LiveCode Forums.

I recently opened a stack with a text field containing a lot of text and wanted to delete some of it.
I was in the IDE so I clicked the "run mode" tool on the tool palette and clicked in the field to insert an insertion point.
I then scrolled down a fair way using the scroll bar and "shift-clicked" to extend the selection.
Briefly the selection was highlighted and then the "Edit" menu flashed and the script editor opened with the card script being displayed.
I had of course lost my selection.
I tried this with every version of LC I have installed (5.5, 6.xx, 7.xx, 8.xx)
They all exhibited the same behaviour.
I have found no mention of this "shortcut" in the user guide or listed as a preference.

Is this not a bug?
Surely you should be able to extend a selection of text using the shift-click method while in run mode?
Is there some "hidden" pref I have set?

I am using a Mac in case that makes a difference.

James

That isn't normal behavior, there may be a script somewhere that is changing the response. The default IDE behavior is to open the script of a selected object with Cmd-E, or with Cmd-Option-click when there is no selection. But neither shortcut works with editable fields, you need to add the shift key as well (Cmd-Shift-Option-click) to get the contextual menu. I've never seen a plain shift-click open the script for any object.

I just tried it in LC 7.1 and was able to shift-click to extend the selection normally.

Thanks Jacque, I will go through my plugins at first and failing that my extensions to see what might be intervening.
I had gotten half way through a bug report when I thought to try earlier versions of LC which prompted this forum request instead.

Seems the issue is dependant on whether the field is locked or not.
So, locktext true, works as expected
but locktext false, script editor opens.

but wait there is more....before I discovered this I noted one more anomaly.

Given Jacque's reply I removed all plugins, checked my macro apps for any shift key traps and then relaunched LC7.1.1
I opened the message watcher, allowed IDE messages but suppressed some (my god there is a lot happening behind the scenes).
Clicked on a text field and noticed nothing untoward. (Although I noticed the menus being built each time one clicked in the text field.)
Held down the shift key and clicked elsewhere in the text field.
Before everything scrolled off screen into the never never (seems the message watcher dumps after a while.) I noticed...
the following two lines...
commandKeyDown
editscript

Now the command key was not down.
I tried cmd-clicking and got nada
I tried option-clicking and got nada (well it registered a selection changed and rebuilt the menus again but there was no visible change to the text field.)
I tried shift-clicking again and yes, the message watcher tells me it has detected the commandKey being pressed.

I am using a new apple wireless keyboard so I grabbed a rather old apple usb keyboard and tried it.
same thing. So it is not the key board.

For some reason LC thinks I am pressing the command key when I am pressing the shift key.

I had another stack I was testing for selecting across fields and tried it.
It extended the selection fine.

Compared field settings for both stacks and noticed the problem only occurs when the field is unlocked.
So, solves the issue for locked fields but the unlocked one remains.

so Jacque, were you trying this in a locked text field or an unlocked one.
If the former could you please try the latter?

I was using an unlocked field, LC 7.1 stable. I just dragged an editable text field from the tool palette and used it as-is with whatever default settings it had. I just tested again in 7.1.1rc2 and it works okay too.

Darn, darn, darn.

Got any frontscripts running?

Not that I know off.
I have removed all plugins (again that I know of, unless there is some other place LC looks).
I am assuming any front scripts installed by a plugin only gets loaded if the plugin is in the plugin directory and activated.
As far as I know I am running plain vanilla installs.
(BTW my triple darn was to get to the ten character min of posts.)

I'm surprised you didn't spell "darn" differently.

Turn on the Message Watcher, and do the selection thing until you see the mysterious commandkey message appear. Deselect the Active checkbox at the bottom left of the MW to inactivate message reporting temporarily. Click on the line in the MW where the commandkey message appears, and in the Object field below the list you should be able to see the object that sent the message. Maybe that will tell you where to look.

Thanks Jacque, I did try this but the response time versus the sheer number of messages means by the time the watcher turns off the message of interest has scrolled out of the variable holding the messages. When I first tried this I selected all the text in the message watcher window and pasted it in to a text editor. It was still truncated. It seems it has a limited capacity.
What I will try to do is filter out as many as the other messages as I can and see if I can do as you suggest.

well I tried filtering the MW but gave up.
Checked its script and increased the message limit from 100 to 1000.
found the commandlinedown message and dbl clicked.
the script was "revshortcutslibrary"
why I get there I don't know.
The sequence is
revUpdateSelectionChanged
selectionChanged
mousedown
revIDEHandleMouseDown
mouseDown
buildMenus 12:35:32 AM (0)
(sequence of menu builders being called)
commandkeydown

now of course I was holding down the shift key, not the command key.
After a lot of looking over the scripts I still have no idea why it thinks the command key is down.

So I thought I would try holding the command and shift keys down.

OK, this works as if I was only holding down the shift key.
In other words the selection gets extended and the script editor does not open.

Looking at the MW again the sequence I see this time is...
revUpdateSelectionChanged
selectionChanged
mouseup
revIDEHandleMouseDown
mouseup

no building of menus, no key modifier handler of any type called.

I will just put it all in to the "very strange" basket and use my newly found workaround of extending selections holding the command and shift keys down when I click in the field.

Thanks for you help Jacque, much appreciated.

That's bizarre.

If the commandkey message was indented, it would mean that LC's menu building script sent the command specifically. Since menu handlers were involved that seems logical, though I have no idea why it might be necessary.

The other puzzler is why it's only happening to you. Do you have LC prefs set to use cmd-opt-click to edit scripts? I wonder if there's a conflict there if that's turned off. I always have it turned on.

If you're tired of messing with this, no problem letting the thread drop.

Solved.
I use an extension called "popclip"
Really quite handy in that any text you select it pops up a little menu with options such as Cut, Copy, Paste etc.
I use it quite a lot.
Quite nifty in the script editor too when using livecode.
Seems it was trying to work out what I was doing and somehow triggered the commandkeydown message to be posted in livecode's IDE.
When I turned off "popclip" the problem went away.
I have now set it to not activate within LC

(I had launched LC in a new, pristine, user account and there was no issue, hence it had to be with a system level process that I had enabled in my usual account. Probably should have done this two days ago.)

Thanks for you patience Jacque. I will close this thread now.
Given I have a work around I will see if I miss "popclip" too much, if I do I will reactivate and use the workaround.