[resolved]Bug: Weird text selection issue in Collins Latin Dictionary
I was double-clicking on some words in an entry to look them up, and the double click resulted in strange selection.
When I double-clicked on fingere in the entry for "make", it selected all of these words:
In fact, double clicking on any words covered by that selection cause the same thing.
Similarly, double-clicking on other words in the same entry causes other strange selections:
Now, the look-up performed by the double-click is only for the word clicked on (which is correct), but the selection shouldn't be extended beyond that word.
MacBook Pro (2019), ThinkPad E540
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I also see this multi-word selection issue from double click in the Lewis and Short dictionary (another Latin resource):
Double-click only. No dragging.
MacBook Pro (2019), ThinkPad E540
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This is because you have Smart Text Selection enabled. When this is enabled, it will select the current phrase instead of the current word.
You can either disable Smart Text Selection in Program Settings or hold Alt while double-clicking to get the normal behavior. Hope that helps!
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Chris Culy (Faithlife) said:
This is because you have Smart Text Selection enabled. When this is enabled, it will select the current phrase instead of the current word.
You can either disable Smart Text Selection in Program Settings or hold Alt while double-clicking to get the normal behavior. Hope that helps!
So you're saying double-clicking always selects current phrase? Why? How is a phrase defined?
In any case, the selections shown don't seem to correspond to any clear concept of phrase, especially in the Collins examples. Is that a resource specific issue?
MacBook Pro (2019), ThinkPad E540
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Why does the meaning of double-click change when Smart Text is enabled? That doesn't make obvious sense as one is look-up and the other is select.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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I can't think of a reason why I'd want to select a phrase with a double click, and I like smart-select otherwise.
And it shouldn't the look-up use the whole phrase in that case? It's still only looking up the single word.
MacBook Pro (2019), ThinkPad E540
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Todd Phillips said:
So you're saying double-clicking always selects current phrase? Why?
Only when Smart Text Selection is enabled. This happens because when we do a power lookup, we first select what is under the mouse and then use the current selection when doing the lookup. When smart selection is enabled, the notion of "selection" is changed from single word to phrase.
Todd Phillips said:How is a phrase defined?
In any case, the selections shown don't seem to correspond to any clear concept of phrase, especially in the Collins examples. Is that a resource specific issue?
Phrases are determined using a third party natural language processing library, which (as noted in another thread) is not expected to be perfect, but rather give an educated guess. This library was designed for use with normal English prose, which is likely why it is not giving good results in this case (first, the resource is a dictionary, so it does not use normal prose and second, it contains many non-English words).
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This behavior does seem undesirable, so I will raise it with our designers and post back here with updates. Thank you for reporting it. In the meantime, holding Alt when you double-click is the simplest workaround.
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Chris Culy (Faithlife) said:
This happens because when we do a power lookup, we first select what is under the mouse and then use the current selection when doing the lookup. When smart selection is enabled, the notion of "selection" is changed from single word to phrase.
Does this mean the intent is to look up the entire phrase? I could see how that might be useful in limited situations, but it's not doing that. It may select the entire phrase, but it's only looking up the word. However, I'd rather the default for double-click to be only one word. In most cases, the phrase is indeterminate before I click on it, and so I wouldn't know what it would be selecting.
MacBook Pro (2019), ThinkPad E540
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To be completely honest, I'm not sure what the intent was, but either way, there is an issue here.
I've created a case internally and will begin investigating the appropriate fix today. Thanks!
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I've implemented a fix for this issue (double-click will select just the single word, as before). Someone from our QA department will update this thread when the fix ships publicly. Thank you!
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Thanks Chris!
MacBook Pro (2019), ThinkPad E540
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Chris Culy (Faithlife) said:
I've implemented a fix for this issue (double-click will select just the single word, as before). Someone from our QA department will update this thread when the fix ships publicly. Thank you!
This should be fixed in 6.1.
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