combobox etc. on touchscreens?

[Roland Koebler <rk-list simple-is-better org>]

Hi,

it seems that comboboxes (and probably some other widgets) are broken
on touchscreens. Is there any way to make them work again or to
work around bug https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=333470?
(Ideally, the bug would be fixed, but since it wasn't fixed the past
10 years, I don't have much hope. What a shame.)

The problem is:
There are usually two ways to select an entry in a combobox:
1. Click -> popup opens, click -> select item
   This doesn't work on touchscreens, since a click on a touchscreen
   may result in ButtonPress, MotionNotify with the same coordinate
   as the press, ButtonRelease -- and GTK+ closes the popup as soon
   as it sees the MotionNotify, even if there was no move after the
   ButtonPress.
   [tested on Linux, GTK+3 3.4/3.14, Iiyama touchscreen and Lenovo X200T]

2. Press -> popup opens, move to a item, release
   This worked on GTK+2, but fails in GTK+3, since on GTK+3 and a
   touchscreen, the move does not select an item, but tries to scroll
   the popup.
   [tested on Linux, GTK+3 3.4/3.14, Iiyama touchscreen;
   (with Lenovo X200T it worked like in GTK+2)]

So, a GTK+3 combobox is *completely unusable* on touchscreens.

The only workaround I've found, is to put a transparent button in the
same container as the combobox (but "above"), and open the combobox-popup
on button-click -- but this seems to be a strange hack. Is there any
better way?


Best regards
Roland