Drag and drop of images is dangerous in evince and too easy to perform
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Evince |
Expired
|
Wishlist
|
|||
One Hundred Papercuts |
Fix Released
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
evince (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
Low
|
Ubuntu Desktop Bugs |
Bug Description
Binary package hint: evince
In the new evince in jaunty, dragging starting from an image actually drags the image, while dragging over text will select it. There are at least three problems in this.
- the operation may harm the user: if I click and drag a page of a pdf which is a scanned document, and I release the document over evince, evince will load the page as an image. This is VERY bad. First, do not know why, this will trigger high memory allocation and eventually trash the system. This happens to me frequently in jaunty. Just a small mistake, a click too much (easy to happen by pure mistake using touchpads) and you have to hard-reboot the machine. While you were working.
- usability: if the drag does NOT trigger high memory usage, it may load a whole pdf page as a separate document. This may be unnoticed because the user continues to see the same page as before, just a bit zoomed in. Then the user zooms out, tries to go to the next page. Does not work. Then finally realises that he is looking at a new window. This happened to me frequently too.
- usability, ii: without knowing about the implementation of PDF, as there are pdfs with text rendered as image, you can not understand why "sometimes it lets me select text, some other times it drags an image". This may be particularly frustrating: you try to select a text, you see that you are dragging something instead, release mouse, and end up with evince loading an image as described above.
The problem may be summarised as follows: Selection should be selection. Dragging should be dragging. These are separate actions. You may eventually drag _after_ you have selected, as in openoffice for example. The current behaviour of enabling a potentially dangerous and confusing operation with the right button should be disabled.
Changed in evince: | |
status: | Unknown → Confirmed |
Changed in evince (Ubuntu): | |
assignee: | nobody → Ubuntu Desktop Bugs (desktop-bugs) |
importance: | Undecided → Low |
status: | New → Triaged |
Changed in hundredpapercuts: | |
status: | New → Confirmed |
Changed in hundredpapercuts: | |
milestone: | none → round-6 |
Changed in hundredpapercuts: | |
milestone: | round-6 → round-1 |
Changed in evince: | |
importance: | Unknown → Wishlist |
Changed in evince: | |
status: | Confirmed → Expired |
I notice that the new behaviour in evince is probably inspired by that of web browsers such as firefox. However, in firefox, I can't release an image OVER the firefox window to have it loaded. This prevents the problems above. To load an image by drag and drop in firefox I have to drag it over the address bar.