Cool VL Viewer forum

On Mac releases 1.26.22.18, and now 1.26.22.20, the "Auto-focus chatbar & history" feature no longer works, regardless of whether that check-box in Preferences/Text chat is ticked or not. This feature works find in 1.26.22.10, and us super-useful for RP, so I'd really like it back.

On rechecking the release notes for Linux (the ones I normally read even though I drive a Mac) I notice in the announcement for 1.26.22.14 this: "When enabled, the "AutoFocusChat" debug setting ("Preferences" -> "Text chat" -> "Auto-focus chat bar & history") now also causes any typed printable character key to be redirected to the chat bar when the latter is open/showing and the key did not correspond to any shortcut in the focused floater."

Might this relate to the problem? 1.26.22.13 crashed on startup so I wasn't able to test that release at all.

It works just fine for me... Please provide repro steps.

In 1.26.22.10:
1. Open Chat-history window by pressing Ctrl-H.
2. Start typing "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog", the chat-line at the bottom of the screen opens automatically to receive the input.
3. Press Enter, and the line is sent, and the chat-line closes (I know that is an option I have turned on).

In 1.26.22.18 and 1.26.22.20:
1. Open Chat-history window by pressing Ctrl-H.
2. Start typing "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog", and nothing happens. The chatline does not open automatically. Instead, I have to tap Enter to open the chat-line at the bottom of the screen manually.

Sorry, won't fix because it's not a bug, but the expected behaviour...

The chat input line is supposed to be focused only if it is part of the (showing) chat history or of the already opened bottom chat bar. So, the feature cannot work if there is no chat input line available. If you use the chat-bar auto-close, then you indeed need to first hit ENTER before typing (and ENTER must not be a valid keystroke for the currently focused UI element).

The previous versions had a bug that caused the chat bar to auto-open, but it also caused ruckus with other floaters (stealing their focus while they had actions for the key press) and the built-in browser.

Simply disable the "auto-close" feature of the chat bar.

OK

I turned off the "auto-close" feature on my chat bar, as you suggested, but I must be missing something, because I don't understand how the auto-focus is supposed to work now.

If I have the bottom chat-bar open, and the Chat History floater open and focused (I have no input bar in my Chat History because I use the "old style" floater), the bottom bar is not focused, and does not get focused when I start typing. I have to tap Esc to unfocus the Chat History floater, and transfer focus to the bottom bar. Having done that, I can type a chat line, but when I press ENTER, focus transfers to the Chat History floater, and does not transfer back to the bottom chat-bar when I start typing my next line, unless I press Esc first. As far as I can see, auto-focus does not happen. What am I doing wrong?

Cannot reproduce here: chat history (without input line) opened or not, focused or not, and even with another floater focused but the next keystroke not being a valid one for this floater (example: Radar opened and focused, typing "x" while no avatar with a name starting with "x" is listed in the radar), the chat bar is always properly focused and the character inserted in it...

It could be a Mac-specific bug however (depending on how the keystrokes are dispatched under MacOS-X), but not owning neither having access to any Mac, I'm afraid I cannot help.

I'll try if I can reproduce and difference between windows and the mac version this weekend. I don't quite understand how it's expected to behave as I just run the default setup but at least I can try repro your steps.

I haven't been able to repro this, maybe cause I'm not quite understanding the expected behaviour. I've also noticed that some keyboard changes in osx 10.14, so maybe that is why I can't repro it here.