"Highlight pointer when you press control" option breaks firefox cut/copy by keyboard.

[Andy Price]

Using an up-to-date dapper i368 install, when using the "Highlight pointer when you press control" option in the mouse preferences, you cannot use Ctrl-c to copy or Ctrl-x to cut a substring from the address box or the google search text box in firefox.

Steps to reproduce:
1) Click on System->Preferences->Mouse->Pointers tab
2) Enable "Hilight pointer when you press control" option
3) Run firefox and enter text in the address box
4) Select a subsection of the text with cursor or shift+arrow keys
5) Press Ctrl-c or Ctrl-x

Expected results:
1) The selected text should be copied or cut to the clipboard

Actual Results:
1) The cursor is hilighted due to Ctrl being pressed
2.a) With Ctrl-c the whole of the text in the box is copied to the clipboard instead of just the selected part.
2.b) With Ctrl-x the whole of the text in the box is cut to the clipboard instead of just the selected part.

Further observation:
Text box widgets in form elements on web pages don't show the same buggy behaviour as the address box and google search box.
Other applications (e.g. gedit) don't seem to show the bug.

[Vladimír Lapáček (vil)]

Using up to date Dapper and firefox 1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.2-0ubuntu1, I experience somewhat different behaviour following the steps you mention.

1) By pressing Ctrl the selection disappears.

2.a) If I just depress Ctrl, the selection reappears and mouse cursor is highlighted.

2.b) If I continue by pressing c (Ctrl + c), exactly the selection gets copied to the clipboard.

2.c) For Ctrl + v the same as for 2.b

[Andy Price (andy-price)]

Vladimír: Thanks for your comment. By "Ctrl + v" i'm assuming you mean "Ctrl + x"

As Vladimír just pointed out, the actual selection gets deselected when i initially press Ctrl. I can add that when it is depressed without pressing anything else the whole text is selected. I guess this is the root of the bug.

Other than that I'm just confirming that I've upgraded to firefox 1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.2-0ubuntu1 and the same behaviour I described initially still occurs.

[Ian Jackson (ijackson)]

I don't know exactly what's going on here but I think the bug here is
that this accessibility feature is misdesigned and the X events it
result in cause firefox to think it has lost mouse or keyboard focus.

Ian.

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

Yet another data point. I have
firefox 1.5.0.1-1ubuntu10 installed with the ctrl-to-focus-pointer on and using ctrl-c/ctrl-x behaves as expected results...

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

That's known upstream: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=125618

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

duplicate of bug #9441