RE: [editing] defaultParagraphSeparator

± From: Aryeh Gregor [mailto:ayg@aryeh.name]
± Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2013 4:37 AM
± 
± Sorry for the delayed response -- I've been busy with other things and
± didn't have time to check my e-mail.  Thanks a lot for the feedback and
± questions!

Thanks for background, it helps a lot. I don't see a need to comment it by point so let me just reference it [1] and try to summarize. 

1. There is no consensus on what the default should be. There are 
   implementations favoring each of <br>, <p> and <div>.
2. It would be good to set it per contenteditable, but we are not sure 
   how to express that.
3. There are no options other than <p> and <div> because there is no obvious 
   reason why it would be useful. (my interpretation: if it is something that 
   can't be done with a <div>, it probably wouldn't work as a default block
   element anyway).
4. Sometimes Enter inserts <br> or EOL character instead of a new element. That
   behavior is independent of the choice between <p> and <div> (but deserves
   a good definition too).

Is that a fair summary?

I think that main reason it's hard to get a consensus is that it is not clear what problem the feature is trying to solve...

If the only problem is the uncollapsed top border that annoyingly appears on first Enter - then it is an overkill to globally change what HTML element should represent a paragraph of text (if you saw it on paper, you would call it a paragraph, right?), just because it has a different default style.

I think a paragraph should be a paragraph, unless there is a semantic reason to use a different element for blocks. It is possible of course that I don't fully understand the motivation for P vs. Div choice... Are there other reasons for having this command that I don't see?

Thanks
Alex

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2013JanMar/0512.html

Received on Friday, 22 February 2013 00:45:18 UTC