Labs/Bespin/KnownIssues

The definitive place for issues is of course Bugzilla but for large concerns we wanted a place for people to see that we have been thinking about them.

Why doesn't Bespin support i18n well?

This is something we very much want to fix. Unfortunately it isn't trivial. We have a couple of key issues right now:

1. editor.js limits the characters that we allow through:

   // Only allow ascii through
   if ((e.charCode >= 32) && (e.charCode <= 126)) {
       args.newchar = String.fromCharCode(e.charCode);
       actions.insertCharacter(args);
   }

2. keys.js has an opt-in approach where we specify what we allow through to the browser versus eat up.

   if (e.metaKey || e.altKey) { // Apple or Alt key
       if ([Key.K, Key.L, Key.N, Key.O, Key.T, Key.W, Key.PLUS, Key.MINUS, Key.TILDE,
            Key.ZERO, Key.ONE, Key.TWO, Key.THREE, Key.FOUR, Key.FIVE, Key.SIX, Key.SEVEN, Key.EIGHT, Key.NINE].include(e.keyCode)) {
           return true;
       }
   }

This ties into the next issue...

I am having strange issues with my key bindings

Key binding that works across different browsers, platforms (operating systems) and country settings is hard.

For example, we have seen issues where for some people hitting backspace in Chrome causes a back command to fire, even though we are trapping that code.

We realize that we need to abstract our current key binding system to branch off for various platforms.

If you run into problems, we want to hear from you. What works best is if you can try the key combination that you are using in the Keycode tester. This way we will know exactly what is coming through.

Also, we are planning on creating an interesting key map tool that will enable people to setup their own keymaps and crowdsource the problem to make sure we are rock solid on key handling.

Why does it seem slow on Linux?

People using Firefox3 on Linux with an Nvidia card are facing important performance issues on canvas rendering that makes Bespin unusable (see related Bug).

This is due to the fact that, under firefox 3, canvas uses xlib/xrender for its rendering instead of pure software rendering under firefox 2. Unfortunately, the state of xrender in Nvidia binary driver is still far from perfection.

The currents solutions are either to use the "NV" drivers (but it won't be possible to benefit of the same level of 3D acceleration used by compiz and co) or to tweak the InitialPixmapPlacement as follows:

nvidia-settings -a InitialPixmapPlacement=2

To make this tweak permanent, add a new entry in your session configuration. For example in Ubuntu: System > preferences > sessions > add ...

Why does it seem slow on Chrome?

We were surprised ourselves when we first ran Bespin in Chrome (v2.x) and it was very slow for us, and the fonts were wacked. Still trying to work this one out.

Why is copy and paste not working with the system clipboard?

Accessing the clipboard is painful from your own webapp. There are browser defendant ways to access it but they are awful to use. Most of the time they aren't viable, and when they can work.... they ask the user for the darn permission which is ugly.

With Flash 9 installed, we had a perfect solution. We used Flash to do the copy paste and it worked perfectly. Then Flash 10 came out and they broke that for us. For security reasons they made it so you had to click on something to get access. We have "zeroclipboard" a project that lets you hide the flash movie invisibly next to an icon (say, the copy icon) but that only works for using the icon itself, not via Cmd-C.

Then we have the notion of the "Bespin Addon" which is a Firefox add-on that, if installed, has enough privs that the copy/paste can just work.

If someone has a nice solution here, we would love to hear it!