Re: [editing] CommandEvent and contentEditable=minimal Explainer

On Jun 12, 2014, at 5:07 PM, Olivier F <teleclimber@gmail.com> wrote:

> I have been reading this and have a comment:
> http://w3c.github.io/editing-explainer/commands-explainer.html
> 
> "Issue 11: We may not need contentEditable=minimal. The same thing can be accomplished by listening for commands and calling preventDefault on all of them."
> 
> I think we need contentEditable=minimal even if it is theoretically possible to listen to all commands and preventDefault on them.
> 
> Listening to all events and preventing their defaults has the following implications:
> - All CommandEvents and other things that can modify the state of the contents in our cE actually do fire events.
> - We are actually able to enumerate all events that could potentially modify the state of our contentEditable.
> - All of these events can be preventDefaulted.
> 
> Given the transient nature of specs, implementations, and bugs I have a hard time believing that the theory that we can just listen to everything and prevent defaults has merit in practice. 
> 
> One can easily imagine that some features provided by the UA won't fire events. Or, no need to imagine: just look at "undo" called from context menu.
> 
> Imagine as well a situation where a UA creates a new way to paste content, and to prevent confusion with "paste" they decide to create a new ua-prefixed event "uaMagicPaste". Now our end-users have a  way of pasting content into our editor's DOM without any intervention at all on our end, resulting in breakage and bugs.
> 
> In practice, if we are left with the burden of listening to all events and preventing defaults we are left in very much the same situation we're trying to get away from.

I don't have a strong opinion either way.  However, can't you just whitelist the list of commands you allow and cancel everything else instead for this specific case?  I guess you're concerned that it'll make things worse in some cases (e.g. new builtin browser features maybe disabled)?

- R. Niwa