Bug 151611 - Writer's DropDownFieldmark cannot use keyboard navigation/data entry
Summary: Writer's DropDownFieldmark cannot use keyboard navigation/data entry
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
unspecified
Hardware: All All
: medium normal
Assignee: Justin L
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Form-Controls
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Reported: 2022-10-17 17:22 UTC by Justin L
Modified: 2022-10-18 20:22 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

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Description Justin L 2022-10-17 17:22:45 UTC
Form fields are generally designed to allow quick keyboard entry. Tab moves between the fields (on a protected form). But once you get to a dropdown, no keyboard navigation (up,down) or data entry (start typing a valid choice) are accepted. Our implementation currently requires mouse use.

Steps to reproduce:
1.) open attachment 183065 [details] (macros can be disabled - no relevance here.)
2.) tab to the dropdown
3.) type "1"

Nothing happens. It ought to select the choice. Arrow/PgUp/PgDn keys aren't captured by the control, but are applied to the document.

Already happened like this in 5.2. Assuming this has been true since initial implementation. Once showing the opened listbox the arrow keys work, but there isn't any obvious keyboard way to trigger opening the listbox.

Perhaps the simplest solution would be to automatically trigger it on a tab-entry.
Comment 1 Justin L 2022-10-18 20:22:03 UTC
fixed with related bug 151548 sw: KEY_DOWN access to FieldmarkWithDropDownButton

It doesn't do direct data entry, but requires a down-key to "open" the dropdown first. The problem with doing a trigger-on-tab-entry is that you couldn't (easily) tab out of it. So either special-key to get into the editing or special-key to get out of editing.

I think that the preferable solution is to assume tabbing primarily for navigation, and require the extra keystroke to move into edit mode.