Selecting text in dialog

[Paul_Abraham]

I am having trouble with selecting test in dialog boxes, as a particular example the “footprint” field in the symbol properties dialog. More often than not when I click on the text to edit it it disappears. Edit functions work (though are a bit difficult since what you’re doing is invisible!)

I can’t find anyone else reporting this so I guess it must be something in my setup, but I can’t work out what. I thought perhaps there was a problem with highlight colour but I doubt this as it doesn’t always happen. I thought there might be a problem with my dark theme but reverting to the standard Mint-Y doesn’t solve it.

Does anyone have any ideas about where to look? Thanks.

Application: KiCad

Version: 6.0.2+dfsg-1, release build

Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.0.5
libcurl/7.81.0 OpenSSL/3.0.2 zlib/1.2.11 brotli/1.0.9 zstd/1.4.8 libidn2/2.3.2 libpsl/0.21.0 (+libidn2/2.3.2) libssh/0.9.6/openssl/zlib nghttp2/1.43.0 librtmp/2.3 OpenLDAP/2.5.13

Platform: Linux 5.15.0-48-generic x86_64, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK, cinnamon, x11

Build Info:
Date: Feb 12 2022 09:36:02
wxWidgets: 3.0.5 (wchar_t,wx containers,compatible with 2.8) GTK+ 3.24
Boost: 1.74.0
OCC: 7.5.1
Curl: 7.81.0
ngspice: 36
Compiler: GCC 11.2.0 with C++ ABI 1016

Build settings:
KICAD_USE_OCC=ON
KICAD_SPICE=ON

[hermit]

This is old. There may be fixes already in for this. Debian is slow to get stuff out but this is what I see:

[gkeeth]

This is a longstanding issue that is an interaction between kicad, wxwidgets (the UI toolkit), and your window manager theme. It affects a lot of people and it’s really hard to fix. See for example this bug and the linked duplicates: Blank fields in the symbol editor (#12011) · Issues · KiCad / KiCad Source Code / kicad · GitLab

You can try a different window manager theme (some are less/not affected). The fields will also be unblanked if you resize your window slightly.

Wx 3.2 supposedly has a fix for this, so when your distro updates it should be resolved (you have 3.0.5 now).

[poco]

This sounds familiar, grid table + linux. Try changing linux theme or something like that. Ircc, there were issue in user forum or gitlab, maybe something like: wxGrid cell editors do not appear sometimes on wxGTK. · Issue #22628 · wxWidgets/wxWidgets · GitHub

Ircc, nothing to be done from kicad side, wxwidgets or linux theme problem. (Sorry if using theme term wrong, not alinux user)

[Paul_Abraham]

Ah right, thanks. I actually have Wx 3.2 installed, but Kicad is must be built with explicit 3.0 dependency.