Re: [editing] CommandEvent and contentEditable=minimal Explainer

The discussion of which minimal default handling to include with
contenteditable="minimal" makes me wonder if contentEditable="minimal" is
necessary at all.  It quickly becomes a can of worms of *which* default
handling should be included, and it seems likely to not satisfy every use
case no matter which decisions are made.  However, "minimal" is proposed as
a building block because currently, disabling all default functionality of
contentEditable="true" is difficult/impossible.  But with CommandEvents,
shouldn't contentEditable="minimal" be equivalent to:

// Let editRegion be <div contentEditable id='editRegion'>

var editRegion = document.getElementById("editRegion");
editRegion.addEventListener("command", handleCommand);
function handleCommand(evt){
  evt.preventDefault();
}

No default actions would be taken, but selection events would still fire
and be handled.  There would be no ambiguity.  If implementing
contentEditable="minimal" on top of CommandEvents could just be a few lines
of code, why complicate things by spec'ing another property?

Then, if someone wants a region that just does basic text input, then they
simply allow it:
function handleCommand(evt){
 switch (evt.commandType){
   case 'insertText':
     // Let the browser do text insertion
     break;
   default:
     // Prevent all other magic
     evt.preventDefault();
}

This hedges on the fact that CommandEvents would capture ALL the cases that
contentEditable currently handles, and that the event would fire BEFORE the
dom is modified, and that calling preventDefault would cancel the event,
but isn't that a goal of this design anyway?

Julie

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ben Peters <Ben.Peters@microsoft.com>
Date: Thu, May 22, 2014 at 4:56 PM
Subject: [editing] CommandEvent and contentEditable=minimal Explainer
To: "public-webapps@w3.org" <public-webapps@w3.org>


I have completed a first-draft explainer document [1], taking the generous
feedback of many of you into account. There are 6 open issues on the
document currently, and I'm sure there are others that I have missed. It
would be great to know if this is heading in in the right direction.

My vision is to use this a non-normative Explainer, and create 2 normative
specs to go with it. The specs for contentEditable=minimal and CommandEvent
should have first-drafts next week.

Thanks!
Ben

[1] http://benjamp.github.io/commands-explainer.htm