Re: Default Caret and Selection Positioning Spec?

I think we should include this in the selection API specification.

Given different browsers support different modality of changing selection with respect to bidirectional text (e.g. moving caret to left/right visually versus moving caret forwards/backwards logically), I don’t know how specific we can be though...

On Dec 9, 2014, at 1:49 AM, Ben Peters <Ben.Peters@microsoft.com> wrote:

> Do we need a new spec to cover where the caret should be placed in the markup in contentEditable='typing', and where the begin/end of the Selection's range should be when selecting with mouse/keyboard?
> 
> On Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 10:45 AM, Ben Peters <Ben.Peters@microsoft.com> wrote (http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-editing-tf/2014Dec/0029.html):
>> On Sat, Dec 6, 2014 at 7:10 PM, Olivier Forget <teleclimber@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Right, I think we'd be trying to change that pattern. The problem is the UA
>>> finally decides where text goes at the last step. I would prefer to see:
>>> 1. User clicks on content
>>> 2. document position is fully resolved by UA
>>> 3. if that document position is editable, show caret, if not (user clicked
>>> on an image or in cE=false) then don't
>>> 4. if there is a caret, then getSelection returns that exact position where
>>> text will be inserted if user types at that moment.
>>> 
>>> What I'm saying is that the UA would need to maintain a one-to-one relation
>>> between the following things:
>>> - a blinking caret
>>> - a fully resolved unique position in the document
>>> - getSelection returns that exact position
>>> - user's typing inserts text at said position
>>> 
>>> If for whatever reason selection is at a non-editable position, then there
>>> is no caret, and there is no insertion of text upon typing.
>>> 
>>> This implies we need to spec a number of things:
>>> - what's editable and what's not?
>>> - where can text be inserted? (and how? can UA create text nodes?)
>>> - how to resolve 1-visible:n-document positions
>>> - caret movement via arrow keys as selection goes inside/outside elements,
>>> and around non-editable elements
>> 
>> This is a great start to a list. 1 and 2 should be in contentEditable. I filed https://github.com/w3c/editing-explainer/issues/21 for 2. 3 and 4 should be in Selection API or related. I'll start a thread for this.

Received on Monday, 8 December 2014 23:05:22 UTC