Getting GestureRecognizers to respect each other

[matthew-carroll]

In super_editor, we're trying to add support to SuperTextField on desktop to allow arbitrary gesture interactions on top of the text field. For example, an app should be able to implement ALT + LEFT CLICK to open a context menu.

Currently, this is a challenge because we can't seem to prevent both the app-level gestures and the SuperTextField internal gestures from both responding to user interactions. I have a PR that illustrates our attempt to do this: superlistapp/super_editor#692

FYI - There's a test in the PR that's currently failing. That should demonstrate the issue.

I think we need the insight of the Flutter team to determine if there's presently a mechanism that would allow these two GestureRecognizers to cooperate in the gesture arena, or whether this use-case is impossible with the current gesture system.

[matthew-carroll]

@Hixie - I thought you might know the answer to this. I know that you and I have discussed the gesture arena in the past.

[Hixie]

I don't understand. What exactly doesn't work? Can you create a reduced test case that demonstrates the case you expect to work, that doesn't?

[matthew-carroll]

The test in the linked PR is pretty reduced. The test fails because the gesture that's supposed to ONLY open a context menu, also places the caret within the text field. Thus, both gesture detectors are handling the same gesture.

[Hixie]

i meant reduced to just importing package:flutter/widgets.dart :-)

[matthew-carroll]

This particular use-case is using a custom gesture recognizer in our text field to recognize series of taps: single, double, triple. So I can't provide a vanilla Flutter example without possibly changing the nature of the bug.

[darshankawar]

Labeling it for better tracking and for continued discussion on this case.

[Hixie]

@matthew-carroll what i mean is an example of what you're trying to do. Presumably there's a particular configuration of GestureDetectors and widgets/renderobjects that doesn't do what you want?

[flutter-triage-bot]

The triaged-desktop label is irrelevant if there is no team-desktop label or fyi-desktop label.