[whatwg] cloneNode and HTML elements

[Jonas Sicking]

On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 12:41 AM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com> wrote:
>
> On Sep 9, 2009, at 10:26 PM, Robert O'Callahan wrote:
>
>> If you call cloneNode on a media element, the state of the resulting media
>> element seems unspecified. Should it be playing the same media resource at
>> the same current time as the original?
>>
>> Similar questions arise when you clone form elements; is the state that's
>> not visible in the DOM cloned?
>>
>> Who should be responsible for defining this?
>
> Does cloneNode require copying any state besides an element's qualified
> name, attributes and DOM children? The definition in DOM3Core doesn't say
> anything else should be copied. Is form control state (such as set of items
> selected in a <list multiple>) copied?
>
> Reference for cloneNode:
> http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Core/core.html#ID-3A0ED0A4
>
> My assumption based on the spec is that no element-specific internal state
> should be copied, the cloning should only be DOM-wise.

My assumption was always the opposite. For example for <input>
elements we clone the 'value' API attribute, as well as the internal
has-changed-value bit (used for form field restore when going back to
a page). For <script> we copy over the has-executed bit. I'm fairly
sure that the list is longer.

/ Jonas