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authorKartik K. Agaram <vc@akkartik.com>2024-06-09 13:17:55 -0700
committerKartik K. Agaram <vc@akkartik.com>2024-06-09 13:17:55 -0700
commit9501f01ca0a8ddcf54e12584f79833c884fde939 (patch)
tree8cb32091ee02c5a9d4c6a0b175cd8c0bcf09788f
parent3e0cb2ed10c35961ea357afc674de204e9c9c83c (diff)
downloadview.love-9501f01ca0a8ddcf54e12584f79833c884fde939.tar.gz
fix a crash involving mouse and drawings
Thanks Alex Schroeder for reporting this crash. The scenario:
  * Edit a file like say this repo's Readme.
  * The second line is empty and there's a '+' to insert a drawing.
    Click on that.
  * Resize the window so just the first line of text and the drawing are
    visible.
  * Close the window.
  * Reopen lines.love, it will reopen the same file.
  * Click on the left margin to the left of the drawing.

Before this commit these steps yielded the following crash:

  Error: bad argument #1 to 'len' (string expected, got nil)
  text.lua:626: in function 'pos_at_end_of_screen_line'
  edit.lua:298: in function 'mouse_press'

There were two distinct problems here:

1. State.screen_bottom1 is not required to point to a text line, it
   could just as well be a drawing. I have been sloppy in handling that.
2. The bug was partially masked (the need to close and reopen the
   window) by a second bug: inserting a drawing was not invalidating the
   cache I save of starty coordinates for each line. (I've inserted and
   deleted starty invalidations a few times in the past, but it looks
   like I'd never had one in this particular location edit.draw before.)

How did these issues get missed for years?
  - Even though I use lines.love on a daily basis, it turns out I don't
    actually create line drawings all that often.
  - When I do, I'm still living in files that are mostly text with only
    an occasional drawing.
  - I keep my windows fairly large.

Between these 3 patterns, the odds of running into a drawing as the
first or bottom-most line on the screen were fairly small. And then I
had to interact with it. I suspect I tend to interact with drawings
after centering them vertically.

---

Bug #1 in particular has some interesting past history.

* Near the start of the project, when I implemented line-wrapping I
  started saving screen_bottom, the bottom-most line displayed on
  screen. I did this so I could scroll down easily just by assigning
  `screen_top = screen_bottom`. (On the other hand, scrolling up still
  required some work. I should perhaps get rid of it and just compute
  scrolls from scratch each time.)

* Also near the start of the project, I supported selecting text by a
  complex state machine spanning keypress, mouse press and mouse
  release:
    mouse click (press and immediate release) moves cursor
    mouse drag (press and much later release) creates selection
    shift-click selects from current cursor to click location
    shift-movement creates/grows a selection

* On 2023-06-01, inscript reported a bug. Opening a window with just a
  little bit of text (lots of unused space in the window), selecting all
  the text and then clicking below all the text would crash the editor.

  To fix this I added code at the bottom of edit.mouse_press which
  computed the final visible line+pos location and used that in the
  cursor-move/text-selection state machine. It did this computation
  based on.. screen_bottom. But I didn't notice that screen_bottom could
  be a drawing (which has no pos). This commit's bug/regression was
  created.

* On 2023-09-20, Matt Wynne encountered a crash which got me to realize
  I need code at the bottom of edit.mouse_release symmetric to the code
  at the bottom of edit.mouse_press. I still didn't notice that
  screen_bottom could be a drawing.

So in fixing inscript's bug report, I introduced (at least) 2
regressions, because I either had no idea or quickly forgot that
screen_bottom could point at a drawing.

While I created regressions, the underlying mental bug feels new. I just
never focused on the fact that screen_bottom could point at a drawing.

This past history makes me suspicious of my mouse_press/mouse_release
code. I think I'm going to get rid of screen_bottom entirely as a
concept. I'll still have to be careful though about the remaining
locations and which of them are allowed to point at drawings:

  - cursor and selection are not allowed to point at drawings
  - screen_top and screen_bottom are allowed to point at drawings

I sometimes copy between these 4 location variables. Auditing shows no
gaps where cursor could ever end up pointing at a drawing. It's just
when I started using screen_bottom for a whole new purpose (in
the mouse_press/release state machine) that I went wrong.

I should also try getting rid of starty entirely. Is it _really_ needed
for a responsive editor? I think I introduced it back when I didn't know
what I was doing with LÖVE and was profligately creating text objects
willy-nilly just to compute widths.

Getting rid of these two fairly global bits of mutable state will
hopefully make lines much more robust when the next person tries it out
in 6 months :-/ X-(

Thanks everyone for the conversation around this bug:
  https://merveilles.town/@akkartik/112567862542495637

---

Bug #2 has some complexity as well, and might lead to some follow-on
cleanup.

When I click on the button to insert a new drawing, the mouse_release
hook triggers and moves the cursor below the new drawing. This is
desirable, but I'd never noticed this happy accident. It stops working
when I invalidate starty for all lines (which gets recomputed and cached
for all visible lines on every frame).

Fixing this caused a couple of unit tests start crashing for 2 reasons
that required their own minor fixes:

  - My emulated mouse press and release didn't have an intervening
    frame and so mouse_release no longer receives starty. Now I've added
    a call to edit.draw() between press and release.

    This might actually bite someone for real someday, if they're
    running on a slow computer or something like that. I've tried to
    click really fast but I can't seem to put mouse_press and release in
    the same frame (assuming 30 frames per second)

  - My tests' window dimensions often violate my constraint that the
    screen always have one line of text for showing the cursor. They're
    unrealistically small or have a really wide aspect ratio (width 2x
    of height). I suspect lines.love will itself crash in those
    situations, but hopefully they're unrealistic. Hmm, I wonder what
    would happen if someone maximized in a 16:9 screen, that's almost
    2x.. Anyways, I've cleaned a couple of tests up, but might need to
    fix up others at some point. I'd have to rejigger all my brittle
    line-wrapping tests if I modify the screen width :-/ X-(
-rw-r--r--README.md5
-rw-r--r--drawing_tests.lua2
-rw-r--r--edit.lua13
-rw-r--r--text.lua19
-rw-r--r--text_tests.lua2
5 files changed, 33 insertions, 8 deletions
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 1a27ac7..690d94c 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -72,6 +72,11 @@ found anything amiss: http://akkartik.name/contact
 * No clipping yet for drawings. In particular, circles/squares/rectangles and
   point labels can overflow a drawing.
 
+* If you ever see a crash when clicking on the mouse, it might be because a
+  mouse press and release need to happen in separate frames. Try pressing and
+  releasing more slowly and let me know if that helps or not. This is klunky,
+  sorry.
+
 * Touchpads can drag the mouse pointer using a light touch or a heavy click.
   On Linux, drags using the light touch get interrupted when a key is pressed.
   You'll have to press down to drag.
diff --git a/drawing_tests.lua b/drawing_tests.lua
index ede25f0..64188df 100644
--- a/drawing_tests.lua
+++ b/drawing_tests.lua
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
 -- of specific shapes. In particular, no tests of freehand drawings.
 
 function test_creating_drawing_saves()
-  App.screen.init{width=120, height=60}
+  App.screen.init{width=800, height=600}
   Editor_state = edit.initialize_test_state()
   Editor_state.filename = 'foo'
   Editor_state.lines = load_array{}
diff --git a/edit.lua b/edit.lua
index b096274..42309df 100644
--- a/edit.lua
+++ b/edit.lua
@@ -66,8 +66,10 @@ function edit.initialize_state(top, left, right, font, font_height, line_height)
     --
     -- Make sure these coordinates are never aliased, so that changing one causes
     -- action at a distance.
+    --
+    -- On lines that are drawings, pos will be nil.
     screen_top1 = {line=1, pos=1},  -- position of start of screen line at top of screen
-    cursor1 = {line=1, pos=1},  -- position of cursor
+    cursor1 = {line=1, pos=1},  -- position of cursor; must be on a text line
     screen_bottom1 = {line=1, pos=1},  -- position of start of screen line at bottom of screen
 
     selection1 = {},
@@ -185,6 +187,7 @@ function edit.draw(State)
                        Drawing.before = snapshot(State, line_index-1, line_index)
                        table.insert(State.lines, line_index, {mode='drawing', y=y, h=256/2, points={}, shapes={}, pending={}})
                        table.insert(State.line_cache, line_index, {})
+                       for _,line_cache in ipairs(State.line_cache) do line_cache.starty = nil end
                        if State.cursor1.line >= line_index then
                          State.cursor1.line = State.cursor1.line+1
                        end
@@ -292,10 +295,7 @@ function edit.mouse_press(State, x,y, mouse_button)
   State.old_cursor1 = State.cursor1
   State.old_selection1 = State.selection1
   State.mousepress_shift = App.shift_down()
-  State.selection1 = {
-      line=State.screen_bottom1.line,
-      pos=Text.pos_at_end_of_screen_line(State, State.screen_bottom1),
-  }
+  State.selection1 = Text.final_text_loc_on_screen(State)
 end
 
 function edit.mouse_release(State, x,y, mouse_button)
@@ -333,7 +333,7 @@ function edit.mouse_release(State, x,y, mouse_button)
     end
 
     -- still here? mouse release is below all screen lines
-    State.cursor1.line, State.cursor1.pos = State.screen_bottom1.line, Text.pos_at_end_of_screen_line(State, State.screen_bottom1)
+    State.cursor1 = Text.final_text_loc_on_screen(State)
     edit.clean_up_mouse_press(State)
 --?     print_and_log(('edit.mouse_release: finally selection %s,%s cursor %d,%d'):format(tostring(State.selection1.line), tostring(State.selection1.pos), State.cursor1.line, State.cursor1.pos))
   end
@@ -596,6 +596,7 @@ end
 function edit.run_after_mouse_click(State, x,y, mouse_button)
   App.fake_mouse_press(x,y, mouse_button)
   edit.mouse_press(State, x,y, mouse_button)
+  edit.draw(State)
   App.fake_mouse_release(x,y, mouse_button)
   edit.mouse_release(State, x,y, mouse_button)
   App.screen.contents = {}
diff --git a/text.lua b/text.lua
index 9c27bde..d9e7653 100644
--- a/text.lua
+++ b/text.lua
@@ -621,6 +621,7 @@ function Text.pos_at_start_of_screen_line(State, loc1)
 end
 
 function Text.pos_at_end_of_screen_line(State, loc1)
+  assert(State.lines[loc1.line].mode == 'text')
   Text.populate_screen_line_starting_pos(State, loc1.line)
   local line_cache = State.line_cache[loc1.line]
   local most_recent_final_pos = utf8.len(State.lines[loc1.line].data)+1
@@ -634,6 +635,24 @@ function Text.pos_at_end_of_screen_line(State, loc1)
   assert(false, ('invalid pos %d'):format(loc1.pos))
 end
 
+function Text.final_text_loc_on_screen(State)
+  if State.lines[State.screen_bottom1.line].mode == 'text' then
+    return {
+      line=State.screen_bottom1.line,
+      pos=Text.pos_at_end_of_screen_line(State, State.screen_bottom1),
+    }
+  end
+  local loc2 = Text.to2(State, State.screen_bottom1)
+  while true do
+    if State.lines[loc2.line].mode == 'text' then break end
+    assert(loc2.line > 1 or loc2.screen_line > 1 and loc2.screen_pos > 1)  -- elsewhere we're making sure there's always at least one text line on screen
+    loc2 = Text.previous_screen_line(State, loc2)
+  end
+  local result = Text.to1(State, loc2)
+  result.pos = Text.pos_at_end_of_screen_line(State, result)
+  return result
+end
+
 function Text.cursor_at_final_screen_line(State)
   Text.populate_screen_line_starting_pos(State, State.cursor1.line)
   local screen_lines = State.line_cache[State.cursor1.line].screen_line_starting_pos
diff --git a/text_tests.lua b/text_tests.lua
index b8f89db..44cdafc 100644
--- a/text_tests.lua
+++ b/text_tests.lua
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ function test_initial_state()
 end
 
 function test_click_to_create_drawing()
-  App.screen.init{width=120, height=60}
+  App.screen.init{width=800, height=600}
   Editor_state = edit.initialize_test_state()
   Editor_state.lines = load_array{}
   Text.redraw_all(Editor_state)