Bug 442295 - Allow Text Highlighting to Facilitate "Copy and Paste" Ability
Summary: Allow Text Highlighting to Facilitate "Copy and Paste" Ability
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 408467
Alias: None
Product: Discover
Classification: Applications
Component: discover (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Platform: Other Linux
: NOR wishlist
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen
URL:
Keywords: usability
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2021-09-11 07:33 UTC by Lonnie
Modified: 2022-01-20 17:18 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

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Description Lonnie 2021-09-11 07:33:27 UTC
Discover doesn't allow any highlighting of text for any of the content it displays! Therefore, you cannot copy text from Discover and paste it elsewhere.

- You cannot copy text and paste it into a search engine for research.
- You cannot copy an email address of an author from discover to your email client.
- You cannot highlight ANY text from ANYWHERE except for its own search box (the least useful place)

Any text I see, anywhere in Discover, is text that I want the ability to highlight, copy, and paste elsewhere.
Comment 1 Nate Graham 2021-09-16 19:16:49 UTC
Unfortunately the QtQuick Label items we use here do not allow mouse-highlighting. We have created our own SelectableLabel component, but porting everything to use it would undoubtedly break other things in the process. Possible, but messy.

Ultimately the base QtQuick component in Qt should probably gain optional mouse-selectability, just like the QWidgets QLabel component has.
Comment 2 Lonnie 2021-09-17 03:57:34 UTC
I wish KDE development would avoid using controls that make copying text impossible. That's a fundamental capability that I generally expect from open source projects, especially ones that showcase content that contain paragraphs and name/value pairs on the screen!

I know it wasn't intentional, but Discover sometimes feels like a closed source application due to issues like this one.

I'm very thankful that progress has been made on showing package names: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=403492

However, I bet when that lands in a version of Discover I'm using, I won't even be able to copy and paste that package name from discover into my notes!

You make a good point, that the QtQuick control should probably be enhanced to support highlighting and copying (I say via both ctrl-c and via a right-click context menu). If addressed at that level, a lot of applications could potential benefit from this (if they enable it).

Can you please advise how we might ensure that such a request is in queue?
Comment 3 Nate Graham 2021-09-17 15:11:00 UTC
Discover's code is at https://invent.kde.org/plasma/discover/ and anyone can contribute. :)

If you'd like to make a difference with this particular issue, there are a few ways you could contribute:

1. Add API to QtQuick Label upstream in Qt that optionally makes it mouse-selectable.
2. File a Qt bug reports requesting that somebody else do the above (don't hold your breath for a quick resolution, though).
3. Create a copy of Plasma's SelectableLabel component and put it in the Kirigami or KDeclarative repos, or some other non-Plasma location so that Discover can use it, and then port Discover to use it.
Comment 4 Lonnie 2021-09-17 16:42:47 UTC
QtQuick Feature Request:
https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-96634
Comment 5 Nate Graham 2021-09-17 16:55:42 UTC
Thanks! Let's see what they say. I'll be really happy if it gets done.
Comment 6 Aleix Pol 2022-01-20 17:18:22 UTC

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 408467 ***