- From: Kevin Hughes <kev@kevcom.com>
- Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2004 17:20:54 -1000
- To: www-svg@w3.org
From: Andreas Neumann <neumann@karto.baug.ethz.ch> > * should there also be an attribute indicating whether a text is > "selectable" (true|false)? There are cases where you want text elements > to react to events, but not be selectable. Setting "pointer-events" to > "none" also turns of the ability to react to mouse-events, such as > "onclick". I think, such an addition might be useful. Of course, > setting > "selectable" to false would also turn off "editable". I would second this. The problem is in cases where one has draggable interface elements, such as scrollbars, next to text content that still needs to respond to events such as mouseup and mousedown. Today, if the mouse is moved over a text element while dragging, the text is selected and in some cases the drag operation is cancelled. In traditional GUIs scrollbars are often near text labels. When a drag is detected the UI programmer must have an easy way to turn off text selectivity for all applicable elements, and turn selectivity back on again when the drag operation is finished. Note also that the UI may be dynamic and change depending on the display size, etc. so these text elements may change over time and be added to or removed from the DOM as the layout changes, as in the case of certain word processor or page layout interfaces. It may be easiest to do this using a CSS property, in which case this becomes a CSS, and not an SVG, issue. Today, if I want to make non-selectable text I can drag over that also responds to mouse ups and downs, as in the case of drop-down menu widgets or a drag-and-drop cut-and-paste text feature, I must create multiple layers with 0 opacity to handle events and highlights. This is a time-consuming elementally verbose process that also requires a good deal of otherwise unnecessary code. The ability to toggle selectivity via CSS (using classes or IDs) sounds like the most flexible solution to me. With that you also give Web page designers the ability to specify certain text as being non-selectable as well. This is useful in the case of allowing people to select and copy only the relevant textual content of Web pages without also inadvertently selecting navigational and other UI-specific text, without having to shut off event listening. -- Kevin Hughes
Received on Monday, 1 November 2004 03:21:03 UTC