Re: [Editing] Splitting Selection API Into a Separate Specification

Web Applications Working Group,


With a Selections API in its own specification, discussion topics include:


Document Object Model

Range

Selection

HTMLRange : Range

HTMLSelection : Selection


Interfaces such as HTMLRange and HTMLSelection can extend Range and Selection to provide UI features, e.g. context menus and HTMLMenuElement.


Selections API topics include:


Attributes on ranges, selections.

Styling of ranges, selections.

Tooltips on ranges, selections.

Context menus on ranges, selections.

Scrolling to ranges, selections.



Navigating between ranges in a selection and between selections (e.g. tabIndex)

Hyperlinks to ranges, selections.

Canonical URI fragments for ranges, selections; extending default context menus on selections to clipboard hyperlinks which include the canonical URI fragment.





Hypertext content can utilize hyperlinks to ranges and selections to discuss relationships between selected content; see also: http://inference-web.org/ , http://www.w3.org/TR/prov-o/ , http://lurchmath.org/ .  Informative content can provide users with information about related ranges or selections with hyperlinks which scroll to ranges or selections and with effects on mouseover.


Other topics include visual indicators on scrollbars based on styled ranges and selections.






Kind regards,


Adam Sobieski






From: Ryosuke Niwa
Sent: ‎Thursday‎, ‎March‎ ‎13‎, ‎2014 ‎7‎:‎45‎ ‎PM
To: public-webapps@w3.org
Cc: Jonas Sicking, Ted O'Connor, Ehsan Akhgari, Aryeh Gregor, Yoshifumi Inoue





Hi,

It appears that there is a lot of new features such as CSS regions and shadow DOM that have significant implications on selection API, and we really need a spec. for selection API these specifications can refer to.

Thankfully, Aryeh has done a great work writing the spec. for selection API as a part of HTML Editing APIs specification [1] but no browser vendor has been able to give meaningful feedback or has implemented the spec due to the inherent complexity in HTML editing.  As a result, the specification hasn't made much progress towards reaching Last Call or CR.

Given the situation, I think it's valuable to extract the parts of the spec that defines selection API into its own specification and move it forward in the standards process so that we can make it more interoperable between browsers, and let CSS regions, shadow DOM, and other specifications refer to the specification.

Any thoughts and opinions?

[1] https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/editing/raw-file/tip/editing.html


- R. Niwa