Input method in edit box becomes unstable after upgrading from v0.16.5 to v0.17

[xuhdev]

Description

In v0.17, if using an input method such as fcitx, the input box becomes unstable: The input method starts flashing and becomes very hard to input a character. This may be caused by some sort of frequent refreshing.

Steps to reproduce

• Find another user to start chatting.
• Try to input Chinese characters using fcitx.

Describe how what happens differs from what you expected.

The fcitx status box flashes and is hard to input any characters.

Version information

• Platform: web (in-browser) or desktop?

in-browser.

For the web app:

• Browser: Both Chromium 69 and Firefox 62.0.3.
• OS: Debian

I bisected the code, and the culprit turns out to be 92db2b8 . However, I couldn't further bisect, since the instructions do not work if I tried to check out a different version of matrix-js-sdk

[lampholder]

Could you try out the same input method editing the text on https://www.slatejs.org/#/rich-text and see if you see any similar problems?

Thanks - and sorry you've been bitten by this.

[xuhdev]

@lampholder No I don't see a problem.

[LCPD2012]

Could you try out the same input method editing the text on https://www.slatejs.org/#/rich-text and see if you see any similar problems?

Thanks - and sorry you've been bitten by this.

There is same problem when I'm typing text in Chinese both on Riot.im and on rich-text by using Microsoft Pinyin IME, it appears as some Pinyin are missing when typing with Microsoft Pinyin IME.

[xuhdev]

I'm not sure why this is labeled "question"... I would love to help bisect as long as you can provide instructions on how to use different versions of matrix-js-sdk.

[lampholder]

HI @xuhdev - it was labelled 'question' because I asked a question 😁

I don't think bisecting this is going to be helpful in this case - if we've introduced any regressions in any of the recent large updates to the composer the only option is going to be to debug and power through at this stage.

That said, what I would find super useful is videos/gifs of the problem in action - would you be able to grab that?

[xuhdev]

I have recorded a video: https://youtu.be/T8zK_wdpDxU

In the video, I tried to type something in an input method, but it is always flashed out in the input box. Only after a few tries, I can type in something.

[turt2live]

@xuhdev what keyboard layout and platform is that video recorded on?

[xuhdev]

I used en_US and I recorded it on Debian. However, I believe @LCPD2012 can reproduce it on Windows.

[turt2live]

So I tested this with Ubuntu 18.10 with fcitx using a Pinyin input method and saw no issues. I also tested on the slatejs website and saw no issues.

Is there more information I can get to maybe reproduce the bug?

[xuhdev]

I also have no issue on slatejs, but have issues on riot.im. I'm using fcitx as the input method framework. You might also wanna try a few more times because it is not always reproduceable. I've also heard some MacOS users having similar issues with rime but unfortunately I cannot verify.

[turt2live]

I've been trying for over an hour to break it, and it seems fine. I tried several of the Pinyin layouts available, and even some not-Pinyin layouts, and had no issues.

Can you try https://riot.im/develop and see what happens?

[xuhdev]

Similar issues happen on https://riot.im/develop

[turt2live]

There's a known issue with slate where input methods don't work, and I'm willing to accept that my testing may have been flawed. I'm going to close this in favour of #7665 to track the upstream issue.

[xuhdev]

I tested slatejs again and now I can reproduce the issue (it's just much less frequent). I agree that we should track upstream.