Add edit menu when editing text

[kopach]

Usually, all the programs which has text input fields - provides standard Edit menu with actions like: Undo, Redo, Copy, Paste, etc.

Also, (probably because of using some kind of standard system library for this) in such kind on Edit menu on Mac there is Emoji & Symbols option. I often use non standards symbols in my commits (mostly emojis 🙂), so I miss this type of menu in the app. As temporary solution I have to switch to terminal to provide commit message. Not very convenient 😞.

[davvid]

Ah... let me know if this sounds right: you're saying that on Linux, we don't have the Emoji & Symbols menu, but on macOS we do.

That's because of Qt using the native stuff on teach platform, but we could probably implement our own for Linux (and Windows too) where that menu is not provided by the OS.

Am I understanding that correctly? +1 from me

[kopach]

Not really. What I'm trying to say, is that there is no Edit menu in menubar in git-cola at all. So, if for example user would like to copy text not by keyboard shortcut, but from menubar - there is no such an option. Additionally in such Edit menu on Mac in almost all the programs - there is option Emoji & Symbols which allows to type special characters.

Here is an example of such Edit menu for Firefox on Mac

I believe this is not a custom functionality but rather should be in standard QT library. Also have to mention that to type special characters on Linux (probably also on Windows) - there is system wide way to do so. On Mac - looks each program individually should provide an option to open system symbols window https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201586

[kopach]

Hi @davvid. Thanks for implementing this functionality. It's really helpful. Anyway, looks like Emoji & Symbols Mac option for some reason is not working as expected. Let me show you:

So, after I select special character - nothing is happening. Only if I move Emoji & Symbols window (actually make it independent of input field) it starts to work.

And here is how it suppose to work:

[davvid]

Ah, interesting. Currently we basically hijack the menu from either of subject or extended description widgets, and make it available in the main menubar. I'll have to test this on macOS.

I'm curious -- does it work at all if you use the right-click context menu in the text fields and use the menu through there?

[kopach]

hi @davvid. Just tested it. Actually, there is no this option in right-click context menu.

[davvid]

I tried this out on linux with the emoji-keyboard and the text fields work with unicode just fine, so I'm dusting off the macos laptop to try this out later. I have to wait for xcode to update so I can have my git toolchain back after the last macOS update ;-)

That menu item is being automatically provided by Qt (or the OS), so it may be that we have to implement some methods to make it start working canInsertFromMimeData() and insertMimeData() might both be needed.

[kopach]

Thanks @davvid. Looking forward for this fix 😊

[kopach]

hi @davvid. looks like the issue happens because of loosing focus by input field. Here is an example of html input in chrome browser:

As you may see - input never looses it's focus.

And here is and example from git-cola input - it looses focus when emoji window open (there is no cursor pointer in input field):

[davvid]

I noticed that the edit menu does not always display itself on macOS, so I tweaked it so that it's built during startup. Not directly related, but something I ran into while testing.

I was finally able to get reliable behavior out of the emoji window by clicking on the expand toggle button in the upper-right corner of the emoji window.

When in the expanded view, double-clicking the icons inserts the symbol into the text field. The focus thing is an interesting detail; maybe there's something we can do about that. I'll reopen this issue in case anyone has any other tricks we can do to make it more reliable.. at least it does seem to work in the expanded view..

[kopach]

Actually, by clicking on the expand toggle button - input window gets it's focus again. the same situation happens when drag emoji window (#725 (comment))

[davvid]

This one is a real rabbit hole.. It only works when the window is moved/detached from the little "up" arrow indicator that's initially displayed, as you already know. We were doing something kinda funky where we were rebuilding the menu dynamically, but I've just changed that now to use a static Edit menu, which should at least rule that out as a possibility.

There's a chance that this may actually be a Qt bug, so it'd be good to report it upstream. The behavior is really consistent, and there's nothing that I can seem to do to make it work correctly.

Here is a minimal test case that shows the issue.

This is really starting to look like a QTBUG ~ the "Emoji & Symbols" menu is a built-in thing that is handled internally by Qt. In the code below all we do is create an Edit menu -- macOS/Qt does the rest automatically. The behavior is identical ~ it ignores the input, but works if I move or expand the emoji window. Bummer..

#!/usr/bin/env python

from PyQt5 import QtWidgets

app = QtWidgets.QApplication([])

window = QtWidgets.QMainWindow()
menubar = QtWidgets.QMenuBar(window)
menu = menubar.addMenu('Edit')
menu.addAction('Example')

widget = QtWidgets.QTextEdit()

window.setMenuBar(menubar)
window.setCentralWidget(widget)
window.show()

app.exec_()

[kopach]

Hi @davvid. Not sure, what has been changed. But in git-cola version 3.0 Emoji & Symbols menu works as expected. Maybe it also was a matter of OS version. Recently I've also updated my system to High Sierra v 10.13.2