Re: Bug 11239

In the short run, these comments are in response to efforts to enable better handling of magnification by ATs in relation to text content, the canvas tag, Section 508 of US legal requirements and WCAG.

Text editing is a red herring, and while I certainly value these posts, I caution observers to discriminate them from the change proposal reviewed by the chairs. We're trying to make content displayed in canvas accessible per US laws, as a matter of practical and ethical considerations.

Whatever pros and cons posters may have to share regarding rich text editing are rather immaterial to the change proposal.

This is about accessibility, not the heuristics and flowing of text, nor the resources required to implement such measures to a standard matching widespread browser implementations.

Again, I'm greatly appreciative of the information in these posts, but the theme contained within them is rather irrelevant to the efforts put forward in public-canvas-api to address deficiencies which might otherwise exclude canvas from Section 508 (US) and WCAG compliance.

As a personal note, I find many statements within this thread directed at web programmers exploring alternative IMEs to be condescending and in bad spirit toward the experimental and open nature of the web. To see highly skilled authors, people with authority in the community, put down the efforts of other programmers is disheartening. I hope that at some future date to see reconciliation, as there is no malintent by authors (such as bespin) nor ill-will from vendors (such as Mozilla).


Best wishes to all of the community, in their individual and collective efforts.


-Charles



On Apr 28, 2011, at 9:12 PM, "Robert O'Callahan" <robert@ocallahan.org> wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 4:06 AM, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Mouse placement of the caret has to be reimplemented. + +
> > Keyboard movement of the caret has to be reimplemented (possibly across
> > lines, for multiline text input). + +
> > Scrolling of the text field has to be implemented (horizontally for long
> > lines, vertically for multiline input). + +
> > Native features such as copy-and-paste have to be reimplemented. + +
> > Native features such as spell-checking have to be reimplemented. + +
> > Native features such as drag-and-drop have to be reimplemented. + +
> > Native features specific to the user, for example custom text + services,
> > have to be reimplemented. This is close to impossible + since each user
> > might have different services installed, and there + is an unbounded set of
> > possible such services. + +
> > Bidirectional text editing has to be reimplemented. + +
> > Text selection has to be reimplemented. + +
> > Dragging of bidirectional text selections has to be reimplemented. + +
> > Platform-native keyboard shortcuts have to be reimplemented. + +
> > Platform-native input method editors (IMEs) have to be reimplemented. + +
> > Undo and redo functionality has to be reimplemented. + +
> > Accessibility features such as magnification following the + caret or
> > selection have to be reimplemented. + +
> 
> In addition,
> -- "Text search" functionality commonly found in browsers doesn't work
> -- For many use-cases, line wrapping would have to be reimplemented (very hard to get right for all languages)
> 
> In the long run, writing a text editor with <canvas> is a dead end. The Bespin project made a big investment in that approach and gave up --- and they never even tried to tackle the hard problems of bidi, accessibility or IMEs.
> 
> Rob
> -- 
> "Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." [Acts 17:11]