Re: Request to re-open issue 131

[not sure what hiccup cause this email to not show up in the archives; 
resending in the hopes that it shows up this time]

On 12/14/2011 05:02 PM, Jonas Sicking wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 10:31 AM, Sam Ruby<rubys@intertwingly.net>  wrote:
>
>>> At Mozilla there are certainly voices for avoiding any kind of
>>> encouragement of canvas-for-text-app usage.
>>
>> It would be helpful if those voices were to participate here, on
>> public-html.
>
> I am one of those voices.
>
> I am personally not at all interested in implementing APIs that are
> there solely for building text editors in canvas. I simply don't think
> that people can build good accessible text editors in canvas. Sure, we
> can slap a few APIs on there to improve certain aspects of it, but I
> don't believe anyone has ever proposed an API which will allow a
> *good* text editor to be written.
>
> I feel like people freaked out when they saw the demo-ware bespin
> using a canvas-based editor. However since then the bespin (now cloud
> writer) developers realized that creating a canvas-based editor was
> simply too much work and so they switched away from using canvas. The
> result was a more accessible user experience.
>
> In other words, the set of accessibility APIs that we have *now*
> deployed in canvas (i.e. basically none) lead the developers to create
> a more accessible editing experience than if they would have used the
> APIs suggested so far.
>
> In short, so far I'm not at all convinced that trying come up with
> APIs that are solely for enabling text editors in canvas is worth our
> or implementors time.
>
> This doesn't say anything about providing other accessibility-related
> APIs for canvas though of course. For things like text selection and
> hit testing I've seen more evidence both that we can create reasonable
> experiences using various proposed APIs, as well as more of a need due
> to how people use canvas on the web today.
>
> / Jonas
>

Received on Thursday, 15 December 2011 00:17:57 UTC