How can i disable text selection from a `BasicText...

# compose

[Alex Styl]

How can i disable text selection from a BasicTextField? Wrapping it in a DisableSelection doesn't seem to work

[Alex Styl]

tldr: You can pass enabled = false which disabled everything (including editing and selection). Not ideal but can be used as a workaround.

[Halil Ozercan]

Which BasicTextField overload are you using? For onValueChange you can simply set the new value by collapsing the selection. Whenever the new value's selection is a non-collapsed range, just use the selection from the previous value.

In the new BTF, you can use InputTransformation and reject the selection change. I'm on mobile rn so I'll try to follow up with code samples soon

[Alex Styl]

im confused. what does collapsing the selection mean?

I am on desktop and i want to prevent the BasicTextField to handy and dragging (selection) happening to it, but allow editing. This is because I want my text field to be draggable

[PHondogo]

Thoughts: may be to put it to Box and place element that handle mouse event over it?

[Halil Ozercan]

var value by remember { mutableStateOf(TextFieldValue()) }
BasicTextField(
    value = value,
    onValueChange = {
        value = it.copy(
            selection = if (it.selection.collapsed) {
                it.selection
            } else {
                TextRange(value.selection.start)
            }
        )
    }
)

// or

BasicTextField(rememberTextFieldState(), inputTransformation = {
    if (!selection.collapsed) {
        selection = TextRange(originalSelection.start)
    }
})

[Halil Ozercan]

this is essentially about never allowing BasicTextField to have an extended selection.

Collapse and Extend refers to the size of the TextRange that is used as selection. Collapsed selection means there is no selection, just a cursor. Extended is when TextRange spans at least one character.

[Halil Ozercan]

TextRange(4, 4) is collapsed, TextRange(4, 5) is extended.

[Alex Styl]

@PHondogo what you suggest is what I ended up doing. have an 'editable' state and depending on that enable or disable the text. needs a lot of wiring but I was able to get the UX I wanted

[Alex Styl]

@Halil Ozercan your code does not disable selection. it 'blocks' selection after it starts. the text fields ends up consuming the drag event even if nothing gets selected afterwards and the cursor moved to where the drag position starts

[Alex Styl]

For anyone stumbling across this in the future, it is much simpler to be swapping out a BasicTextField with a BasicText if you need to disable editing. No other code changes needed

[Halil Ozercan]

glad to hear that that approach works for you. BasicTextField has always been designed to be compatible with BasicText. So in a scenario where BasicTextField does not have overflow, BasicTextField and BasicText rendering should be identical if all text related parameters are the same.

[Alex Styl]

that's good to hear. overall all seem to be working as expected now.

The only difference I found is that the BasicTextField has some default width for some reason. Seems like a bug which I filled it here

[Alex Styl]

Would be cool if the text selection API worked the same for both btw. found it very strange how DisableSelection doesn't work on BasicTextField

[Halil Ozercan]

The default width was discussed before, so the current behavior is intended. When a BasicTextField is placed on the screen with no content in it, what should be its width? It should not be zero because then you have no way to interact with it. 1.dp or any other similarly small value is no different than 0.dp. Therefore we kept the initially chosen HHHHHHHHHH as the default text that is measured for the minimum width of any BasicTextField . IIRC the workaround you found was also the official suggestion. cc; @Grant Toepfer , I remember you looking into this.

[Alex Styl]

ok, i understand that it works as intended. i might be missing something but why is there a need for the text field to be interactive when it has no text?

[Alex Styl]

I see the Basic components as building blocks to build UI with. not to use directly in my app. that sounds like a decision for components ie for a design system.

[Halil Ozercan]

We think that by default a BasicTextField call should place a box on the screen that can be tapped to bring the keyboard. Otherwise expecting people to explicitly provide width modifier to achieve this behavior sounds unintuitive.

[Alex Styl]

i see. I think my "beef" is that there is a Basic_TextField_ component instead of a Basic_TextInput_ component. 100% it makes sense to have some width on a text field, but not so much for any text input

[Alex Styl]

just discussing here btw. not arguing in any way

[Halil Ozercan]

I see the Basic components as building blocks to build UI with. not to use directly in my app. that sounds like a decision for components ie for a design system.

I understand this point of view. You are correct that Basic components are not supposed to be called directly in app code. However BasicTextField by design has to make some tradeoffs to be at least usable. The min width is one of those. Ideally foundation would provide a modifier or some other composable that doesn't even do text layout, text selection, just text input management from InputConnection.