Dot next to cursor

Ben_ · Post by **Ben_** » October 17th, 2005, 8:55 pm

Just a couple of odd things I have been wondering about:

Can anyone tell my what the small dot is that appears on the right of the cursor in some text entry fields- it appears in all Mozilla apps I have used on mac and windows from time to time. I mainly notice it when logging in to sites- eg. when entering my name and password into my webmail page.

For that matter what ever happened to the small hidden window that would appear in expose in mozilla apps- Camino seems doesn't seem to have it anymore.

Uncle Asad · Post by **Uncle Asad** » October 17th, 2005, 9:44 pm

The little dot is the indicator that you're in an IME mode; i.e., I see it if I switch to an Arabic keyboard layout. I don't know why it would appear in some textareas and not others unless you are switching keyboard layouts/input methods.

AFAIK, Camino never needed the "hidden window" hack because it was built from the ground up as a native Cocoa app, so it never needed the hack like Firefox and friends did (I think to show menus in the menubar when no browser window was open). At some point I believe they devised a better system than the hack, so the hidden window is now history in Fx, too.

smorgan · Post by **smorgan** » October 17th, 2005, 9:52 pm

I've definitely seen the dot occasionally and am never in IME mode (at least, not unless it's switching to it despite having no IME input options), so there's definitely some kind of bug there.

And yes, the extra window was definitely never in Camino.

Ben_ · Post by **Ben_** » October 18th, 2005, 12:50 am

I have never changed my input mode either. I'm Australian and can't speak any other languages anyway! Thanks for the info on the hidden window Uncle Asad.

smorgan · Post by **smorgan** » October 18th, 2005, 6:43 pm

The search feild at http://en.wikipedia.org/ always shows it for me. A quick glance at the HTML and CSS didn't show anything obvious.

Uncle Asad · Post by **Uncle Asad** » October 18th, 2005, 7:51 pm

How odd. I see it there, too, but don't see anything obviously awry, either. I don't see it at other MediaWiki installs, though. I thought it might be a version thing, but the search box on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Version doesn't cause it. It's there on the Main Page of Meta, but not on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Sites_using_MediaWiki either. Quelle bizarre!

I do know the IME logic takes some wierd turns in Camino sometimes, and perhaps this is one such case....

Ben_ · Post by **Ben_** » October 18th, 2005, 9:13 pm

I don't think it's specific to Camino, I get the dot on my webmail page in mozilla too on mac and PC.

cflawson · Post by **cflawson** » October 18th, 2005, 11:11 pm

Oh, THAT thing! Yeah, I see that all the time on Wikipedia too. I thought it was some weird artifact.

Dunno anything else constructive to suggest, though...

cl

Snow7 · Post by **Snow7** » October 19th, 2005, 5:23 am

lol I've been wondering about this for a long time too but dismissed it as a weird artifact like chris said.

nguyenhm16 · Post by **nguyenhm16** » October 20th, 2005, 5:35 pm

I thought it was dust on my LCD :-D

jedik · Post by **jedik** » March 10th, 2006, 4:12 pm

I saw this another day and then I tried to figure out what's going one. It seems that it always occurs when there are <a href="http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/" class='extiw' title="ar:">العربية (Arabic)</a> or <a href="http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/" class='extiw' title="he:">עברית (Hebrew)</a> in the page (any of the two, not both of them, as one could imagine...

). I've also tested Greek, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Bulgarian and Ukrainian (other oriental languages that use non-latin alphabet), but they don't make any difference.

It will happen here now in the Search or the Reply text boxes. Why this happens? Well, maybe a dev can answer it now...

Cheers

Uncle Asad · Post by **Uncle Asad** » March 10th, 2006, 6:21 pm

jedik wrote:I saw this another day and then I tried to figure out what's going one. It seems that it always occurs when there are <a href="http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/" class='extiw' title="ar:">العربية (Arabic)</a> or <a href="http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/" class='extiw' title="he:">עברית (Hebrew)</a> in the page (any of the two, not both of them, as one could imagine... ). I've also tested Greek, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Bulgarian and Ukrainian (other oriental languages that use non-latin alphabet), but they don't make any difference.

It will happen here now in the Search or the Reply text boxes. Why this happens? Well, maybe a dev can answer it now...

I think at some point someone (smorgan maybe) explained that it's the BiDi caret, which explains why only Arabic, Hebrew, and other RTL languages trigger it. I thought the little dot was supposed to switch sides of the cursor depending on the direction of the current text (being typed/edited), but it seems not to.... Anyway, that's part of the explanation

mento · Post by **mento** » March 10th, 2006, 8:51 pm

The directional flag shows up on pages that are multidirectional. Wikipedia is a good example, its home page is a mix of LTR and RTL scripts. This particular page is another example, since jedik kindly supplied some RTL Arabic and Hebrew text - you won't normally see a directional caret here, but now that there's a mix of directional text on the page, you will.

XUL-based apps like Firefox sometimes have trouble with the caret getting stuck with the directional flag in a window and not being able to get rid of it. Camino is more resistant to that type of problem.

jedik · Post by **jedik** » March 10th, 2006, 11:13 pm

I thought about that... But why Arabic and Hebrew, but not Japanese, Chinese, Korean?

Also, is there any webcode that is able to change the text input method from LTR ro RTL and vice-versa? I thought it was controlled but the system input manager only...

Cheers

cflawson · Post by **cflawson** » March 11th, 2006, 12:41 am

Because CJK isn't normally RTL? I know both Arabic and Hebrew *are*, but AFAIK, the Asian languages aren't.

cl