Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 66315
Add option to turn off drag-and-drop editing
Last modified: 2014-07-28 09:36:12 UTC
I would like to see an option to turn off drag-and-drop editing, as in MS Word. I have twitchy fingers with the mouse. For example, if I move the mouse quickly from the foot of the screen to the top of the screen, my finger can randomly twitch. By the time it "untwitches", I might have highlighted perhaps two characters, moved on about one inch, then inserted the characters in some random position. I either notice the drag and drop immediately, or I find it during the final spell check.
Reassigned to Requirements.
If the response to my request had been any faster, it would have arrived slighly before I actually submitted it.
Isn't this properly a desktop setting? Does OOo use the desktop setting? (It doesn't for me at least) The D&D threshold in Writer is instantaneous, which is bad in itself, but it isn't even consistent with D&D in the rest of the suite (using 2.x on Linux here).
I'm not sure whether jes' questions and comments are being addressed to me (the originator) or to the OOo developers. To be on the safe side, I'm answering :) jes wrote: > Isn't this properly a desktop setting? I don't know what a "desktop setting" is (I searched the OOo help). Therefore I can't say if it's properly a desktop setting. > Does OOo use the desktop setting? (It doesn't for me at least) Same answer as above.
By "desktop setting" I mean a property managed by the operating system through the desktop, rather than through individual applications. E.g., I can change the mouse sensitivity, and even the "drag & drop threshold" at the desktop/system level, which should tune this to my comfort for every application. However, from my testing anyway, OOo completely ignores changes to that setting, and handles the drag & drop operation all on it's own. While it would be nice if OOo was less sensitive with d&d, it seems to me that this is rightfully something that should be handled system-wide and OOo should respect whatever I set for my system.
Let's label this for what it is: drag and drop is a data loss bug. If I could set the keyword, I would. Drag and drop shouldn't even be the default. This does not just affect the word processor. It also affects other programs in the suite --at least the spreadsheet-- so the component should be reset. This doesn't even depend on a user error. Drag and drop sensitivity varies unpredictably with the speed of the computer and its current state. Accidental mouse strokes can and do ruin documents, sometimes without detection. And what if you have a touch pad? An errant touch can really mess up a document, and you may never know until it's too late. If you are working on a big-bucks proposal, you can discover the hard way that this is a very serious problem. Even Microsoft has the good sense to allow disabling this misfeature, and they do it at the application level. Contrary to jes' comments, drag and drop is NOT a system setting. At the moment, I'm typing with a very ordinary setup: Win XP, MS mouse, Dell computer. I checked the entire menu for system mouse settings and there is no drag and drop setting. And don't assume this is an accessibility issue. I'm an expert touch typist and I'm fast with editing. Even just a few minutes ago I had an unwanted event, which, fortunately, I noticed.
I just checked Ubuntu Karmic (current version). There is a system mouse setting for drag and drop sensitivity, but it doesn't seem to do anything. And there doesn't seem to be a way to DISABLE drag and drop. So I don't know what OSs this applies to, but it doesn't seem to apply just to Win XP. Priority P3 means "probably never"--right? How about at least P2?
I really hate drag and drop for text editing as I generally only use it by accident since my normal workflow for moving text involves selecting, then cut/paste using keystrokes. Given the small size of text, I frequently need to refine my selection and it's very confusing when the selection refinement becomes a DnD. DnD-for-text one of the first things I turnoff when I configure MS Word (which usually means turning off many of MS's "user-friendly" features). In MS Word this is an application setting and should be as well in OO; DnD is less of a problem in a spreadsheet.
This really is something annoying. For about anything else, drag and drop is fine, but for a text selection, it's just annoying. I can't count the times I selected a piece of text, and trying to change the selection it starts dragging around the previously selected text.
Created attachment 83742 [details] disable drag'n'drop disable_dnd.ott is a Writer document template which embeds a starbasic macro which shows how it could be possible to disable drag'n'drop functionality on a document (macro level security must be set to "medium").