Drop non-normative references to execCommand()

[sideshowbarker]

https://w3c.github.io/editing/docs/execCommand/ has a big red warning:

This spec is incomplete and it is not expected that it will advance beyond draft status. Authors should not use most of these features directly, but instead use JavaScript editing libraries. The features described in this document are not implemented consistently or fully by user agents, and it is not expected that this will change in the foreseeable future.

Given all that, it seems not good to have text in the HTML spec saying, “User agents are encouraged to implement the features described in execCommand”, and also not good to make reference to the execCommand() API as something that developers should be using directly in their code.

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/infrastructure.html ( diff )
/interaction.html ( diff )

[domenic]

I disagree with this assessment. The spec cited remains the best documentation/spec we have available for a rather core web platform feature that is extremely widely used. Although nobody has stepped up to maintain that core feature, in an ideal world someone should.

From another perspective: no browser, to my knowledge, has any intent to deprecate this method. So I don't think it's a good idea for HTML to treat it as such, despite the spec being unmaintained.

[sideshowbarker]

From another perspective: no browser, to my knowledge, has any intent to deprecate this method. So I don't think it's a good idea for HTML to treat it as such, despite the spec being unmaintained.

From the fact that implementations have not deprecated it, it does not follow that the HTML spec should be actively recommending it. This PR doesn’t change any parts of the spec that normatively reference the execCommand spec. Instead it just drops some incidental, completely discretionary non-normative references. And the reason it drops them is that they conflict with the prominent warning at the top of the execCommand spec itself.

On the face of it, is seems odd for the HTML spec to be even implicitly recommending proliferation of execCommand when the execCommand spec itself is doing the opposite.

[annevk]

It's not clear to me that warning has implementer agreement. While execCommand() may be in the same realm as XMLHttpRequest, that doesn't mean it doesn't need to be maintained and supported, as well as taken into account when new features come to the scene.