[whatwg] Syntax Highlighting [was: several messages]

[fantasai]

James Graham wrote:
> 
> The details of that suggestion were way too complex. But replace all the 
> rubbish about URIs with 'allow an optional attribute specifying the MIME 
> type of the data type expected in the textarea'. Since many browsers use 
> text editing components that already support features such as syntax 
> highlighting (or, I would be surprised if they don't), it would seem 
> very plausible that at least some browsers would make use of this 
> attribute to provide a better text editing experience. Since many 
> applications (e.g. CMS systems) require the input of specific data types 
> (html) in text areas, this could be a big usability win for any browser 
> that implements it. Clearly syntax highlighting is not the only 
> possibility - a spellchecker could be set up to ignore certian data 
> types or certian poritions of the text in a particular data type.

I don't know if MIME would be able to give enough information: perhaps
the attribute value could be MIME or a set of pre-defined keywords.
(e.g. I don't think Perl has its own registered MIME type.)

Also, another thing you could do if you just have an informational attribute
like this is to allow editing the textarea content in an external editor.
That should not be very complicated to implement.
http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2004-July/001064.html

~fantasai
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