Text edit fields still not working in plugins (added patch for demo)

Audio Plugins
1

I just had to revisit the issue with TextEditor components in audio plugins again...

Jules: can you please add these small changes to the audio plugin demo, so it becomes easy to check with the audio plugin demo in different hosts, without all the extras of people's own plugins? I just added 2 TextEditor items (and a label for each) to the GUI. Here is a zip file with the 3 source files with small changes: http://dropbox.samplesumo.com/public/AudioPluginDemo.zip 

Problem:
Typing text in a TextEditor (or in the text field of a Slider) doesn't work at all in Ableton Live or Cubase on Windows.
This is very problematic, as we require our users to type in info to activate the plugin they bought. And they can't do it.
I then tell them to copy/paste the info, but even that doesn't work (standard copy/paste keyboard shortcuts don't work).
So I tell them to copy/paste by right-clicking and choosing paste from the pop-up menu.
But that doesn't always work either, because there is no "Paste" menu item if setPasswordCharacter was set on the TextEditor.

This has been ongoing for quite some time, and we followed another thread somewhere on the forum to try and circumvent this using modal text editor components in these hosts on Windows, but that is clearly a workaround and seems to have other issues...

So: I would very much like to see this ongoing issue fixed in JUCE, so that we can just use a basic TextEditor component (and Slider) and trust that this elementary control just works. Or if that is really not possible, maybe a special text editor component for use in audio plugins alone (with some workaround built-in).

Note that plugins made with the VSTGUI framework from VST2 don't have this problem in these hosts.

Thanks!

2

Am working on VST3 support at the moment, and sure, I can add a text editor to the demo. Although it's already got a slider with a text box you can click on, so doesn't that serve the same purpose for testing?

3

Well, yes, the Slider does have a text edit box (it's a Label actually), but it's connected up to the Slider code, which makes it more difficult to investigate what's going wrong.

I actually noticed the issue (well, my clients did) using a TextEditor control (and then also an editable Label). I didn't add another Label in my edits to the demo plugin, as indeed there is already one in Slider.

Having a separate TextEditor (and editable Label) control makes it easier to make sure we all talk about the exact same thing when communicating about this erratic behavior, and can easily test if it works when something was changed in the code (instead of having to re-edit the plugin demo code each time after a new pull).

Currently, this problem does also show up with the Label from the Slider in the last pull from git: just open the demo plugin and try to type anything in the Slider text edit box in Live 9... It just doesn't work.

My first concern is that this problem gets fixed somehow.
I saw there is now the "Paste" option, which at least enables the workaround of copy/paste for the plugin registration, so thanks for that.
But I can't expect users to type in a value in a text document and then copy and paste it over into an editable Label each time they want to change it. Also, I had other plans where using text input is required (for typing in search terms). 

So: any effort on making the elementary TextEditor and editable Label controls just work as expected would be highly appreciated.