Bug 37167 – [Win] Composition text's underline is rendered differently than that of native applications

• Status: NEW
• Component: HTML Editing

[Elliot Block]

Created attachment 52661 [details]
Screenshot of the undetermined text with the wrong style

Overview
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Undetermined IME input has solid underline instead of dashed underline


Repro Steps:
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1) Find an empty editable text area, e.g. an <input type="text"/> field
2) Use an IME, such as Windows Chinese IME
3) Type some sample text but do not determine it (i.e. do not press space or enter)
E.g. for Chinese, type "wo" without the quotation marks, and without space or enter

You should now see "wo" underlined.

4) Press space.  

This will pop up a candidate window which shows a selection of characters
that are conceivable replacements for "wo"


Actual Result:
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"wo" will display as "我" with a solid black underline.


Expected Result:
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"我" displays with dashed or dotted underline.  This is the standard behavior in Windows, Firefox, etc..  If it is solid underlined it looks weird and wrong to native users, like it's in the wrong state.


Environment:
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Repros both Safari 4.0.5 (531.22.7) and Chrome 4.1.249.1045 on Win7

[Alexey Proskuryakov]

Is this a new behavior in Windows 7?

[Alexey Proskuryakov]

<rdar://problem/7835387>

[Mengjuei Hsieh]

I can confirm it with chrome 8.0.552.237 on window xp using traditional chinese input method.

[Mengjuei Hsieh]

Created attachment 79064 [details]
IME behavior comparison between MSIE and Chrome

[Ryosuke Niwa]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Is this a new behavior in Windows 7?

I don't think this is a new feature.  IE has always used dotted line but native apps behave differently based on IME.  For example, Japanese IME uses wave line for typed hiragana and then solid line for Kaji characters.  On the other hand, Chinese IME uses solid line for typed pinyin and solid line for Chinese characters, and Korean IME doesn't show underline at all.

You can see some some screenshots on http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms971336.aspx and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc194855.aspx

It seems like Firefox always show dotted underline for all IMEs and IE shows dotted underline for Japanese/Chinese but doesn't show underline for Korean.  We need to figure out the behaviors for other IMEs.

[James Su]

(In reply to comment #5)
> (In reply to comment #1)
> > Is this a new behavior in Windows 7?
> 
> I don't think this is a new feature.  IE has always used dotted line but native apps behave differently based on IME.  For example, Japanese IME uses wave line for typed hiragana and then solid line for Kaji characters.  On the other hand, Chinese IME uses solid line for typed pinyin and solid line for Chinese characters, and Korean IME doesn't show underline at all.
> 
> You can see some some screenshots on http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms971336.aspx and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc194855.aspx
> 
> It seems like Firefox always show dotted underline for all IMEs and IE shows dotted underline for Japanese/Chinese but doesn't show underline for Korean.  We need to figure out the behaviors for other IMEs.

As far as I know, it's not possible to retrieve the preferred underline style with IMM32 API, unless we use TSF. So it's up to the application to choose proper underline style. And IMHO, it's just a matter of taste.
Usually Chinese pinyin input method tends to use solid line for typed pinyin and dot line for Chinese characters.
Perhaps we need to support dot and maybe other underline styles in WebCore and let the browser application decide which style to use.