Re: Spec'ing innerText (Was Re: [Editing] Splitting Selection API Into a Separate Specification)

> On Apr 13, 2014, at 5:21 AM, Aryeh Gregor <ayg@aryeh.name> wrote:
> 
>> On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 9:05 PM, Ryosuke Niwa <rniwa@apple.com> wrote:
>> Thanks for the pointer.
>> 
>> Unfortunately, we might need to take a slightly different approach more based on the CSS box tree because whitespace collapsing, etc... are defined in CSS2.1 and CSS level 3 specifications.
> 
> As far as I know, CSS does not define the box tree with nearly enough
> precision to allow basing a precise innerText spec on it.  From
> black-box testing at the time I wrote the spec, it seemed to me that
> WebKit's implementation was built on some sort of internal CSS
> representation that does not match anything that currently exists in
> spec-land.  So I'm skeptical of the feasibility of this approach until
> someone rewrites CSS in a more precise fashion.  I also don't know if
> all implementations could support such an approach at all -- IIRC, I
> was told that for Gecko to even support display:none in
> Selection.toString was difficult.

Right, but the reason WebKit's implementation doesn't match any spec is because there is no spec!  With a sufficiently precise spec, we should be able to converge at least on innerText.

Having said that, I do agree we need to consult with CSS WG to have a more precise spec. for text layout in order to spec innerText.

- R. Niwa

Received on Sunday, 13 April 2014 14:10:21 UTC