[whatwg] Spellchecking proposal #2

[Matthew Raymond]

Andrew Fedoniouk wrote:
> Spellchecker looks like pure behavioral entity.

   Behavior is generally handled exclusively by Javascript, but some
people have expressed that having to use script to enable spell checking
is highly undesirable.

> So I would define this as:
> 
> <style>
> #myeditor
> {
>     white-space:pre; overflow: auto; ...
>     behavior: textarea spellchecker;   /* textarea editor and spellchecker 
> */
> }
> </style>
> 
> In htmlayout engine each DOM element can have
> multiple behaviors assigned, so following:
> 
> <textarea id="myeditor">...</textarea>
> 
> will behave as a text area editor with spellchecker using
> style declaration above.
> 
> (in fact behavior:textarea and/or spechecker can be assigned to
> any DOM element with display-role: block, (not only textarea)
> but this is another story)

   This looks a lot like an HTML Control (HTC), but it's incorrect if it
is. Remember that binding mechanisms like HTC and XBL are for binding
HTML/CSS/Javascript to elements, so any solution provided by those
mechanisms would have to have support in one of those languages.

   However, I suspect this is supposed to be a means of using canned
styles built into the browser. While this may be useful is some cases,
there is a danger that this could lead to people trying to reimplement
(X)HTML using CSS/XBL.