Minutes from PEWG meeting 14 January 2026

Dear all,

minutes from today's call are at 
https://www.w3.org/2026/01/14-pointerevents-minutes.html and copied below:


PEWG
14 January 2026

Agenda: 
https://www.w3.org/events/meetings/bc0bed33-fd93-40a6-95bb-10f27c641863/20260114T100000/
IRC log: https://www.w3.org/2026/01/14-pointerevents-irc

Attendees
Present
flackr, mustaq, Patrick_H_Lauke, smaug, vmpstr

Chair: Patrick H. Lauke
Scribe: Patrick H. Lauke

Contents
* Recharter w3c/strategy#515
* Follow-up from UI Events meeting 
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iRFgqtReyomoCwZFEdRUdoW1ManD5t656CVUGJm7Xos/
* WPTs


# Recharter w3c/strategy#515

Patrick: all wording changes to the charter that we discussed/were 
raised have been done. last outstanding piece is a rough prototypical 
"here's the list of events for gestures we want to cover"

[some discussion on which types of events we want - rotate/zoom and 
possibly swipe, or is swipe the same-ish - moving centroid]

ACTION: Patrick to draft gesture event outline for next meeting



# Follow-up from UI Events meeting 
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iRFgqtReyomoCwZFEdRUdoW1ManD5t656CVUGJm7Xos/

plh: i have a PR for UI events w3c/uievents#411 to make sure it removes 
the bits we're taking into PE

plh: still need to figure out pointerlock (trying to get webapps to move 
that out)

plh: we'll keep linking to the external algos. once moved, the link will 
update

plh: some like focusable area and click-focusable defined in HTML,but 
they're not exporting them. we can either link, or ask HTML spec to export

plh: looked a bit at default action idea

plh: if you look at DOM spec it handles the idea of default action 
already. just that it calls it activation behaviour

olli: that's only for click

plh: there's different types ... activation behaviour, and LEGACY 
activation behaviour. trusted behaviour, cancelled not set to true.

plh: all we need to do is define what the legacy activation behaviours 
are for click, and what the activation behaviours are for all other cases

plh: am i correct? somebody double-check my understanding

<mustaq> https://w3c.github.io/uievents/#event-type-keydown

plh: if i understand the dispatch behaviour, that's covered. legacy 
activation for click, and the others are for other events

mustaq: in the default action of keydown it links to the activation 
behaviour

"Varies: beforeinput and input events; launch text composition system; 
blur and focus events; keypress event (if supported); activation 
behavior; other event"

plh: i believe one way out then is not to talk about default action, but 
talk about activation behaviour

olli: but activation behaviour is specific to click. it assumes trusted 
events...

rob: i believe it covers just things like click. doesn't handle text 
selection, or scrolling, or similar

plh: then way forward may be to ask for a hook to handle these other 
cases, and we hook into that, rather than patching the dispatch algo 
ourselves

olli: 
https://dom.spec.whatwg.org/#:~:text=Let%20isActivationEvent%20be%20true%2C%20if%20event%20is%20a%20MouseEvent%20object%20and%20event%E2%80%99s%20type%20attribute%20is%20%22click%22%3B%20otherwise%20false%2E

plh: we get dispatch algo updated to take into account those default 
actions. or we clarify that these are actions after the dispatch

rob: the action does happen in between events though...

olli: but after the relevant event was sent...

rob: yes, but not after all events...so there's some specific order/timing

rob: no strong feeling if it needs to be in the dispatch, or after the 
dispatch...

plh: assuming it's trusted, cancelable flag set to false, it then 
happens after dispatch...

plh: i'll see what that looks like, but if not we need to modify dispatch...

plh: hit-test algo is only used by mouse events. i moved it to PE, but 
then realised it conflicts with our glossary. removed our glossary...

rob: it should all be the same thing. think for longest time it didn't 
exist other than SVG

plh: DOMActivate - as part of legacy bits, the DOMActivate is still 
present in ui events. but you're not supposed to use that anymore in 
preference of click. do we want it, or leave it? legacy section

olli: should probably go to HTML...

Patrick: yeah from memory this is the "click is not device agnostic as a 
term, let's invent something new" but that was too late. for history, 
still good to have that somewhere. probably HTML

plh: so somebody should make a PR/proposal to HTML spec. if you know a 
contact with an editor at HTML spec, ask them...

olli: not seeing any WPTs for DOMActivate...

plh: i'll bring that up to the next UI events meeting next month

plh: beyond that i think i'm done with the PR

plh: we'll wait for next UI events meeting to merge

plh: WPTs ... any idea what best approach might be? if we move them, 
would things break?

mustaq: i'm worried about links to tests breaking

rob: we could leave behind a text file pointing to the new location? i 
think it's nice to have the structure of WPT match the specs

mustaq: should we wait for WPT move until things settle down?

rob: spec move doesn't affect WPT. so what do we need to wait for?

mustaq: should we wait until the ui events part is merged into PE and 
baked in

plh: going to make PR against WPT. then we know we have all components 
(spec change, WPT), then we can decide on sequencing

plh: other consideration is MDN, as they link to tests and specs

mustaq: also caniuse etc

plh: need to make a list of what will be affected. like... for MDN, does 
it repoint automatically, or does it need a PR

rob: we know what the anchor links are...maybe we can add in a mention 
about the move and point there

olli: and that needs to only be a temporary thing

plh: making a tasklist on the PR

olli: caniuse seems to link to MDN

mustaq: there's links to actual specs

mustaq: there's a webDX community group. maybe reach out to them too

<flackr> mdn/content and web-platform-dx/web-features ?

rob: two files in web-features that will need updating. just a one-line 
change

<flackr> 
https://github.com/web-platform-dx/web-features/blob/879469aaa3a54cb5c1c453e18f9b08548067f070/features/mouse-events.yml#L3 
and 
https://github.com/web-platform-dx/web-features/blob/879469aaa3a54cb5c1c453e18f9b08548067f070/features/wheel-events.yml#L4

plh: link those from the PR, if easy enough i can make a PR for those too

mustaq: any other repos in web-platform-dx that might be relevant/need 
updates?

<mustaq> https://github.com/web-platform-dx

rob: nothing seems to come up from a search

mustaq: question about the larger picture - how will the PE spec itself 
"work" structure wise / logically

olli: maybe we should add a note warning that things are still in progress

rob: keep sections, but note that it's WIP

<mustaq> +1, a note for each top level section make sense.

Patrick: was also thinking that we may need an update to the prose at 
the start of the spec, to explain why all of a sudden we also have mouse 
and wheel stuff



# WPTs

mustaq: i looked into the non-standard tests ... we essentially we don't 
the non-standard part inthe stable part ofthe spec. will do a PR

plh: still need to do implementation report, taking results and then 
filtering things we don't cover in the spec

mustaq: moving the non-standard tests that are in tentative, and ignore 
the touch-action ones for values that are not in level 3, that should be 
complete



# Summary of action items

* Patrick to draft gesture event outline for next meeting


-- 
Patrick H. Lauke

* https://www.splintered.co.uk/
* https://github.com/patrickhlauke
* https://flickr.com/photos/redux/
* https://mastodon.social/@patrick_h_lauke

Received on Wednesday, 14 January 2026 16:30:40 UTC