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by montag 58 days ago
My problem with IPv6 is that I can't double click 2001:db8::1428:57ab to select the entire address. It's a silly complaint but representative of real ergonomic issues.
3 comments

It would be pretty straightforward to change the text selection rule, so that double-clicking anything matching the syntax of an IPv6 address selects the whole address.

The hard part is to find all the places to repeat that change, and convince the code owners to accept it. Probably start with a standard analogous to RFC 5952?

This is a great idea. To slightly sidetrack things: I think updating computer UI text selection behavior to not break click/snap-to-next selectable words on colons without padding spaces in general would be a good thing.

"A: B" would still click-select either "A:" or "B", but "1:2" (a ratio) would select the whole thing, as would "small:med:large" or an ipv6 address. In other words, I think that, in practice, English writing has assigned semantic significance to space-less colons in enough cases that text selection systems should reflect that.

Though I'm not sure RFCs are going to drive general GUI behavior--they won't "MUST" it, because that's overstepping, and I'm not sure GUI/OS-text-selection-functionality maintainers will be persuaded otherwise.

This is the most pro-IPv6 comment I could ever imagine. I am more persuaded now than by the IPv6-is-easy guys all these years.
Fwiw opera mobile on Android selects the whole address there when i long-press