Re: 'textarea' elements are non-replaced

On Wednesday, February 25, 2004, 8:42:03 AM, Etan wrote:


EW> Dec 1, 2003, at 17:04 US/Pacific, Boris Zbarsky wrote to 
EW> <mailto:www-style@w3.org> on 1 Dec 2003 in "Re: [CSS 2.1] overflow of
EW> replaced elements" (<mid:3FCBE515.4040101@mit.edu>):

>> Yes, I realize you consider all form controls to not be replaced 
>> elements.  Sorry, that doesn't fly.  If a <textarea> were an 
>> inline-block, it would display the text that lives inside it (in 
>> textnodes).  That's true only up until the point at which the user 
>> starts typing in it -- the question of whether those changes should be
>> reflected in the page's DOM is a little vague, but last I checked with
>> DOM WG people they said they should NOT be.

EW> That is ridiculous.

No, its sensible.  The document is not changing. No mutation events
are being generated. Instead, a local copy of the text contents are
being edited, in the representation.

These *might* be reflected back into the DOM at a later date. Or they
might be sent to a server. or something.

In particular, if there is a 'reset' button, the original contents of
the text area will be used to get back to the original default
editable contents.

EW> If I edit a 'p' element, its DOM representation
EW> should change, yes? What makes 'textarea' elements different?

Well, if you edit a text area in the DOM its contents will change,
too. If you type into a textarea, you are not editing the textarea
element.

EW> Boris, can you direct me to archived messages from the DOM Working
EW> Group?

This is normal and expected behavior; chasing up individual messages
is not needed.



-- 
 Chris Lilley                    mailto:chris@w3.org
 Chair, W3C SVG Working Group
 Member, W3C Technical Architecture Group

Received on Wednesday, 25 February 2004 03:08:18 UTC