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VisualEditor: Don't allow a linking action if no text was highlighted before
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Description

Load VE. Say "Foobar" is the first word on the page.
If you click on the link tool, by mistake or not, without selecting anything before, Foobar will automatically become a link to the Foobar page (it doesn't help that pressing ESC doesn't abort the action, the link gets applied anyway, as we know).
NicoV noticed this in several French articles, where you can quite tell links happened "by mistake" since the first word is an article, "le".


Version: unspecified
Severity: normal
See Also:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=68102

Details

Reference
bz68101

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Needs Triage.Nov 22 2014, 3:36 AM
bzimport added a project: VisualEditor.
bzimport set Reference to bz68101.

This is explicitly a feature that was requested (years ago now). People clicking buttons and not paying attention to what they're doing seems more like a social issue than a software bug.

I was the one reporting the issue with words like "le" being made into internal links by mistake on frwiki. I think the behavior of automatically selecting the entire word when make an internal link should be kept (it's probably causing less issues than it's avoiding).

But the main problem with this is that the ESC key is not working correctly (it should cancel the action and not silently validate it). Do you plan to do something to make the ESC key work as it works in every other application ?

Please read my comment: the main problem is ESC key not working at all as could be expected by any user.

(In reply to NicoV from comment #2)

But the main problem with this is that the ESC key is not working correctly
(it should cancel the action and not silently validate it). Do you plan to
do something to make the ESC key work as it works in every other application
?

You are mistaken. The Escape key is doing exactly what users expect; it closes the window. The user clicking the link button – not the closing the link editor window – is what makes the link.

Well, give me one example of a software behaving like that: in any software I know, when you click on a button that open a dialog, if you cancel the dialog then no action is done.

The current behavior is probably the reason of many links created in frwiki to pages "Le", "La", "Les", ... (all created by VE) which we have to fix on a regular basis. And we obviously miss all the other links created by mistake.

Please, change the current behavior, so that Esc key behaves as in any normal software.

Please don't edit war on Bugzilla. Create a new bug about an actual issue if you wish.

ronnirubin wrote:

I don't know how to reopen this. As an Admin on en.Wikipedia, I can say that having "Escape" _not_ close the box and take none of the actions indicated in the box is a deal-stopper for me. I will argue against VE be made default if this isn't fixed.

(In reply to Arthur Rubin from comment #7)

I don't know how to reopen this.

You were asked to not reopen this, but to file a new and separate enhancement request for the Esc behavior if you wish so.

ronnirubin wrote:

(In reply to Andre Klapper from comment #8)

(In reply to Arthur Rubin from comment #7)

I don't know how to reopen this.

You were asked to not reopen this, but to file a new and separate
enhancement request for the Esc behavior if you wish so.

So, you want me to lie and call it an "enhancement request" rather than a bug fix. _That_, I won't do. I'll still call it a bug fix, and apparently a serious one.

I hereby distance myself from that guy who wrote "enhancement" in comment 8, as differing interpretations and judgements of that term might trigger "lies". Please feel free to argument why not supporting Esc is a "serious bug" in a separate, non-enhancement request if you wish so. Thank you.

Ah. Bug 69407. Alright, thanks.