Possibly related: T119838 for the cursor requiring two presses to get past a mwEntity.

So, I looked at this. Simplified HTML DOM in CE is:

<p id="…" class="ve-ce-branchNode ve-ce-contentBranchNode ve-ce-paragraphNode">
	Foo.
	<span about="#mwt10" class="mw-ref ve-ce-leafNode ve-ce-focusableNode ve-ce-mwReferenceNode" id="cite_ref-1" rel="dc:references" typeof="mw:Extension/ref" contenteditable="false">
		<a href="#" style="counter-reset: mw-Ref 1;">
			<span class="mw-reflink-text">[1]</span>
		</a>
	</span>
	Bar!
</p>

I think the problem is the inner <span> with class="mw-reflink-text"; this class does display:none; and then applies the CSS counter styling. Removing the display:none; causes the reference the appear twice ([1][1]), but the cursoring works perfectly. Is there a way we can cause the inner span to not affect cursoring?

Change 280683 had a related patch set uploaded (by Jforrester):
[Failing test case] Cursoring over empty alienInline nodes

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/280683

This is broken in a slightly different way now. In Chrome cursoring right works, but left it skins over the reference without selecting it (after two keypresses).

This seems to be a problem due to Chromium's position normalization interacting badly with its ce=false handling (similar to https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=440877 ).

Change 303008 had a related patch set uploaded (by Divec):
WIP: Hide text without confusing Chromium's cursoring

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/303008

Change 303008 just changes display:none to font-size:0 . In theory this could have an impact on bidi cursoring in some browser. Therefore I have tested references at bidi text offsets as shown below:

Eng <ref>11</ref> lish? English<ref>22</ref> English!

עבר <ref>33</ref> ית? עברית<ref>44</ref> עברית!
<div lang="he" dir="rtl">
Eng <ref>55</ref> lish? English<ref>66</ref> English!

עבר <ref>77</ref> ית? עברית<ref>88</ref> עברית!

עבר<ref>99</ref>ית

(Note the bidi text rendering above is misleading). The cases are:

1. LTR directionality in LTR block, not adjacent to a directional character
2. LTR directionality in LTR block, adjacent to a directional word-end character
3. RTL directionality in LTR block, not adjacent to a directional character
4. RTL directionality in LTR block, adjacent to a directional word-end character

5. LTR directionality in RTL block, not adjacent to a directional character
6. LTR directionality in RTL block, adjacent to a directional word-end character
7. RTL directionality in RTL block, not adjacent to a directional character
8. RTL directionality in RTL block, adjacent to a directional word-end character

9. Adjacent to strongly directional RTL characters on both sides.

In Chromium 50:

• On master, all cases fail (i.e. you cannot cursor onto any of the references)
• On 303008, cases 4 and 6 fail.

In Firefox 46:

• On master, cases 4 and 6 fail.
• On 303008, cases 4 and 6 fail (i.e. no change).

So it doesn't seem that this change has any adverse impact on bidi cursoring.

Change 303008 merged by jenkins-bot:
Hide text without confusing Chromium's cursoring

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/303008