[Bug 19899] New: Support for Break characters should be reconsidered for Textarea

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=19899

          Priority: P2
            Bug ID: 19899
                CC: mike@w3.org, public-html-wg-issue-tracking@w3.org,
                    public-html@w3.org
          Assignee: dave.null@w3.org
           Summary: Support for Break characters should be reconsidered
                    for Textarea
        QA Contact: public-html-bugzilla@w3.org
          Severity: normal
    Classification: Unclassified
                OS: Windows NT
          Reporter: james@onisliving.com
               URL: http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/common-input-element-attr
                    ibutes.html#the-placeholder-attribute
          Hardware: PC
            Status: NEW
           Version: unspecified
         Component: HTML5 spec
           Product: HTML WG

The specification currently states that the attribute, if specified, must have
a value that contains no "LF" (U+000A) or "CR" (U+000D) characters.

I would like to request that this restricition is reconsidered for Textarea
input fields which, by their nature, are designed to span multiple lines and a
placeholder hint to show a user an example of the data to enter should also be
able to span multiple lines.

An example of this requirement is where a textarea is used to create a list of
items e.g.

Please enter areas of work:
    Area A
    Area B
    Area C

The specification suggests the alternative use of Title but in most browsers
this does not display in as helpful a manner and is, anyway, currently
discouraged by the W3C, see:

http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/global-attributes.html#attr-title
Relying on the title attribute is currently discouraged as many user agents do
not expose the attribute in an accessible manner as required by this
specification 

The use of this feature is becoming increasingly common, there is a clear
demand for this feature to be supported (as can be seen by a quick Google
search) and the decision to disallow line breaks imposes a decision that should
really be left to individual website developers as to what best suits their own
requirements.

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Received on Wednesday, 7 November 2012 21:11:33 UTC