Topic on Extension talk:CodeMirror

... if the thing did not decide of its own volition or so it seemed, to:

- randomly erase stuff I've just written in a previous paragraph, or stuff I wrote 2 hours previously in the case of long edits. When a 2 hrs edit disappeared and no way to reverse the erasing, I went into traumatized mode and thereon systematically copied to a personal file the whole edit for every sentence added, and sometimes even only part of sentence (when links added were hard to find, complicated names aso). That is a very very VERY serious drag.

- in the same way, randomly copy stuff I've just written (same ignorance on how); not as bad as full erasing but it does waste an awful lot of time finding out where the double bits are.

Plus:

- I can't use the buttons on the toolbar above the edit windows (serious drag too). They just not only don't work, but I do have a suspicion that it really does not like them: the random erasing always happened either immediately or shortly after I tried to use them buttons.That's all I can say about it. (and that I don't trust it anymore at all whatsoever.)

Plus:

- can't reverse an "erase" edit with right-click (or any other way for all I know, at least not any easy way). Would have been even more annoying than it's been if, previously to the first time it happened, I hadn't already been rendered paranoïac enough by the random erasing : the systematic copy-to-file saved me from losing it more times than I can count.

- my corrector does not work with it on. I don't need it for spelling; I do need it for occasional typos, and even more so for accents on capitals (capital é, very common at least in the sort of articles I potter about with; capital à, common everywhere; the 'oe'; ...). Not wanting to scroll down to the special characters (and back up again when it doesn't want to go back up on its own, which does happen often enough albeit not systematically and that's another question mark in the sky) is not laziness, it's working with no mouse and with arthritis in the fingers.

- it's very clumsy when using the buttons underneath the edit window. Eg., click for a French speech mark : in the normal edit mode you can just click and type, it'll type between the marks. in the beta edit mode, click on the speech marks and then it's lost and you have to find where the marks are to click the cursor back to place and then start typing. Not practical at all, esp. in the middle of long paragraphs - hard to find the place again. Same goes for all the other buttons : the thing gets even more lost than it makes us get lost. May be akin to what Anomalocaris called "lost focus after searching", only it's not just after searching.

- reading other comments here : Szczureq mentions some trouble with ctrl+C when no selection is made. Don't know about that one (am not fast enough to forget to highlight txt) but I did notice malfunctions for keyboard commands in general. It doesn't like them either.

- it slows down the "visualize" op. Not a whole lot but quite a bit. Not a severe drag (not like having a *** 2 hrs edit disappear-just let's not mention that one furtherrrhhhaaagghh...)

What I liked in that beta thing: the links to homonymy pages highlighted, but it's not a necessity; the refs in different colours that did help finding where the slash was missing so as to close a ref; er, that's about it. Definitely not worth the trouble it gave me. May others be luckier than I. But I darn well hope that there won't be too many of them, so that that accursed thing does not become a compulsory feature!!!

For that matter, I have similar pbms with the new edit tool. Not quite as bad but nearly so. So I do hope that it's not gonna become a compulsory feature either. After 15 yrs on En. and Fr. wk, I'd drop the Fr. bit just because of that. Definitely too much of a pain in the fundament.

Thanks for the effort nevertheless.

P.S.: coming from Fr. wk. Don't know what it does in En. (no I don't really want to try it yet, thanks. Saturated, giving my nerves a wee rest ...).

P.P.S.: firefox used.

Hi -- I'm sorry you had such a bad time with the feature. I haven't seen that problem of randomly erasing paragraphs, and it sounds like it's important to track down.

Can you tell me some more about what happened when text disappeared? It sounds like you had the edit window open for a while (two hours), and you were making various changes to the page. What was happening when you noticed that text had disappeared? Did you scroll down, edit, scroll back up, and find that the edit you'd made was gone? Did it remove a whole chunk of text including your edit, or just the words that you'd added? Did you try to save the page? Any details you could provide about that would be really helpful.

Hi Danny, for various reasons it was hard to check on that. I think it's got to do with using some keyboard key combinations, see further down.

Yes I do looonnng edits. But it happened on the short ones too.

It only removed text I had just put in.

Yes, lots of scrolling up and down, adding bits here and there as they come, reporting the refs back to the first instance of it coming in, and at some point you do a search for a bit that you Know 200% sure you've put in and it's not there anymore. Then you check the rest and sometimes the rest is there, sometimes everything you've just added is gone but for your very last sentence. Example I can remember: open edit on a 60K bit article, correct one ref in infobox then add/correct 3 or 4 sentences in different sections, scrolling up and down as it goes. While doing so, I copy a ready-made ref in perso file to edit, somewhere in the middle of the article. Then I reach the bottom of the article, write smthng, the ref I want for it is in the one I first put in the infobx. So I go back up there but as I do so I need to check on the ref I've pasted (it's there). Ok, so I reach the top, copy the ref name in infobox (highlight, CTR+C and that the second instance of using any sort of key combination in that session apart from the capitals), then go back all the way down, prrrt the last sentence is gone. As well as the pinch of sentences previously added in same edit, wtf? I had no time to click/touch any other button/key than the CTR+C then the side of the touchpad.And I don't recall having had a finger slipping on a nearby key or anything like that. I did have the copied ref on coz I copied it on the perso file immediately so as to save at least that from the black hole.

Another one I remember: opening for edit a twenty-ish-line-long paragraph with 4 sentences altogether in it (and 2 refs). First I put the cursor at the beginning, then decide to rather put what I want to add at the end. So I go there (no fiddling around, no button-clicking a.s.o.,not even scrolling down coz i can see the whole paragraph in the edit window, so I just go straight there), click at the end, start to type. Then I paste a ref from perso file to the end of what I just typed but I need to change a little bit of that ref. So I highlight that little bit and press the, what's the name, the button on the right of keyboard with arrow pointing left, above the "entry" key. While it's erasing the highlight I just made, I notice some movement at the top of the paragraph I'm editing. And I see that "the thing" has copied my ref (and only the ref, not the sentence i typed) twice, once at the beginning of paragraph where I first clicked, and once at the end of paragraph where I do want it ; and while it's erasing the bit at the end of paragraph, it's erasing the bit at the beginning of it too - the same part of what I copied. I try to erase it all and start again, it copies at both places again (at the same time, that is). I try to type the ref manually, it types it at the top at the same time, proper mirror... I did a couple more of similar manoeuvers on that with similar results, then shut the whole lot down and went to bed. Must say that I don't drink (at all) so wasn't seeing double because of that. Nor because of any other reason that I can think of, for that matter.Maybe there is a function that does double copying and I hit it unknowingly? It would have to be in a + or - straight line between the edit button at top of page and the edit window coz I don't doodle, means somewhere in the edit bar above the edit window. I haven't tried half of them but I don't see anything in there that would do that. Or is there??

CTR+X, CTR+C, CTR+V I use very very often, never had trouble so far. Until then, that is.

Saving was no pbm.

Can't say much more about it. Hope that helps a bit...

Gosh, that's really strange, and I can see how it would be confusing and upsetting. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that I would be able to reproduce that error. In order to diagnose and fix a bug, we need to be able to see it ourselves, and it sounds like a very involved process to get there.

Yea, Gosh, as you say. I'm more and more convinced that the disappearance(s) has/have to do with key combinations. I'm back to the normal edit and nearly back to non-paranoïac state, only nearly coz there's an after-effect of all that : I can't do the "<" if it's stuck to a preceding letter (any letter): it turns that letter into a special character that varies according to what the said preceding letter was. And I can't do the "[[", must separate the hooks with a space and then go back in between to stick them together. Even here the double hook does something weird (it calls for an external link); in wiki the double hook turns into a sort of apostrophe. These started when I turned on the new editor, and they've remained behind now that I'm back on the normal editor... (???) I just hope it'll settle back down on its own. It usually does. Although if you have any idea on that one I'll take it on for sure.

Wishing you good continuation, and thanks much for your attention.

Hi Danny, did you do anything to stop the pbm wth "<" and "[["? It's stopped this morning (yeppeeee!)

No, we didn't make any changes. I'm glad that it's working better for you now.

@Pueblopassingby, I think a lot of these problems have something to do with conflicting gadgets being enabled or changes you might have made to your GlobalJs file. We've seen similar problems because some gadgets try to use the same key combinations as CodeMirror does and that leads to problems.

Hi NKohli, very early on I did have some thought in that direction. So 2 days after I had turned this one on I turned off the "improved edit bar" (on top of the default edit bar on top of the edit window). That's the only gadget I had added (me no great fan of novelties for the sake of it and too busy to spend time finding what does what unless strictly necessary). Besides, turning that off was no loss whatsoever because it doesn't work with Mirror turned on anywaʏ. Niak, it didn't change a thing, kept on going potty as you please (that's why I forgot to mention that move: it had no effect and my memory got beyond saturated with the rest of it).