Selection

[jgraham]

Selection, including where it's possible to put the caret, is an area that's been identified as high impact for editor authors. In particular the following questions:

• What are the legal caret positions?
• How does selection interact with non-selectable elements?
• How does selection interact with shadow dom?

For the caret position, we have some existing spec text that calls out some special cases: https://github.com/w3c/contentEditable/blob/ba10fb177f68567ff742d0acb6caab337224af2d/index.html#L145-L187

So as part of this investigation we should:

• Figure out how much of this is already covered by relevant specifications and ensure that any gaps are reported and able to be addressed
• Figure out where we already have test coverage, and where we don't add additional test coverage.
• Ensure that everyone agrees that the expected results of the tests match the specification and the desired behaviour.

The aim is that the identified tests would be a candidate for an Interop 2023 focus area that browsers would be able to commit to.

[jgraham]

Please let me know if the summary as written isn't right, doesn't cover something important, or covers something it shouldn't.

[jgraham]

WICG/webcomponents#79 seems to be the shadow root selection issue. The last action was @mfreed7 suggesting that they were planning to look at putting up spec PRs early/mid 2022. Unless there's a significant change in the status there I'd propose we make those PRs and some accompnying tests part of the concrete goals for this effort.

[travisleithead]

Note, the Intl.Segmenter is a very good way to get "legitimate" caret locations within a string (e.g., keeps grapheme clusters together, also helps with "word" navigation).

[johanneswilm]

Selection tests have been submitted here: web-platform-tests/wpt#35862

[jgraham]

So we have a test PR, with some feedback. Do we believe that merging that PR completes all the selection work we were hoping to achieve as part of this investigation?

[johanneswilm]

As far as I can tell, the issues addressed in this PR do in fact correspond to the main selection issues editors are currently having. I have not received any feedback from other editors to the contrary either.

[jgraham]

Updating the score here to 50% per the meeting.

[jgraham]

Next step is review of the test PR; if that lands then this area will be complete.

[jgraham]

The test PR landed, so I propose we score this as 100%.