Bug 163817 - When changing special char dialog search term - keep position and highlighted char
Summary: When changing special char dialog search term - keep position and highlighted...
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: LibreOffice (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
24.8.2.1 release
Hardware: All All
: low enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Special-Character
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Reported: 2024-11-08 08:00 UTC by Eyal Rozenberg
Modified: 2024-11-21 08:05 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

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Description Eyal Rozenberg 2024-11-08 08:00:24 UTC
If we search for something using the Special Character dialog, click one of the resulting characters, then alter the search string - the scroll bar no long  keeps the position of that character, not is it highlit or selected.

We should, at the very least, maintaing the selection until such time as another character is chosen. Mainitaining the scroll position needs some thought perhaps.
Comment 1 Heiko Tietze 2024-11-08 08:04:59 UTC
The search applies immediately to the list. Whether you see all glyphs or a subset after searching for "am". And after finding "ampersand" you want the same happen.

The request means ultimately that you never get a live result for a search and always have to press enter to execute. I'm strongly against this change.
Comment 2 Eyal Rozenberg 2024-11-08 08:19:04 UTC
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #1)
> The search applies immediately to the list. Whether you see all glyphs or a
> subset after searching for "am". And after finding "ampersand" you want the
> same happen.
> 
> The request means ultimately that you never get a live result for a search
> and always have to press enter to execute. I'm strongly against this change.

To clarify, I mean the cases where the glyph you've selected is still part of the search results for the updated term. A main use case for me is actually deleting the search term altogether.
Comment 3 Rafael Lima 2024-11-19 18:58:00 UTC
Actually the last selected position is remembered (instead of the last selected character).

For instance:
1) Open the Special chars dialog
2) Enter "am" as the search term; a lot of results will remain
3) Select the fourth entry in the first row (for me it's capital gamma - using Liberation Serif)
4) Now delete the "m" from the search term leaving only "a"
5) Notice that the fourth entry in the first row now is different (for me it is "$"), and it is greyed out
6) Press Tab twice to move focus to the char grid
7) Notice "$" is selected

This means the position is remembered.

In summary, if the character remains visible during a search, it should be possible to remember that it is selected.

I'm not against this request... but I don't see a strong use case for this either.
Comment 4 Eyal Rozenberg 2024-11-20 21:49:58 UTC
(In reply to Rafael Lima from comment #3)
> Actually the last selected position is remembered (instead of the last
> selected character).

So, during the design meeting we noticed that this is VCL-specific; on GTK we don't see this highlighting remembered. Plus, it's not the _character_ that's remembered, it's the position in the grid - which, when the search term changes, is a different character. It doesn't seem remembering that is useful, while it does seem remembering the selected character (if it is still matches the search string of course) is useful. And - we will most probably need to do this with a selection rather than with the position-memory which is VCL specific.
Comment 5 Heiko Tietze 2024-11-21 08:05:25 UTC
We discussed the topic in the design meeting.

Use case is either a large number of search results, eg. circum, or in case of similar looking items. We mark the last used (?) item of the view, at least under Windows, and suggest to improve this by not keeping the last position but the last item - as long the search contains it as a result.