Re: DOM3 Key events

On 1/08/2007, at 7:11 PM, Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:
> Thanks for your comments. There are two things I would like to note.
> First, the former DOM Working Group spend a good deal of effort on the
> new events, their context information, and the key naming; we already
> have implementations of them and other specifications require support
> for parts of it. It's very late to make changes to them, and if there
> are major issues, it might be best to split them completely into a new
> specification.

Righto, as I said, I only sent this email as Doug had asked for my  
input :D

>> This behaviour is not something that should be used to standardise on
>> as it has been designed with the goal of website compatibility rather
>> than to be "nice".
>
> There seem to be only three options: a) we do not standardize in the
> area, b) we standardize whatever is implemented, c) browser vendors
> change their browsers, probably sacrificing web site compatibility in
> the process.

I wouldn't consider (a) an option :D

(c) is out of the picture, as no browser will make any substantial  
changes due
to the large potential for widespread site breakage.  Given the  
choice WebKit (and I
imagine Firefox, Opera, etc) would choose to match a standard,  
however that would
immediately become problematic if matching the spec caused sites to  
break.

(b) is clearly best, but it is difficult as not all browsers match  
each other exactly.  The behaviour
that we have implemented in WebKit seems to provide the most  
compatibility, and is largely
sensible.  My main worry is IME handling, it seems particularly ugly  
to use such an arbitrary
keyCode for keydown events that have been handled by an IM, however  
not doing so causes
a number of sites to break (various google apps, a number of ajax-y  
sites, basically any webapp
that likes to think reacting during a keydown is a good thing).

Ignoring the keyCode bludgeoning that we do during composition, etc I  
feel that the WebKit
keyevent model is sensible, clear, and provides a high degree of  
cross site compatibility, so would
be reasonable to use as the basis for a spec.  In fact the keyCode  
bludgeoning is the only
part that seems bad to me, it is unfortunate that it is necessary.

However I wrote our event handling model, so I am clearly biased in  
this matter, so the
model should be examined by other independent bodies (preferably  
including people
from the other major browsers)

>
> As for your other points, is there anything in the specification that
> we absolutely must change, or that Apple would have to change in order
> comply with the specification where Apple is unlikely to do so?

I am very concerned at the attempt to make composition events  
masquerade as keyevents.
While providing DOM level composition events is indeed useful and  
desirable, and would
be beneficial to IM aware sites, I feel it would likely introduce  
worsen the experience of IM
users on non-IM aware sites.

Other than that, nothing has immediately struck me as being awkward/ 
wrong.

Cheers,
   Oliver

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Received on Thursday, 2 August 2007 02:36:21 UTC