Re: [editing] How do we switch the caret between overtype and insert mode? (#55)

>  In particular, I don't know what the use cases are beyond "deal with someone pressing the insert button on a 1980s keyboard"

I have an insert-key on my 2015 Thinkpad. Mac OS X may be the most common OS among developers these days, but lets not forget that there are still many people running Windows in this world.

> What about:
1. There is an event for a request to overtype, since there is a use behaviour on lots of systems that does this.

Right now we have a beforeInput event for this, that lets us know about a user's "intentions". 

> 2. Expected behaviour is to say "we don't support that".

Right now, there is no default behavior for all or most of the events within ContentEditable=Typing that are marked as intentions. So it's just an event that a piece of JS may choose to hook in to. If nothign does that, nothing happens.

> 3. We note that some people may implement something different (such as allowing overtype mode).

Yes, but for that they need to be able to show the overtype caret, so we need to make that possible. All movement and insertion is handled in JS, with the exception of some parts of IME-based insertion of new content. In that case it would have to look a bit different visually as the current character is covered during the composition process while in overtype mode. Thisis the entire reason overtype needs to be mentioned in the spec if it is supported.

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Received on Wednesday, 3 June 2015 09:05:08 UTC