createCanvas() doesn't return an HTMLCanvasElement

[lorenzo-lipparini]

Nature of issue?

• Found a bug

Most appropriate sub-area of p5.js?

• Core/Environment/Rendering

Details about the bug:

The documentation states that the createCanvas() function should return an HTMLCanvasElement corresponding to the created canvas, but this is clearly not the case since a p5.Renderer is returned istead.

The thing happens in this line of code of the p5 source.

However, I'm not really sure about which one is wrong between the documentation and the implementation.

[Amethystix]

This is a tricky one; I can see how the wording of the documentation compared to what is actually returned may be ambiguous. However, the wording in the documentation, which reads as:

Returns:
HTMLCanvasElement: canvas generated

Seems to have the intention of saying that while an html canvas is generated, though not returned. I think that changing the wording to having a p5.Renderer as the return, and perhaps the canvas generated comment as more of a description would serve as a less confusing and more concise version of the documentation.

[limzykenneth]

createCanvas is indeed supposed to return a p5.Renderer instance and not a HTMLCanvasElement. The documentation probably should be corrected in this case, if anyone wants to make a PR for this change please feel free. 😃

[Amethystix]

I can take care of this; I'll make the PR in a bit :)

[lmccart]

fixed with #2823

[Spongman]

What's even weirder is that createCanvas doesn't really create a new canvas at all. It just replaces the existing canvas with a canvas of the right size (and renderer).

[PixsaOJ]

What is weirder is, if I use canvas = createCanvas(...) In typescript I should be getting HTMLCanvasElement so I can set width height and other properties to it, but when I get Renderer I have to give my variable type of p5.Renderer | HTMLCanvasElement