Re: Default Caret and Selection Positioning Spec?

We specify what happens when a caret is moved forwards or backwards logically, or when it’s moved left or right visually.

However, we can’t say what happens when a specific arrow key is pressed because that binding depends on the underlying platform.

Also, many Web browsers support moving across a word, line boundary, etc… and I don’t think we can specify exactly that either because many languages require heuristics to determine a word boundary.

On Dec 9, 2014, at 6:22 AM, Ben Peters <Ben.Peters@microsoft.com> wrote:

> Why can't we say if the caret should move logically or visually forward? We can implement it either way regardless of the underlying platform, right?
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ryosuke Niwa [mailto:rniwa@apple.com] 
> Sent: Monday, December 8, 2014 3:21 PM
> To: Ben Peters
> Cc: public-editing-tf
> Subject: Re: Default Caret and Selection Positioning Spec?
> 
> We can't do that because it's more of a UI/UX problem that depends on the underlying platform.
> 
> On Dec 9, 2014, at 6:19 AM, Ben Peters <Ben.Peters@microsoft.com> wrote:
> 
>> I think we should specify the way bidi text should work.
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Ryosuke Niwa [mailto:rniwa@apple.com]
>> Sent: Monday, December 8, 2014 3:05 PM
>> To: Ben Peters
>> Cc: public-editing-tf
>> Subject: 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 23:26:20 UTC