[webkit-dev] Selection highlight painting ("gaps"?)

[David Hyatt]

On Oct 19, 2009, at 3:27 PM, Peter Kasting wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 1:21 PM, David Hyatt <hyatt at apple.com> wrote:
> On Oct 19, 2009, at 3:19 PM, Peter Kasting wrote:
> I'm not quite sure what you mean.  Do you just mean it looks  
> visually confusing, but when you copy/paste you get the right text?   
> Or are you saying that it's actually selecting the wrong things?
>
> There are two different effects that interrelate:
> * WebKit allows you to select anything on a page.  Repro: Go to any  
> page, start at top, drag down, note that you select everything.   
> Desired behavior: Only select the text from the page.

You aren't only selecting text on a page though.  For example, copying  
can be of all the HTML content.  This includes tables, images,  
plugins, etc.   If you don't highlight that content, then you're lying  
about what gets copied.  The fact that it doesn't show up when you  
happen to paste into a plaintext app does not change the fact that the  
non-textual content really does get copied if you paste into an app  
that supports HTM.

On Mac that's practically everything, so maybe that's the difference  
in perception on your part is that on Windows you don't commonly copy/ 
paste into apps that support HTML?  Copy/paste within the same app  
while doing rich text editing in Chrome, and you'll see why including  
elements other than text in the selection makes sense.

Gaps are distinct from the question of whether or not you're selecting  
just text though.  However, excluding gaps once you start extending  
the selection to cover other types of content leads to a pretty ugly  
selection (as can be the case in Firefox).

dave

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