IssueTracker

First of all thanks for this detailed issue.

This issue had been investigated thoroughly when it was first reported internally. The surprising detail in this report is that the issue is not reproducible before 1.7. I will look into this.

The main problem with POBox is the fact that it is deprecated. Since 2021 Sony has been shipping new Xperia devices with Gboard pre-installed. Although we are aware that there is still a considerable amount of users still using POBox, the described behavior is caused by POBox's noncompliant behavior with InputConnection and InputMethodManager documentation. However, this is understandable since TextView implementation was also not respecting the behavior that is expected from Editors.

Ultimately we have decided to enforce the documented behavior with specifically regards to when editors should call InputMethodManager.updateSelection. Also, although unconfirmed, there were traces of possible custom code being included in Sony OEM images that changed how InputMethodManager was notified from TextView. If POBox also depended on something like this, it would be impossible for Compose code to replicate the same unknown behavior.

Just to be sure, it is dangerous to replace Compose TextField with Android View EditText as a workaround for this issue.

Compose 1.7 has a bug that causes ANR when the focus is on EditText. https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/369354336

Another View-related bug in Compose 1.7 is that an Android View is focused by calling FocusManager.clearFocus(). https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/374031296

Perhaps there is a lack of testing of Compose 1.7 in combination with Android View. There is also a possibility that there are other fatal bugs related to View.

In other words, the only options for apps targeting the Japanese market that require POBox support are to continue using Compose 1.6 or to use EditText in combination with various workarounds.

Project: platform/frameworks/support
Branch: androidx-main
Author: Halil Ozercan <halilibo@google.com>
Link:      https://android-review.googlesource.com/3317256

Fix POBox keyboard issue

Fix POBox keyboard issue 
 
Fix: 373743376 
Fix: 329209241 
Test: NullableInputConnectionWrapperTest 
Change-Id: I94e0e598274fb88b255f977f9fbd50dfbbb1ecb1

Many thanks again for this report. Especially for giving us a huge clue in terms of what could be going wrong. The fix is now merged and I will ask for a cherry-pick into a stable release.

Yes, this fix is planned to be included in a future 1.7.x release.

Thanks for the fix. Sorry to follow up on this. is it possible for you to share specific release version/date for the stable version? We are waiting on this to decide on our direction.

My first question here is actually less about where this API should live, but what actually is a placeholder.

I'm not sure I agree that it depends upon design system; I can see many users wanting a simple placeholder that appears when no text is entered and disappears otherwise. Correctly implementing could be complex to correctly synchronize alignment, lines height, cursor etc. I see the benefit of having this in a library function that we can update etc.

Appearing / dissapearing already implies some UX - will there be a transition? If so, what is the transition? Can developers customize it?

Similarly for positioning, padding from the sides, size, etc. There is no non-Material answer here, we will need some numbers so it can actually be implemented.

This is also IMO a problem with the core / foundation level text fields, it's impossible to build such a component without some UI, and developers are routinely confused by how 'ugly' the foundation level component is, and how it doesn't support Material features.

We had similar problems before discussing the default minimum width for a TextField, again, unavoidable given that TextField by design occupies space on screen, but it causes a lot of confusion as there is not really a consistent / correct answer here without referring to a specific design system. I have the same concerns here with placeholder, and I think avoiding these problems / confusion between API layers is a good idea.

+1 to Louis' point above.

Back to the idea of PlaceholderTextField, I personally don't see it as a way forward. One thing is when you have it as a sample that shows a way to add a placeholder to the TextField. And developers can iterate on this example and add opinionated placeholders to their custom text fields.

But as Matvei mentioned, "PlusOneFeature components in foundation" is not a good idea. Imagine we added a placeholder (even if we figured out some UI for it) and solved that particular problem. Later developers come and say that they need to put an icon to the text field. Should we create a more complex text field similar to MD text fields? Or should we create a StartIconTextField?

looks like we have an agreement that placeholder should not be in foundation. will close the ticket. Nick, please feel free to reopen.

Renamed FilledTextField to TextField, so the most hot traffic name will be easy to reach and it will have placeholders / label / etc