Avoiding multiple text selections

jeanas

Hi!

I'm working on a PyQt5-based application which contains multiple QPlainTextEdits and QTextBrowsers. I noticed a behavior that I find a bit unintuitive: those widgets can each keep their own text selections independently. For example:

from PyQt5.QtWidgets import (
    QApplication,
    QMainWindow,
    QWidget,
    QVBoxLayout,
    QPlainTextEdit,
    QTextBrowser,
)


class MainWindow(QMainWindow):
    def __init__(self):
        super(MainWindow, self).__init__()
        layout = QVBoxLayout()
        widget = QWidget()
        widget.setLayout(layout)
        self.setCentralWidget(widget)

        editor = QPlainTextEdit(widget)
        layout.addWidget(editor)
        browser = QTextBrowser(widget)
        browser.append("ABCDEF")
        layout.addWidget(browser)

app = QApplication([])
window = MainWindow()
window.show()
app.exec()

If you enter some text in the QPlainTextEdit and select it, then select something in the QTextBrowser, you get two simultaneous selections.

I found that I can avoid this with a mixin class that does

def focusOutEvent(self, ev):
    cursor = self.textCursor()
    cursor.clearSelection()
    self.setTextCursor(cursor)

My question: is there a simpler way to do this, rather than changing each of the widget classes? Can I just tell Qt "clear the text selection whenever a widget is unfocused"?

jeanas

And of course, 5 minutes after asking, I found that I can connect my QApplication's focusChanged signal to something like

def clear_selection(old, new):
    if isinstance(old, (QPlainTextEdit, QTextEdit)):
        cursor = old.textCursor()
        cursor.clearSelection()
        old.setTextCursor(cursor)

I still wonder if there is a better way, though.