[whatwg] Textarea Wishlist
James Graham
jg307 at cam.ac.uk
Thu Jul 1 13:53:02 PDT 2004
Ryan Johnson wrote:
> Anyway, I think that it might be quite a jump for manufacturers. I also
> see that a standard language would need to be decided upon just to
> describe the structure of the programming languages. Is it worth the
> time to come up with suggestions and examples of a programming language
> definition markup, or is my head in the clouds?
I think that what I'm proposing is a lot simpler than what you have in
mind. My proposal relies on built-in knowledge of the format. As far as
I know, that's pretty much how all programs handle syntax highlighting
today. Of course, it would be good if the language identifier was a real
resource that pointed to a document that could be used to dynamically
add language-specific features but, like you say, that's hard. Even
without that, syntax highlighting can be provided for many types, error
checking may be avaliable for some and even if the UA doesn't provide
any functionality of it's own, type-specific helper apps could be used
to edit the input.
(question - would a MIME type be more appropriate than a URI as an
identfier? It's simpler and I guess is specific enough to cover all
required formats)
--
"If anybody ever tells you that you’re using the language incorrectly,
just yell 'prescriptive grammarian!' at the top of your voice and all
the linguists in the building will run over and surround the guy... and
then they’ll rough him up"
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