[9.0b14] rubberband selection activating spontaneously

[sirksel]

Something is very sporadically wonky with the interaction of rubber-band selection and some other setting in my installation... I'm in the process of trying to add settings one-by-one to a clean install to see which setting it is that conflicts. Has anyone else seen the following behavior?

When I have the right half of my screen devoted to a TC window and the left half of my screen notepad++ or chrome or something else, I often find myself clicking between one app and other to activate the respective windows for typing. In TC, to avoid selecting something in that process, I always click a blank part of the screen. If I do this clicking quickly enough, somehow the rubberband mode spontaneously activates and gets stuck in a selection mode -- as though the left mouse button is down, when in fact, it is not. Once this starts, nothing... not even cmd_rereadsource (which is, for me, mapped to Esc) will get me out of this mode. I have to click around in various places until the rubberband thinks it has a valid selection. This happens maybe 10% of the time when I'm quickly clicking between windows, so it is hard to replicate.

The biggest reason I think this is a bug and not something like me inadvertently moving the mouse while clicking is that the rubber-band mode that activates is selecting things in both panes simultaneously! From everything I've read in the documentation, this mode is supposed to select files in one pane or the other. I've read about no behavior where (1) it should lock in this mode after the left mouse button is released or (2) the selection should cross the center line and be operating on both panes simultaneously...

P.S. This does not happen with a fresh portable install, so my guess is that it's a settings conflict. My only problem is figuring out which setting...

So here are my questions:

1. Has anyone else seen this? Is this a known issue? If so, I won't bother troubleshooting further, but I couldn't find it in my search of the forums. I've just disabled it for now.

2. Any ideas what settings might be conflicting? I'm literally commenting out sections of my wincmd.ini to find the conflicting set of settings. I've been doing this for over an hour, and I still haven't found it.

Thanks for the help, and Mr. Ghisler, thanks for all your work in making Total Commander the great program that it is! There are many developers who rarely introduce material new features with a mature product, so they don't have to debug them -- but thankfully you're not one of those guys. You keep pushing the envelope to make TC better and better, even if it occasionally means having to fix little bugs like this. Thank you again for your time.

[Phred]

Just to be clear, the 'rubber-band mode' is.... when the mouse pointer/cursor is in left-click-holddown mode and everything is selected as the pointer moves?

[ghisler(Author)]

If you click on TC, TC receives a mouse down, mouse move, and mouse up event. If you move the mouse too much, then the rubberband selection gets activated by the mouse move. The same happens with e.g. notepad and Explorer.

If this is a problem for you, you can disable the rubberband selection via Configuration - Options - Operation.

[sirksel]

Thank you both for your replies. Phred, yes, I think we're talking about the same selection mode. It's just that it behaves strangely for me, maybe 10% of the time.

Mr. Ghisler, could you take a look at the image below? I still think this might not be what you're describing. Here's how this happens:

Image: https://s11.postimg.org/pkacxg83n/rubberband_issue2.jpg

1. When moving the mouse fast, I end up clicking in a blank spot under the red circle. You can see in the photo the darkness of the rubberband selection that was started there. Remember, I'm clicking to activate the window (and not holding the mouse button down), and I'll immediately be moving to my left to activate another application window to the left of TC.

2. Next, I begin to move the mouse (with the mouse buttons UP -- nothing held down) in the direction of the red arrow, but it's inadvertently locked in a rubber-band select mode. By the time I realize this I'm often all the way over to the left edge of the application on my way to the application to its left.

3. I don't think I'm holding the mouse button down at all. But let's say for 5 pixels of a move or something, it's possible the mouse button doesn't release right away. In other words, I'm saying the button is certainly released well before the mouse is moving over any file names (even in the right pane).

4. What seems so strange about this is that all of the files that you see selected here in BOTH panes of this screenshot were selected in that one motion. I'm absolutely certain the mouse button was never held down at all in the left pane. In other words, the selection rectangle crossed the right pane / left pane threshhold and started selecting on the left side too? I've never seen that double-panel behavior before when normally using this mode.

5. Now we're locked in a rubber-band mode and no mouse button are down. What's so strange is that when I move the mouse around to try to get out of the mode, it's very clear that it's operating to select from both panes. As I resize the rubber band, the selection is still growing and shrinking in both the left pane and the right pane at the same time.

I just wanted to be sure that this is the behavior you're thinking it is, because it seems really strange. I could understand this better, if for example, my click in the right pane was a little too long and something got selected in the right pane accidentally. I don't understand (1) how it gets locked in rubber band mode with no buttons down and (2) why the selection would be growing and shrinking in both panes at the same time.

If you say this is the expected behavior, I'm not one to question it. I can just disable it as you say, which I've already done. However, I just wanted to be sure I explained it clearly. Thanks again!

[ghisler(Author)]

I cannot see this behaviour here where both panels are affected. Maybe it depends on what you do in TC before switching away to the editor?

[sirksel]

Mr. Ghisler, are you saying that you can't see this behaviour being normal, or that you don't think the photo is evidence of the behavior? If the latter, do you see in the photo how there are 26 files selected on the left side and 5 on the right? What I'm trying to say is that all those selections (on both sides) were caused by a single click-and-release (no drag) and a single mouse motion upward and to the left. No files were selected in either pane before this click and move. Also, in this particular example, I never clicked outside of TC. I was "caught" in the rubberband mode with no buttons down after that first click. I stopped and took the screenshot as soon as I discovered I was caught again.

If it helps you diagnose, I spent a little time making a screen recording and uploading a private link to Youtube. In this video below, it's not the same exact incident as the photo, but the same idea. Everything you see is caused by a single click in the lower right of the right pane. No clicks outside the TC window. All the selection/deselection you see going on happens as the mouse is being moved with no buttons depressed. We're effectively stuck in some weird two-pane version of the rubber-band mode. You will note that it is oddly selecting and deselecting files in both panes at the same time. The mouse was clicked only once in this entire video -- at the beginning -- and then released.

https://youtu.be/f3JDHkbYOYE

Does this help you understand what I'm talking about? If it's too much trouble to fix, don't worry about it. I'm probably just going to disable it with UseRubberBandSelection=0 for now. I did think it was strange enough that you'd want to see it. I'm trying to figure out which wincmd.ini settings might be interacting here, but I haven't had any luck so far.

[Phred]

FWIW, as a comment from the sidelines, I've never seen this behaviour in TC itself, alone.
I've certainly seen it when my mouse refuses to up-click, even though I've physically released the mouse's primary button.
Locked in select-everything-the-mouse-pointer-moves-over mode.
It's been resolved, variously by keyboard reset sequences sent to my Cybex KVM box, logging out/logging in, rebooting, time.
At one time I removed all mouse-affecting software, extra HID programs, of any kind - pximouse/PixelArt Imaging, KatMouse, MouseWithoutBorders, etc..

[ghisler(Author)]

Could it be that your mouse driver gives the window under the mouse cursor the focus even when you don't click on that window? In that case, TC would continue to select files in the other panel when you move over that panel. I cannot see that in your video because the panel headers are not visible.

[btcslg]

also have this problem
seems begin from 9.0b13

[sirksel]

Thanks for the responses. In answer to your question, Mr. Ghisler, regarding focus-on-hover, I do not have that enabled. I have to click on a window to activate it, and that's why I noticed this problem in the first place. If my hand is already on the mouse, instead of alt-tabbing, I'll often just click a blank area in the TC pane to activate the window. That's definitely when this occurs.

While I think suspecting the mouse driver or mouse button sticking is certainly reasonable, I ruled that out previous to posting for the following reasons:

• 1. I've tested a portable installation on three different computers, with three different mouse types/drivers, and they all exhibit the behavior.
  
  2. I use lots of applications, with rubber-band or other mouse selection with many/most of them, and I haven't noticed this behavior in any other application. (I'm a fairly experienced user/coder, and non-conforming behavior like this generally gets noticed by me the first time it happens...)
  
  3. This behavior does not occur with a fresh installation of Total Commander. Therefore, it seems like some combination of my settings in my wincmd.ini are not playing well together. The trick is to figure out which ones. I'm trying to boil that down so you can replicate it easily.

Given that at least one other user has noticed this, I'm going to resume the commenting-out and changing of various settings in wincmd.ini to see if I can narrow it to the right combo that creates the problem. More to come once I can isolate the problem and get it to reproduce in a fresh install with just a few lines of wincmd.ini settings.

Thanks again for your time.

[immi]

I can confirm this

(TC 9.0B14 / W10 x64)

[ghisler(Author)]

Sorry, I couldn't reproduce it. Maybe it has the same reason as the other problems (dropped TC messages), so please try again with beta 15.

[sirksel]

I think you fixed it. I re-enabled the rubber band mode under beta 15, and I haven't seen this issue happen again in the past several days. Thanks!

[ghisler(Author)]

Great, thanks! Please let me know if it happens again.