[whatwg] including <output> in form submissions

[Michael Gratton]

Hi there,

HTML5 does not provide a means of submitting form content that is
otherwise rendered as normal text, i.e. not as a form control. The use
cases for this are the same as for the <output> element, but when it is
also desirable for the result of a calculation to be sent to the server
when the form is submitted.

Currently, the only way to implement this is to maintain two copies of
the value, one the child text of an <output> element (or something
similar, for example a <td> or <span>) and once in the value of an
<input type="hidden"> element, using appropriate scripting to keep the
two in sync. This is error prone and places an additional burden on the
web page author.

This can be remedied by allowing the value of <output> elements to be
submitted. That is, include the <output> element in the submittable
form-associated element category.

I initially thought that this was precisely what the <output> element
existed for - it was rather surprising when I tried using them but none
of the values were appearing in the submission.

//Mike

-- 
⊨ Michael Gratton.
⚙ <http://mjog.vee.net/>