Invisible text cursor in LibreOffice

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1

Hi,

I have following problem since ~1 week. When I’m changing (with Alt-Tab) between different LibreOffice documents, the blinking text cursor is not visible, also not when clicking on a position in the field (the normal pointer is visible). The text cursor only becomes visible when typing a button on the keyboard, then the typed character and the text cursor is getting visible. This behavior is very weird and make it difficult to copy and past texts from one document to the other, because you never know where you are in the document after switching with Alt-Tab. You also can’t see what you “marked” because it will not be highlighted. This effect is annoying with Writer and more frustrating with Calc when trying to copy numbers or complete rows from on document to the next.

This problem does not occur in other Apps (e.g. Firefox, Thunderbird, Kate…), only LibreOffice “hides” the text cursor when switching from an other window.

Has somebody else observed this problem?

2

Which Desktop Environment? Everything normal here with Gnome.

3

I just tested this on Tumbleweed KDE Plasma using LO Writer and yes the text cursor disappears and only shows up again when a key is pressed. Not tried Calc. Not a function I normally use so had not noticed before!

Stuart

4

Hi,

thanks for the answers! I’m happy to hear, that my system is not the only one which shows this weird behavior.

I’m using KDE 6.2.3 with Wayland and LibreOffice 24.8.2.1.

Best,

Michael

5

Login with the selection “KDE → X11” (vs Wayland), and see if the behavior is different.

(Sidenote: we use Leap 15.6 (KDE | X11), and do not see this issue).

6

Thanks!
It’s a Wayland error. When using X11, I can switch between Writer documents without any problems and the text cursor is directly visible. I have also checked Calc, also here the problem is solved.
Therefore, I will first stick again to X11 and see if the problem is solved with a future Wayland update.

Best,

Michael

1 Like
7

I have done some more testing on this in LO writer. If I switch between the screens using the cursor on the task manager this issue does not happen, only using the alt-tab function. However if I have two Firefox windows open and switch between them using alt-tab the same thing happens with the text cursor and any keyboard key will cause it to return not just typing a character it works with the ctrl and even fn (on my keyboard).

So this is not an LO issue but a more general one with Wayland or KDE Plasma I suspect.

Stuart

8

Without somebody starting a bug report, not much will happen I guess.

9

I’ve just been checking https://discuss.kde.org/ and there seem to be a few reports of it on different distros not just openSUSE. Maybe someone on there has raised a bug with them. To be honest it’s not something I see as causing a huge issue at least for me as I’ve never used that keyboard shortcut until I saw this report, the cursor returns as soon as you touch any key.

Stuart

10

Thanks for testing!
I’m always working with many open documents in parallel and therefore, I’m always using Alt-Tab (and never click in the task manager). The idea to use the ctrl is very helpful.

Michael

11

We have discovered a few glitches, every now and then (using Wayland) on all our machines, so we use X11 (KDE Plasma).

12

This must be a new bug in Wayland. I’m using Wayland since KDE6 and this problem occurred first last week.

13

Well, KDE implementation of Wayland, everything OK on Wayland+Gnome

14

I think kwailand6, kwailand-integration6 and qt6-wayland + libqt6wayland xy files were updated last week (current version 6.2.3-1.1, respectively 6.8.0-2.1).

15

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