Preserve selection range across element replacements

[hexops]

Preserve selection range across element replacements

[slimsag]

Perhaps this is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. If the text in a textbox changes, moving the cursor to the end of the text might not be the end of the world.

I've been thinking about this recently, and while I don't have a full conclusion here, I am considering: what other things in browsers might break arbitrarily by only copying the selection range? For example, there are Input Method Editors (IMEs) for non-English languages that might be affected somehow (I'm not sure how yet, though). I'm just spitballing ideas here, not saying any of this is true.

However, quite a common use-case I can see is validation where the entry of certain characters is forbidden... preserving the cursor position in that case would be essential...

If I understand correctly, you're saying for example an input component which only allows entering a phone number. When the user types a non-number, the value of the input needs to be replaced and thus the cursor would be moved to the end of the input. Is that correct?

[dave]

When the user types a non-number, the value of the input needs to be replaced and thus the cursor would be moved to the end of the input. Is that correct?

Yup - that's what I had in mind.

For example, there are Input Method Editors (IMEs) for non-English languages that might be affected somehow

You're probably right.

There's a good cursor jumping discussion in the Facebook react repo here: facebook/react#955

[slimsag]

I'm going to mark this as WontFix -- but leave the issue open.

I currently think that it is not possible to implement this in a way that truly works properly (without screwing up the selection flow of the user, or breaking IMEs etc.) But I'd like to acknowledge that this is a real issue for users -- including for React users today -- but that it probably isn't solvable with the APIs that browsers expose today. I'm very open to being proven wrong, or seeing a future selection API solve this problem :)