[whatwg] Spellchecking proposal #2

[Ian Hickson]

On Thu, 22 Jun 2006, David Hyatt wrote:
>
> If the user wants spell checking on in all textareas, then it should be on,
> regardless of what the page says.  I don't think the page should be allowed to
> override spell checking rules, since this is really a user decision.

Agreed; the spec is written so as to allow the UA to always honour the 
user prefs instead of the author hints if desired.


> For example, I know how to spell, so I don't want spell checking on in 
> any controls.  A person with poor spelling, however, might want spell 
> checking on in all controls.  I think it's totally inappropriate for a 
> Web page to have any control over spell checking settings.

Some sites want to hint to the UA that for certain form controls there is 
no point enabling spellchecking (e.g. because they contain a list of 
e-mail addresses or some such), whereas for others they would recommend it 
be enabled (forum comment boxes or some such).

I'd be happy without the attribute at all, but Mozilla is going to have 
something to enable/disable this feature from markup, and they wanted to 
have a spec for it so they asked WHATWG to provide a strawman. I figure 
it's better to have a spec and an implementation than just an
implementation...

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'