marker insertion type to t,
> perhaps it is cleaner just to set it to nil for radio-button-choice
> widgets in widget-default-create.  Or maybe someone will come up with a
> better fix...
>
> Steve Berman
>
> diff --git a/lisp/wid-edit.el b/lisp/wid-edit.el
> index 172da3db1e0..01319853edc 100644
> --- a/lisp/wid-edit.el
> +++ b/lisp/wid-edit.el
> @@ -532,6 +532,17 @@ widget-inactive
>  
>  (defun widget-specify-inactive (widget from to)
>    "Make WIDGET inactive for user modifications."
> +  ;; When WIDGET is a radio-button-choice widget and its first child
> +  ;; radio-button widget is inserted, the marker FROM, which has
> +  ;; insertion type t, advances to the position after the radio button,
> +  ;; and since the overlay setting the widget-inactive face begins at
> +  ;; the position of FROM, this results in the first radio button
> +  ;; incorrectly not being fontified with the widget-inactive face.  To
> +  ;; ensure it is correctly fontified, we move FROM backward by 3,
> +  ;; i.e. the length of the radio-button widget (from its string
> +  ;; representation "( )" or "(x)") (bug#69941).
> +  (when (eq (widget-type widget) 'radio-button-choice)
> +    (set-marker from (- from 3)))
>    (unless (widget-get widget :inactive)
>      (let ((overlay (make-overlay from to nil t nil)))
>        (overlay-put overlay 'face 'widget-inactive)

To fix this bug, do you have a preference between this patch for
widget-specify-inactive and the attached patch for
widget-default-create?  Or do you have a better fix?

Steve Berman


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diff --git a/lisp/wid-edit.el b/lisp/wid-edit.el
index 172da3db1e0..7fc9ac59b0a 100644
--- a/lisp/wid-edit.el
+++ b/lisp/wid-edit.el
@@ -1733,8 +1733,17 @@ widget-default-create
        (goto-char value-pos)
        (widget-apply widget :value-create)))
    (let ((from (point-min-marker))
-	 (to (point-max-marker)))
-     (set-marker-insertion-type from t)
+	 (to (point-max-marker))
+         ;; When WIDGET is a radio-button-choice widget and its first
+         ;; child radio-button widget is inserted, advancing the marker
+         ;; FROM would make the overlay setting the widget-inactive face
+         ;; begin right after the first radio button, which would hence
+         ;; incorrectly not be fontified with the widget-inactive face.
+         ;; To ensure it is correctly fontified, we set the marker
+         ;; insertion type of FROM to nil only when WIDGET is
+         ;; radio-button-choice, otherwise to t (bug#69941).
+         (from-mit (not (eq 'radio-button-choice (widget-type widget)))))
+     (set-marker-insertion-type from from-mit)
      (set-marker-insertion-type to nil)
      (widget-put widget :from from)
      (widget-put widget :to to)))
diff --git a/test/lisp/wid-edit-tests.el b/test/lisp/wid-edit-tests.el
index 4b049478b29..d416eb99022 100644
--- a/test/lisp/wid-edit-tests.el
+++ b/test/lisp/wid-edit-tests.el
@@ -336,7 +336,13 @@ widget-test-widget-move
     (widget-forward 2)
     (forward-char)
     (widget-backward 1)
-    (should (string= "Second" (widget-value (widget-at))))))
+    (should (string= "Second" (widget-value (widget-at))))
+    ;; Check that moving to a widget at beginning of buffer does not
+    ;; signal a beginning-of-buffer error (bug#69943).
+    (widget-backward 1)   ; Should not signal beginning-of-buffer error.
+    (widget-forward 2)
+    (should (string= "Third" (widget-value (widget-at))))
+    (widget-forward 1)))  ; Should not signal beginning-of-buffer error.

 (ert-deftest widget-test-color-match ()
   "Test that the :match function for the color widget works."