4.3: RichTextLabel.text = "" no longer clears contents and RichTextLabel.clear() no longer has an effect outside of scene tree

[Nallebeorn]

Tested versions

Reproduced in 4.3-dev4. Not reproducible in 4.2.1-stable.

System information

Windows 11

Issue description

I'm not 100% sure if this is in fact a bug, but it is at the very least an unexpected version incompatibility.

The behaviour of RichTextLabel.clear() and RichTextLabel.text = "" is different between Godot 4.2 and 4.3.

The context is instantiating a scene with a single RichTextLabel containing some placeholder text, and then immediately clearing the text when adding the instantiated node to the scene tree (the placeholder text is useful for testing the RichTextLabel scene in isolation).

In Godot 4.2:

• When calling clear() or setting text = "" before the node is added to the scene tree (between instantiating a scene and calling add_child), the RichTextLabel will appear empty as expected.

In Godot 4.3-dev4:

• When calling clear() before the node is added to the scene tree (between instantiating a scene and calling add_child), the RichTextLabel still has the placeholder text from the original scene.
• When setting text = "", either before or after add_child, the original text remains visible. This means you essentially have to call both clear() and set text = "" to fully reset the contents.

Steps to reproduce

extends Control

const TextLabel := preload("res://rich_text_label.tscn")

# Produces expected behavior in 4.2, but in 4.3

func _ready() -> void:
	var label := TextLabel.instantiate() as RichTextLabel
	label.text = ""
	add_child(label)
	#label.clear() # uncommenting this line will produce the expected behavior in 4.3
	label.text = "" # commenting this line will still produce the expected behavior in 4.2

Minimal reproduction project (MRP)

RichTextLabel-Bug-4.3.zip

[AThousandShips]

It's due to this code:

godot/scene/gui/rich_text_label.cpp

Lines 5678 to 5681 in f2045ba

	// If `text` is empty, it could mean that the tag stack is being used instead. Leave it be.
	if (text.is_empty()) {
	return;
	}

CC @YeldhamDev