[whatwg] Textarea Wishlist

[James Graham]

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"