[whatwg] Textarea Wishlist

[Ryan Johnson]

This might have already been covered, but I can't get a sense from the 
archives, so I thought I would contribute my wishlist for what I would 
like to be able to do with a textarea element...

1) Control the cursor position via scripting.

2) Easily preform a regex search, line search, or character search 
(i.e. identify patterns, lines or individual characters), to get the 
position of elements.

3) Extensible syntax highlighting (coloring). I am aware that a ton of 
code editors don't even do this well. The ability to load a syntax 
definition file and have it color a block of code would do wonders for 
making the web a more friendly place to script.

4) TABS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't know how this would 
affect tabbing between forms, but in my opinion, the accessibility 
problem created by not being able to tab out of a text area is far far 
far better than not being able to make a tab character unless you cut 
and paste it in.

The other thing I was curious about, is if there is some way, in 
between drafts of the specs to see wish lists or ideas? It's kind of 
hard to read all of the archives, and I imagine the list will grow 
quite rapidly in the future... Just My two cents - Ryan