[whatwg] Normalization of user selections

Boris Zbarsky bzbarsky at MIT.EDU
Thu Jun 16 12:12:52 PDT 2011


On 6/16/11 3:00 PM, Aryeh Gregor wrote:
> Assuming we don't match WebKit/Opera here, though, does everyone agree
> we should still place constraints on what selections can be generated
> by *user* actions?  E.g., if you have<b>foo</b>bar, and the user
> places the cursor in between "foo" and "bar" by any means, it should
> always be inside the<b>, not outside.

This is an interesting situation which is the inverse of the bidi 
problem.  In the bidi case there is a single point in the DOM which 
corresponds to two different user-perceived selection positions.  In 
this case, a single user-perceived selection position corresponds to 
multiple (could be more than 2) points in the DOM....

As an actual user of editors, by the way, the #1 thing that pisses me 
off about wysiwyg editors is precisely having situations like the one 
above and wanting to be able to make the text be "<b>foo</b>orbar" in 
some cases but "<b>foopy</b>bar" in others.  Wysisyg editors tend to be 
terrible at this sort of thing.  Is that something that's inevitable, or 
can we do better here?

-Boris



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