Status of this Document

The features documented herein are obsolete. Authors should not use 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.

This document aims to assist web browser implementers in correctly handling old websites, but implementers should be aware that it is incomplete and does not match any implementation exactly, so it is unlikely to process sites correctly as-is. Nevertheless it remains available in case the research that went into it proves useful to implementers.

Because of lack of implementer interest, this document is no longer maintained. However, the accompanying conformance tests are useful for regression-testing changes to existing editor implementations, even if those implementations do not intend to match the specification exactly.

The selections portion of this specification has been superseded by the Selection API specification. It remains here as well only to avoid the need to rewrite the editing portions of this specification to refer to the new specification.

This document is a rough draft of a specification for HTML editing APIs, mainly defining selections, execCommand() and related functionality. It replaces a couple of old sections of the HTML specification, and the selection part of the old DOM Range specification.

Copyright © 2015 the Contributors to the HTML Editing APIs Specification, published by the W3C Editing APIs Community Group under the W3C Community Contributor License Agreement (CLA). A human-readable summary is available.

This specification, along with the accompanying JavaScript implementation and tests, may also be used under the terms of the CC0 1.0 Universal License. Thus anyone may reuse, modify, and redistribute them without restriction.

This specification was published by the W3C Editing APIs Community Group. It is not a W3C Standard nor is it on the W3C Standards Track. Please note that under the W3C Community Contributor License Agreement (CLA) there is a limited opt-out and other conditions apply. Learn more about W3C Community and Business Groups.

Table of contents

  1. Status of this Document
  2. Table of contents
  3. Introduction
  4. Tests
    1. General remarks
    2. Command development tests
    3. Command conformance tests
  5. Issues
  6. Selections
  7. Commands
    1. Properties of commands
    2. Supported commands
    3. Enabled commands
  8. Methods to query and execute commands
  9. Common definitions
  10. Common algorithms
    1. Assorted common algorithms
    2. Wrapping a list of nodes
    3. Allowed children
  11. Inline formatting commands
    1. Inline formatting command definitions
    2. Assorted inline formatting command algorithms
    3. Clearing an element's value
    4. Pushing down values
    5. Forcing the value of a node
    6. Setting the selection's value
    7. The backColor command
    8. The bold command
    9. The createLink command
    10. The fontName command
    11. The fontSize command
    12. The foreColor command
    13. The hiliteColor command
    14. The italic command
    15. The removeFormat command
    16. The strikethrough command
    17. The subscript command
    18. The superscript command
    19. The underline command
    20. The unlink command
  12. Block formatting commands
    1. Block formatting command definitions
    2. Assorted block formatting command algorithms
    3. Block-extending a range
    4. Recording and restoring overrides
    5. Deleting the selection
    6. Splitting a node list's parent
    7. Canonical space sequences
    8. Indenting and outdenting
    9. Toggling lists
    10. Justifying the selection
    11. Automatic linking
    12. The delete command
    13. The formatBlock command
    14. The forwardDelete command
    15. The indent command
    16. The insertHorizontalRule command
    17. The insertHTML command
    18. The insertImage command
    19. The insertLineBreak command
    20. The insertOrderedList command
    21. The insertParagraph command
    22. The insertText command
    23. The insertUnorderedList command
    24. The justifyCenter command
    25. The justifyFull command
    26. The justifyLeft command
    27. The justifyRight command
    28. The outdent command
  13. Miscellaneous commands
    1. The copy command
    2. The cut command
    3. The defaultParagraphSeparator command
    4. The paste command
    5. The redo command
    6. The selectAll command
    7. The styleWithCSS command
    8. The undo command
    9. The useCSS command
  14. Additional requirements
  15. Acknowledgements

Introduction

A piece of software that claims to implement this specification must follow every normative requirement in it. Every requirement in this specification is normative unless stated otherwise.

This is a note. All notes other than this one are non-normative.

This is an open issue. All issues other than this one are non-normative.

The remainder of this section is not normative, and nor is any preceding section.

This specification defines commands to edit HTML documents programmatically. The APIs specified here were originally introduced in Microsoft's Internet Explorer, but have subsequently been copied by other browsers in a haphazard and imprecise fashion. Although the behavior specified here does not exactly match any browser at the time of writing, it can serve as a target to converge to in the future.

Where the reasoning behind the specification is of interest, such as when major preexisting rendering engines are known not to match it, the reasoning is available by clicking the "comments" button on the right (requires JavaScript). If you have questions about why the specification says something, check the comments first. They're sometimes longer than the specification text itself, and commonly record what the major browsers do and other essential information.

The principles I've used for writing this specification so far are:

  • If all browsers that implement a particular feature agree on some detail of how it works, match them unless there's very good reason not to. When it's not clear what behavior is best, try to follow the implementations with the most market share. But if one browser's behavior is clearly better than the others', go with the better behavior.
  • If a command is issued to format some text in a particular way, we will format the text that way no matter what. If the user clicks the "bold" button, they don't care that the text didn't become bold because of an external CSS rule or for any other reason, they only care that it didn't work. The only exception (beyond where it's simply impossible, like propagated text-decorations we can't remove) is that we don't try to override !important rules from external stylesheets, although we also don't go out of our way to respect them.
  • When we're given a presentational command like "bold", don't modify anything other than presentational markup related to that command. If an element has non-presentational attributes like id or class, don't split it up or remove it or anything. At most convert it to a span, if it's some type of presentational element. ("Presentational" here really means "browsers produce it in response to execCommand() so we need to treat it as presentational", so it includes things like strong and em.) Of course, in some cases we have to remove elements, like when merging two blocks.
  • Don't interfere with more markup than necessary. If the user modifies only a small run of text, don't go around simplifying ancestors or siblings or whatever unless it's necessary to produce simpler markup in the place that was actually modified.
  • But if we are already changing around something's style, convert existing styles to the preferred format. For instance, we use <b> for bold (if the CSS styling flag is false), and convert <strong> and <span style="font-weight: bold"> if we happen to be modifying that node anyway.
  • Try not to make the document less conforming than it originally was. If we happen to make it more conforming, good, although we don't have to go out of our way to do that. In some cases we do make the document less conforming, generally because there's some clear use-case that requires it or because it matches existing browsers behavior. (For instance, see the styleWithCSS = false mode, and the fact that insertImage doesn't add an alt attribute, etc.)
  • Keep the markup as concise as possible. (I've received feedback that this is very important to authors.) Ideally, the markup should look as simple and neat as what a human would have produced by hand-editing. We do complicated manipulation to pull styles down from ancestors rather than having to use inline CSS, and make sure to tidy up any styles on elements that we happen to be modifying anyway. Previous principles take precedence over this one, however.

Tests

This section is not normative.

There are two groups of tests currently associated with this document: selection tests, and command tests. These tests are a non-normative part of this specification. The command tests are available in two formats, development tests and conformance tests. This has a lot to do with the history of how the specification was developed: selection was originally part of the defunct DOM Range spec, while the command parts were developed on their own. The selection things have been merged into the command spec, but neither the spec text nor the tests have been fully unified at the time of this writing.

Thus the selection tests live in their own directory, selecttest/. They use the standard testharness.js framework developed by James Graham. They're entirely self-contained, sharing nothing with the command tests (except invoking the testharness.js library). At the time of this writing, they're not nearly as comprehensive as the command tests, although they do test some functionality comprehensively.

On the other hand, the command-related part of this specification is developed in tandem with a more or less complete JavaScript implementation. The implementation is used for creating tests, of two different types: development tests and conformance tests. The two types of test share most of the same code, starting with the multi-thousand-line implementation itself. The actual tests run are largely the same in either case, but the way they're run is very different.

The development tests were the original ones, and were designed to assist in writing the specification from scratch. Given an input, they print out the spec's and browser's output to allow manual inspection. They can store the spec's output and will raise an alert if it changed since the last run, as a form of regression testing, but they don't print out counts of passed/failed tests. They are not designed to run exactly the same across browsers and are tolerant of minor variations. Development tests are likely not very useful for anyone other than the spec's editor.

Conformance tests were added later. They run the same tests as the development tests, but in an entirely non-interactive format, using the testharness.js framework like the selection tests. They always run the same set of tests, don't vary behavior between browsers (hopefully), and are unforgiving of any deviation. However, they're significantly more cumbersome to set up and use, so they're less useful for developing the specification itself.

There's a suite of predefined tests for each command (~30–300 at the time of this writing). These are the only tests run for the conformance tests, and in the regression tests they can be run by clicking the "Run tests" button. For the regression tests, you can also enter your own tests manually in the box provided. In any event, the test input is a snippet of HTML, which must have a selection marked in it. There are three ways to mark a selection's start or end:

  1. Square brackets mark a selection inside a text node, like <b>foo[bar]baz</b> for a selection whose start and end nodes are in the text node foobarbaz, with start offset 3 and end offset 6. Do not use square brackets where there's no text node: <b>[]</b> is bad, <b>{}</b> is correct.
  2. Curly braces mark a selection inside an element, like <b>{foobarbaz</b>} for a selection whose start node is the element <b>, whose start offset is 0, whose end node is the root of the editable region, and whose end offset is 1. Do not use curly braces in the middle of a text node: foo{bar}baz is bad, foo[bar]baz is correct.
  3. The data-start and data-end attributes mark a selection inside an element if a curly brace can't be put there in text/html. For instance, <table><tr>{<td>foo</td>}</tr></table> doesn't work because when the fragment is parsed, the curly braces end up outside the table. Instead, you have to do <table><tr data-start=0 data-end=1><td>foo</table>.

Every input must have exactly one start marker and one end marker, which will be removed from the DOM before the test is run. You can mix and match marker types, e.g., [foo}.

There is one special test type that behaves differently, "multitest". This allows running several tests in succession, which is needed at least for testing the effect of commands' state override or value override. The syntax is JSON, and looks like 

[HTML input,
  [command name 1, command value 1],
  [command name 2, command value 2],
  . . .]

where all the variables are properly-quoted JSON strings. queryCommand*() are not run for multitests.

In all cases, prefixing the test string (or the first string in the test array, for arrays) with "!" has a special effect. The "!" will be stripped, and the test will be added to an array of bad tests. These tests will be omitted from the conformance tests. This is used to mark tests where the reference implementation is known to currently give bad results, either because of a bug in the reference implementation or a bug in the spec. Bad tests will still be run as development tests.

Commands that are expected to vary significantly based on the value of the CSS styling flag are run twice. The first time runs execCommand("styleWithCSS", false, "false") before every command, and the second runs execCommand("styleWithCSS", false, "true") before every command. All other commands other than multitests run execCommand("styleWithCSS", false, "false") before every command. The extra tests are not run as regression tests, in IE or Opera, because they don't implement the styleWithCSS command (but of course the conformance tests always all run).

The implementation is also used for an actual rich-text editor, but it's currently more of a toy than anything. Significant functionality is probably broken, especially outside of Gecko/WebKit. I might spend some more time getting it to work right, but it's certainly not going to be very useful on real-world sites, since there's no way any of this stuff will work in IE8.

Command development tests

The development tests are mostly useful for developing the spec itself, not for use by authors or browser implementers. They consist of a suite of fully automated tests plus a few separate suites of manual tests. The tests are:

The automated tests run the JavaScript implementation of the specification on a particular input, then run the browser's implementation on the same input for comparison. The results of running automated tests are placed in a table, with rows marked as passing or failing based on whether the browser output is "close enough" to the spec output. Since the tests are designed for debugging the spec rather than actually testing conformance, minor variations are allowed to avoid having browsers fail many tests for uninteresting reasons. Passes and fails are based only on execCommand() output, not queryCommand*(): the latter is sanity-checked, and colored green or red if it's known to be right or wrong on general principle, but spec and browser output are not compared.

The tests will optionally store the specification's result for each test in localStorage, and will raise an alert for any new test (no stored output), any test whose spec output is different from the last run, and any test whose spec output is otherwise clearly bad (e.g., producing a non-serializable DOM). This is mostly useful for debugging and regression-testing the spec itself, and is probably not interesting to anyone other than me.

When a test runs, first the code sets up a contenteditable div with the given contents and sets the selection as requested. Then it runs queryCommandIndeterm(), queryCommandState(), and queryCommandValue(), and their values are noted. Then it runs execCommand(). Finally, it runs queryCommandIndeterm(), queryCommandState(), and queryCommandValue() again. Then it adds the output to the table.

The manual tests are much like the automated tests, with some key differences. They only test one command each, with one input value (if applicable). When a test is run, everything proceeds as in the automated case, but instead of running execCommand() for the browser tests, the user is asked to hit the appropriate key (backspace, delete, enter, etc.). Thus when running the tests for the first time, the user has to hit a key repeatedly, perhaps a few hundred times. The browser's result is then cached in localStorage so no manual intervention is required on subsequent runs except for newly-added tests, but the cached entries can be cleared if necessary.

The development tests have been tested and largely work in the latest versions (at the time of this writing) of IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Opera. Since the implementation of the spec is in JavaScript, it's vulnerable to bugs in browsers' JavaScript implementations. I work around or warn about some of these, but not all. The most correct results will probably be in Firefox or Chrome: both IE and Opera have serious known bugs that corrupt spec output for many tests. The tests are still useful for reviewing the browser output, but spec output in those browsers should be sanity-checked and compared against another browser's spec output in case of doubt.

Command conformance tests

The conformance tests operate more like one would expect from tests. Once generated, they consist of a single page, conformancetest/runtest.html, which runs all the tests and prints out a table of passes and fails. Like many other recent web standards suites, they use the testharness.js framework, and browser implementers should be able to make them part of their automated regression test frameworks.

For manual inspection, a version of the conformance tests is also available that runs only some of the tests at once: conformancetest/splitruntest.html. This runs only one group of tests at a time, which takes only a few seconds instead of a minute or more. This makes debugging particular tests much faster. In all other respects, it should behave identically to runtest.html.

Unlike the development tests, the conformance tests don't run the JavaScript implementation as part of the test. Instead, the tests' expected values are generated by a separate page, conformancetest/gentest.html. That page will output the expected values for all tests in a format to be copied to conformancetest/data.js, where it will be used by runtest.html.

This separation has a few benefits. First of all, it means the conformance tests take a long time to generate, but run much faster than the development tests: on the order of one minute instead of five or more. (Browser implementations of execCommand() are currently much faster than the spec's JS reference implementation, it seems.) Second of all, it means that all browsers are running against the same expected results. Third of all, the fact that all expected results are saved in a file allows much more systematic regression testing of the spec and the reference implementation. Changes in expected results will be recorded in the spec's version history and can be matched up to changes in the reference implementation or the spec, instead of being stored transiently in the spec editor's localStorage and then lost.

There are a couple of disadvantages as well. For one thing, new tests can't easily be added live, so the conformance tests aren't useful for experimenting with how implementations work. For another thing, the tests' expected results can only be generated all at once (not per-command), which takes minutes. A third issue is that they provide no useful feedback at all about user actions such as hitting Enter: they tell you what the insertParagraph command does in the browser, but not whether it matches up to any user action. Commands like the insertText command just fail all tests in most browsers. Thus they don't replace the manual development tests at all. (Manual conformance tests will eventually be added.)

As might be expected, browsers don't generate exactly the same expected results from the tests. Clearly incorrect expected results (like a DOM that doesn't round-trip through text/html) are automatically rejected, with a printed warning, but some discrepancies remain. At the time of this writing, Firefox 8.0a2 and Chrome 15 dev generate identical results, except that Firefox omits one test (due to incorrect serialization of <xmp>) and Chrome gets one test wrong (due to a style resolution bug). Thus I generate the tests right now in Firefox, since all its generated tests are at least correct. IE9 and Opera 11.50 don't yet generate or run the tests usefully at all in this initial version, but this will be remedied soon.

Event firing is currently tested in a totally separate file, event.html. In the long term, this will probably be merged into runtest.html so that it's tested more thoroughly.

Issues

This section is not normative.

This specification is mostly feature-complete. It's more or less fully implemented in JavaScript, and has been tested on a fairly significant amount of artificial input. It has not been tested on real-world sites that use execCommand(), and has not been thoroughly reviewed by anyone other than me. It should be considered mostly stable and awaiting implementater review and feedback.

Significant known issues that I need feedback on, or otherwise am not planning to fix just yet:

  • Need to make CSS terminology more precise, about setting/unsetting CSS properties. The intent is to modify the style attribute, CSSOM-style. Suggestions appreciated on how I should spec this.
  • I use resolved value instead of computed or used or anything like that, just because that's what my test implementation uses (via getComputedStyle). This is not necessarily the best actual choice: if it should be something else, please tell me.

  • I haven't paid much attention to performance. The algorithms here aren't performance-critical in most cases, but I might have accidentally included some algorithms that are too slow anyway on large pages. Generally I haven't worried about throwing nodes away and recreating them multiple times or things like that, as long as it produces the correct result.

    If it would be useful to implementers for me to spend time and spec complexity on avoiding some of the masses of useless operations that are currently required, please say so. All intermediate DOM states are black-box detectable via mutation events or whatever their replacement will be, so implementers theoretically can't optimize most of this stuff too much themselves, but in practice I doubt anyone will rely on the intermediate DOM states much.

  • brs are a nightmare. I have tons of hacks all over the place which are totally wrong, mostly to account for the fact that sometimes brs do nothing and we need to treat that case magically. I don't know what a good way is to fix this. At this point I've mostly gotten the evil concentrated in the definitions "collapsed line break", "extraneous line break", and "collapsed block prop", but there's lots of other special-case handling scattered about. Feedback appreciated. How do browsers handle this?
  • The CSS styling flag is an issue. Currently authors are forced to turn it entirely on or entirely off. If it's on, it produces stuff like <span style=font-weight:bold> instead of <b>, while if it's off, it produces stuff like <font color=red> instead of <span style=color:red>. The issue is that authors might want a mix, like making the markup as concise as possible while still conforming, and they can't do that. Changing the flag on a per-command basis doesn't help because of things like the "restore the values" algorithm, which might create several different types of style at once and has to use the same styling flag for all of them. This was discussed back in March in this thread, along with a number of other things, but at that time I hadn't written commands that change multiple styles at once, so it seemed feasible to ask authors to switch styleWithCSS on or off on a per-command basis.
  • I haven't defined the "undo" or "redo" commands yet. They look very complicated to define precisely, and other people are working on them right now.

A variety of other issues are also noted in the text, formatted like this. Feedback would be appreciated on all of them.

Things that would be useful to address for the future but aren't important to fix right now are in comments prefixed with "TODO".

Selections

Every document with a non-null defaultView has a unique Selection object associated with it. Selection objects are known as selections. Each selection is associated with a single range, which may be null and is initially null. This one selection must be shared by all the content of the document (though not by nested documents), including any editing hosts in the document. Editing hosts that are not inside a document cannot have a selection.

A document's selection is a singleton object associated with that document, so it gets replaced with a new object when Document.open() is called.

The user agent should allow the user to change the active document's selection. If the user makes any modification to a selection, the user agent must create a new range with suitable start and end and associate the selection with this new range (not modify the existing range). The user agent must not allow the user to set a selection's range to null if it was not already null.

Once a selection is associated with a given range, it must continue to be associated with that same range until this specification requires otherwise.

For instance, if the DOM changes in a way that changes the range's boundary points, or a script modifies the boundary points of the range, the same range object must continue to be associated with the selection. However, if the user changes the selection or a script calls addRange(), the selection must be associated with a new range object, as required elsewhere in this specification.

If the selection's range is not null and is collapsed, then the caret position must be at that range's boundary point. When the selection is not empty, this specification does not define the caret position; user agents should follow platform conventions in deciding whether the caret is at the start of the selection, the end of the selection, or somewhere else.

Each selection has a direction, either forwards or backwards. If the user creates a selection by indicating first one boundary point of the range and then the other (such as by clicking on one point and dragging to another), and the first indicated boundary point is after the second, then the corresponding selection must initially be backwards. Otherwise, it must be forwards (including if the user didn't create the selection, created it by selecting an entire part of the page using a keyboard shortcut, etc.).

Wouldn't it make more sense if addRange()/removeRange() reset direction?

Selections also have an anchor and a focus. If the selection's range is null, its anchor and focus are both null. If the selection's range is not null and its direction is forwards, its anchor is the range's start, and its focus is the end. Otherwise, its focus is the start and its anchor is the end. 

interface Selection {
  readonly attribute Node? anchorNode;
  readonly attribute unsigned long anchorOffset;
  readonly attribute Node? focusNode;
  readonly attribute unsigned long focusOffset;

  readonly attribute boolean isCollapsed;
  void               collapse(Node node, unsigned long offset);
  void               collapseToStart();
  void               collapseToEnd();

  void               extend(Node node, unsigned long offset);

  void               selectAllChildren(Node node);
  void               deleteFromDocument();

  readonly attribute unsigned long rangeCount;
  Range              getRangeAt(unsigned long index);
  void               addRange(Range range);
  void               removeRange(Range range);
  void               removeAllRanges();

  stringifier;
};

Originally, the Selection interface was a Netscape feature. The original implementation was carried on into Gecko (Firefox), and the feature was later implemented independently by other browser engines. The Netscape implementation always allowed multiple ranges in a single selection, for instance so the user could select a column of a table. However, multi-range selections proved to be an unpleasant corner case that web developers didn't know about and even Gecko developers rarely handled correctly. Other browser engines never implemented the feature, and clamped selections to a single range in various incompatible fashions.

This specification follows non-Gecko engines in restricting selections to at most one range, but the API was still originally designed for selections with arbitrary numbers of ranges. This explains oddities like the coexistence of removeRange() and removeAllRanges(), and a getRangeAt() method that takes an integer argument that must always be zero.

All of the members of the Selection interface are defined in terms of operations on the range object (if any) represented by the object. These operations can raise exceptions, as defined for the Range interface; this can therefore result in the members of the Selection interface raising exceptions as well, in addition to any explicitly called out below.

What happens if you try to put a selection in some node that's not part of the selection's document? Assuming it works, how is it presented to the user?

What does getSelection().getRangeAt(0).detach() do?

selection . anchorNode

Returns the element that contains the start of the selection.

Returns null if there's no selection.

selection . anchorOffset

Returns the offset of the start of the selection relative to the element that contains the start of the selection.

Returns 0 if there's no selection.

selection . focusNode

Returns the element that contains the end of the selection.

Returns null if there's no selection.

selection . focusOffset

Returns the offset of the end of the selection relative to the element that contains the end of the selection.

Returns 0 if there's no selection.

The anchorNode attribute must return the context object's anchor's node, or null if the anchor is null.

The anchorOffset attribute must return the context object's anchor's offset, or 0 if the anchor is null.

The focusNode attribute must return the context object's focus's node, or null if the focus is null.

The focusOffset attribute must return the context object's focus's offset, or 0 if the focus is null.

collapsed = selection . isCollapsed()

Returns true if there's no selection or if the selection is empty. Otherwise, returns false.

selection . collapse(node, offset)

Replaces the selection with a collapsed one at the given position.

Throws an IndexSizeError exception if offset is negative or longer than node's length.

selection . collapseToStart()

Replaces the selection with an empty one at the position of the start of the current selection.

Throws an InvalidStateError exception if there is no selection.

selection . collapseToEnd()

Replaces the selection with an empty one at the position of the end of the current selection.

Throws an InvalidStateError exception if there is no selection.

selection . extend(node, offset)

Changes the focus while leaving the anchor in place.

Throws an InvalidStateError if there's no selection, an InvalidNodeTypeError if node is a doctype, and an IndexSizeError exception if offset is negative or longer than node's length.

The isCollapsed attribute must return true if the anchor and focus are the same (including if both are null). Otherwise it must return false.

The collapse(node, offset) method must create a new range, set both its start and end to (node, offset), and set the context object's range to the newly-created range.

The collapseToStart() method must throw an InvalidStateError exception if the context object's range is null. Otherwise, it must create a new range object, set both its start and end to the context object's range's start, and then set the context object's range to the newly-created range.

The collapseToEnd() method must throw an InvalidStateError exception if the context object's range is null. Otherwise, it must create a new range object, set both its start and end to the context object's range's end, and then set the context object's range to the newly-created range.

The extend(node, offset) method must run these steps:

  1. If the context object's range is null, throw an InvalidStateError exception and abort these steps.

  2. Let anchor and focus be the context object's anchor and focus, and let new focus be the boundary point (node, offset).

  3. Let new range be a new range.

  4. If node's root is not the same as the context object's range's root, set new range's start and end to (node, offset).

  5. Otherwise, if anchor is before or equal to new focus, set new range's start to anchor, then set its end to new focus.
  6. Otherwise, set new range's start to new focus, then set its end to anchor.
  7. Set the context object's range to new range.
  8. If new focus is before anchor, set the context object's direction to backwards. Otherwise, set it to forwards.
selection . selectAllChildren(node)

Replaces the selection with one that contains all the contents of the given element.

selection . deleteFromDocument()

Deletes the selection.

The selectAllChildren(node) method must run the following steps:

  1. Let range be a new range.

  2. Set range's start to (node, 0).
  3. Set range's end to (node, number of node's children).
  4. Set the context object's range to range.
  5. Set the context object's direction to forwards.

The deleteFromDocument() method must do nothing if the context object's range is null, and otherwise must invoke the deleteContents() method on the context object's range.

Should we replace the range rather than mutating it here? This is currently the only Selection method that actually mutates an existing range in place.

selection . rangeCount

Returns the number of ranges in the selection (either 0 or 1).

selection . getRangeAt(index)

Returns the selection's range, if index is 0.

Throws an IndexSizeError exception if index is not 0, or if there is no range in the selection.

selection . addRange(range)

Adds the given range to the selection.

selection . removeRange(range)

Unselects everyting, if range is in the selection. (Use removeAllRanges() instead.)

selection . removeAllRanges()

Unselects everything.

The rangeCount attribute must return 0 if the context object's range is null, otherwise 1.

The getRangeAt(index) method must throw an IndexSizeError exception if index is not 0, or if the context object's range is null. Otherwise, it must return a reference to (not a copy of) the context object's range. (Thus subsequent calls must return the same object if nothing has removed the context object's range in the meantime.)

The addRange(range) method must set the context object's range to a reference to (not a copy of) range. Since range is added by reference, subsequent calls to getRangeAt(0) must return the same object, and any changes that a script makes to range after it is added must be reflected in the selection, until something else removes or replaces the context object's range.

The removeRange(range) method must set the context object's range to null if its range is currently range, otherwise do nothing.

Do we check for object equality here or just equality of boundary points?

The removeAllRanges() method must set the context object's range to null and its direction to forwards.

The stringifier must . . .

Complicated. The Selection stringifier is magical like innerText. See W3C bug 10583.

This specification extends several interfaces to provide entry points to the interfaces defined in this specification.

window . getSelection()
document . getSelection()

Returns the Selection object for the window, which stringifies to the text of the current selection. 

partial interface Document {
  Selection getSelection();
};

The getSelection() method on the Document interface must return null if the context object's defaultView is null, and the context object's selection otherwise. 

partial interface Window {
  Selection getSelection();
};

The getSelection() method on the Window interface must return the same thing as calling getSelection() on the document returned by the context object's document property.

Commands

Properties of commands

This specification defines a number of commands, identified by ASCII case-insensitive strings. Each command can have several pieces of data associated with it:

Supported commands

Some commands will be supported in a given user agent, and some will not. All commands defined in this specification must be supported, except optionally the copy command, the cut command, and/or the paste command. Additional vendor-specific commands can also be supported, but implementers must prefix any vendor-specific command names with a vendor-specific string (e.g., "ms", "moz", "webkit", "opera").

A command that does absolutely nothing in a particular user agent, such that execCommand() never has any effect and queryCommandEnabled() and queryCommandIndeterm() and queryCommandState() and queryCommandValue() each return the same value all the time, must not be supported.

In a particular user agent, every command must be consistently either supported or not. Specifically, a user agent must not permit one page to see the same command sometimes supported and sometimes not over the course of the same browsing session, unless the user agent has been upgraded or reconfigured in the middle of a session. However, user agents may treat the same command as supported for some pages and not others, e.g., if the command is only supported for certain origins for security reasons.

Authors can tell whether a command is supported using queryCommandSupported().

Enabled commands

At any given time, a supported command can be either enabled or not. Authors can tell whether a command is currently enabled using queryCommandEnabled(). Commands that are not enabled do nothing, as described in the definitions of the various methods that invoke commands.

Among commands defined in this specification, those listed in Miscellaneous commands are always enabled, except for the cut command and the paste command. The other commands defined here are enabled if the active range is not null, its start node is either editable or an editing host, its end node is either editable or an editing host, and there is some editing host that is an inclusive ancestor of both its start node and its end node.

Methods to query and execute commands

We fire events as requested in bug 13118. This is a new feature does not currently match any browser. If you are implementing this, please make sure to file any feedback as bugs. The spec is not finalized yet and can still be easily changed. 

[Constructor(DOMString type, optional EditingBeforeInputEventInit eventInitDict)]
interface EditingBeforeInputEvent : Event {
  readonly attribute DOMString command;
  readonly attribute DOMString value;
};

dictionary EditingBeforeInputEventInit : EventInit {
  DOMString command;
  DOMString value;
};

[Constructor(DOMString type, optional EditingInputEventInit eventInitDict)]
interface EditingInputEvent : Event {
  readonly attribute DOMString command;
  readonly attribute DOMString value;
};

dictionary EditingInputEventInit : EventInit {
  DOMString command;
  DOMString value;
};

We have two different interfaces because we might want to add additional members to the input event but not the beforeinput event, such as a list of nodes that were affected.

When an EditingBeforeInputEvent object is created, the command and value attributes must both be initialized to the empty string, unless otherwise specified.

When an EditingInputEvent object is created, the command and value attributes must both be initialized to the empty string, unless otherwise specified.

When the execCommand(command, show UI, value) method on the HTMLDocument interface is invoked, the user agent must run the following steps:

  1. If only one argument was provided, let show UI be false.
  2. If only one or two arguments were provided, let value be the empty string.

  3. If command is not supported or not enabled, return false.

  4. If command is not in the Miscellaneous commands section:

    We don't fire events for copy/cut/paste/undo/redo/selectAll because they should all have their own events. We don't fire events for styleWithCSS/useCSS because it's not obvious where to fire them, or why anyone would want them. We don't fire events for unsupported commands, because then if they became supported and were classified with the miscellaneous events, we'd have to stop firing events for consistency's sake.

    1. Let affected editing host be the editing host that is an inclusive ancestor of the active range's start node and end node, and is not the ancestor of any editing host that is an inclusive ancestor of the active range's start node and end node.

      Such an editing host must exist, because otherwise the command would not be enabled.

    2. Dispatch an event at affected editing host that uses the EditingBeforeInputEvent interface. The event's type attribute must be initialized to "beforeinput"; its isTrusted, bubbles, and cancelable attributes must be initialized to true; its command attribute must be initialized to command; and its value attribute must be initialized to value.
    3. If the value returned by the previous step is false, return false.
    4. If command is not enabled, return false.

      We have to check again whether the command is enabled, because the beforeinput handler might have done something annoying like getSelection().removeAllRanges().

    5. Let affected editing host be the editing host that is an inclusive ancestor of the active range's start node and end node, and is not the ancestor of any editing host that is an inclusive ancestor of the active range's start node and end node.

      This new affected editing host is what we'll fire the input event at in a couple of lines. We want to compute it beforehand just to be safe: bugs in the command action might remove the selection or something bad like that, and we don't want to have to handle it later. We recompute it after the beforeinput event is handled so that if the handler moves the selection to some other editing host, the input event will be fired at the editing host that was actually affected.

  5. Take the action for command, passing value to the instructions as an argument.
  6. If the previous step returned false, return false.
  7. If command is not in the Miscellaneous commands section, then dispatch an event at affected editing host that uses the EditingInputEvent interface. The event's type attribute must be initialized to "input"; its isTrusted and bubbles attributes must be initialized to true; its command attribute must be initialized to command; and its value attribute must be initialized to value.
  8. Return true.

When the queryCommandEnabled(command) method on the HTMLDocument interface is invoked, the user agent must run the following steps:

  2. Return true if command is both supported and enabled, false otherwise.

When the queryCommandIndeterm(command) method on the HTMLDocument interface is invoked, the user agent must run the following steps:

  1. If command is not supported or has no indeterminacy, return false.

  2. Return true if command is indeterminate, otherwise false.

When the queryCommandState(command) method on the HTMLDocument interface is invoked, the user agent must run the following steps:

  1. If command is not supported or has no state, return false.

  2. If the state override for command is set, return it.
  3. Return true if command's state is true, otherwise false.

When the queryCommandSupported(command) method on the HTMLDocument interface is invoked, the user agent must return true if command is supported, and false otherwise.

When the queryCommandValue(command) method on the HTMLDocument interface is invoked, the user agent must run the following steps:

  1. If command is not supported or has no value, return the empty string.

  2. If command is "fontSize" and its value override is set, convert the value override to an integer number of pixels and return the legacy font size for the result.

  3. If the value override for command is set, return it.
  4. Return command's value.

All of these methods must treat their command argument ASCII case-insensitively.

The methods in this section have mostly been designed so that the following invariants hold after execCommand() is called, assuming it didn't throw an exception:

  • queryCommandIndeterm() will return false (or throw an exception).
  • queryCommandState() will return the opposite of what it did before execCommand() was called (or throw an exception).
  • queryCommandValue() will return something equivalent to the value passed to execCommand() (or throw an exception). "Equivalent" here needs to be construed broadly in some cases, such as fontSize.

The first two points do not always hold for strikethrough or underline, because it can be impossible to unset text-decoration in CSS. Also, by design, the state of insertOrderedList and insertUnorderedList might be true both before and after calling, because they only remove one level of indentation. unlink should set the value to null. And finally, the state of the various justify commands should always be true after calling, and the value should always be the appropriate string ("center", "justify", "left", or "right"). Any other deviations from these invariants are bugs in the specification.

Common definitions

An HTML element is an Element whose namespace is the HTML namespace.

A prohibited paragraph child name is "address", "article", "aside", "blockquote", "caption", "center", "col", "colgroup", "dd", "details", "dir", "div", "dl", "dt", "fieldset", "figcaption", "figure", "footer", "form", "h1", "h2", "h3", "h4", "h5", "h6", "header", "hgroup", "hr", "li", "listing", "menu", "nav", "ol", "p", "plaintext", "pre", "section", "summary", "table", "tbody", "td", "tfoot", "th", "thead", "tr", "ul", or "xmp".

A prohibited paragraph child is an HTML element whose local name is a prohibited paragraph child name.

A block node is either an Element whose "display" property does not have resolved value "inline" or "inline-block" or "inline-table" or "none", or a document, or a DocumentFragment.

An inline node is a node that is not a block node.

An editing host is a node that is either an HTML element with a contenteditable attribute set to the true state, or the HTML element child of a document whose designMode is enabled.

Something is editable if it is a node; it is not an editing host; it does not have a contenteditable attribute set to the false state; its parent is an editing host or editable; and either it is an HTML element, or it is an svg or math element, or it is not an Element and its parent is an HTML element.

An editable node cannot be a document or DocumentFragment, its parent cannot be null, and it must descend from either an Element or a document.

The editing host of node is null if node is neither editable nor an editing host; node itself, if node is an editing host; or the nearest ancestor of node that is an editing host, if node is editable.

Two nodes are in the same editing host if the editing host of the first is non-null and the same as the editing host of the second.

Barring bugs, the algorithms here will not alter the attributes of a non-editable element; will not remove a non-editable node from its parent (except to immediately give it a new parent in the same editing host); and will not add, remove, or reorder children of a node unless it is either editable or an editing host. An editing host is never editable, so authors are assured that editing commands will only modify the editing host's contents and not the editing host itself.

A collapsed line break is a br that begins a line box which has nothing else in it, and therefore has zero height.

Is this a good definition at all? I mean things like <p>foo<br></p>, or the second one in <p>foo<br><br></p>. The way I test it is by adding a text node after it containing a zwsp; if that changes the offsetHeight of its nearest non-inline ancestor, I deem it collapsed. But what if it happens to be display: none right now, for instance? Or its ancestor has a fixed height? Would it be better to use some DOM-based definition?

An is a br that has no visual effect, in that removing it from the DOM would not change layout, except that a br that is the sole child of an li is not extraneous.

Also possibly a bad definition. Again, I test by just removing it and seeing what happens. (Actually, setting display: none, so that it doesn't mess up ranges.)

A whitespace node is either a Text node whose data is the empty string; or a Text node whose data consists only of one or more tabs (0x0009), line feeds (0x000A), carriage returns (0x000D), and/or spaces (0x0020), and whose parent is an Element whose resolved value for "white-space" is "normal" or "nowrap"; or a Text node whose data consists only of one or more tabs (0x0009), carriage returns (0x000D), and/or spaces (0x0020), and whose parent is an Element whose resolved value for "white-space" is "pre-line".

node is a collapsed whitespace node if the following algorithm returns true:

This definition is also bad. It's a crude attempt to emulate CSS2.1 16.6.1, but leaving out a ton of the subtleties. I actually don't want the exact CSS definitions, because those depend on things like where lines are broken, but I'm not sure this definition is right anyway. E.g., what about a pre-line text node consisting of a single line break that's at the end of a block? That collapses, same idea as an extraneous line break. We could also worry about nodes containing only zwsp or such if we wanted, or display: none, or . . .

  1. If node is not a whitespace node, return false.
  2. If node's data is the empty string, return true.
  3. Let ancestor be node's parent.
  4. If ancestor is null, return true.
  5. If the "display" property of some ancestor of node has resolved value "none", return true.
  6. While ancestor is not a block node and its parent is not null, set ancestor to its parent.

  7. Let reference be node.

  8. While reference is a descendant of ancestor:
    1. Let reference be the node before it in tree order.
    2. If reference is a block node or a br, return true.
    3. If reference is a Text node that is not a whitespace node, or is an img, break from this loop.

  9. Let reference be node.

  10. While reference is a descendant of ancestor:
    1. Let reference be the node after it in tree order, or null if there is no such node.
    2. If reference is a block node or a br, return true.
    3. If reference is a Text node that is not a whitespace node, or is an img, break from this loop.
  11. Return false.

Something is visible if it is a node that either is a block node, or a Text node that is not a collapsed whitespace node, or an img, or a br that is not an extraneous line break, or any node with a visible descendant; excluding any node with an inclusive ancestor Element whose "display" property has resolved value "none".

Something is invisible if it is a node that is not visible.

A collapsed block prop is either a collapsed line break that is not an extraneous line break, or an Element that is an inline node and whose children are all either invisible or collapsed block props and that has at least one child that is a collapsed block prop.

A collapsed block prop is something like the <br> in <p><br></p>, or the <br> and <span> in <p><span><br></span></p>. These are necessary to stop the block from having zero height when it has no other contents, but serve no purpose and should be removed once the block has other contents that stop it from collapsing.

The active range is the range of the selection given by calling getSelection() on the context object. (Thus the active range may be null.)

Each HTMLDocument has a boolean CSS styling flag associated with it, which must initially be false. (The styleWithCSS command can be used to modify or query it, by means of the execCommand() and queryCommandState() methods.)

Each HTMLDocument is associated with a string known as the default single-line container name, which must initially be "p". (The defaultParagraphSeparator command can be used to modify or query it, by means of the execCommand() and queryCommandValue() methods.)

For some commands, each HTMLDocument must have a boolean state override and/or a string value override. These do not change the command's state or value, but change the way some algorithms behave, as specified in those algorithms' definitions. Initially, both must be unset for every command. Whenever the number of ranges in the selection changes to something different, and whenever a boundary point of the range at a given index in the selection changes to something different, the state override and value override must be unset for every command. The value override for the backColor command must be the same as the value override for the hiliteColor command, such that setting one sets the other to the same thing and unsetting one unsets the other.

The primary purpose of state and value overrides is that if the user runs a command like bold with a collapsed selection, then types something without moving the cursor, they expect it to have the given style (bold or such). Thus the commands like bold set state and value overrides, and insertText checks for them and applies them to the newly-inserted text. Other commands like delete also interact with overrides.

When document.open() is called and a document's singleton objects are all replaced by new instances of those objects, editing state associated with that document (including the CSS styling flag, default single-line container name, and any state overrides or value overrides) must be reset.

Of course, any action that replaces a document object entirely, such as reloading the page, will also reset any editing state associated with the document.

When this specification refers to a method or attribute that is defined in a specification, the user agent must treat the method or attribute as defined by that specification. In particular, if a script has overridden a standard property with a custom one, the user agent must only use the overridden property when a script refers to it, and must continue to use the specification-defined behavior when this specification refers to it.

When a list or set of nodes is assigned to a variable without specifying the order, they must be initially in tree order, if they share a root. (If they don't share a root, the order will be specified.) When the user agent is instructed to run particular steps for each member of a list, it must do so sequentially in the list's order.

Common algorithms

Assorted common algorithms

To move a node to a new location, preserving ranges, remove the node from its original parent (if any), then insert it in the new location. In doing so, follow these rules instead of those defined by the insert and remove algorithms:

Many of the algorithms in this specification move nodes around in the DOM. The normal rules for range mutation require that any range endpoints inside those nodes are moved to the node's parent as soon as the node is moved, which would corrupt the selection. For instance, if the user selects the text "foo" and then bolds it, first we produce <b></b>foo, then <b>foo</b>. When we move the "foo" text node into its new parent, we have to do so "preserving ranges", so that the text "foo" is still selected.

  1. Let node be the moved node, old parent and old index be the old parent (which may be null) and index, and new parent and new index be the new parent and index.

  2. If a boundary point's node is the same as or a descendant of node, leave it unchanged, so it moves to the new location.

  3. If a boundary point's node is new parent and its offset is greater than new index, add one to its offset.
  4. If a boundary point's node is old parent and its offset is old index or old index + 1, set its node to new parent and add new index − old index to its offset.
  5. If a boundary point's node is old parent and its offset is greater than old index + 1, subtract one from its offset.

To set the tag name of an Element element to new name:

This is needed because the DOM doesn't allow any way of changing an existing element's name. Sometimes we want to, e.g., convert a markup element to a span. In that case we invoke this algorithm to create a new element, move it to the right place, copy attributes from the old element, move the old element's children, and remove the old element.

  1. If element is an HTML element with local name equal to new name, return element.
  2. If element's parent is null, return element.
  3. Let replacement element be the result of calling createElement(new name) on the ownerDocument of element.
  4. Insert replacement element into element's parent immediately before element.
  5. Copy all attributes of element to replacement element, in order.
  6. While element has children, append the first child of element as the last child of replacement element, preserving ranges.
  7. Remove element from its parent.
  8. Return replacement element.

To a node node:

<br> sometimes has no effect in CSS, such as in the markup foo<br><p>bar</p>. In such cases we like to remove the extra markup to keep things tidy.

  1. Let ref be the previousSibling of node.
  2. If ref is null, abort these steps.
  3. While ref has children, set ref to its lastChild.
  4. While ref is invisible but not an extraneous line break, and ref does not equal node's parent, set ref to the node before it in tree order.
  5. If ref is an editable extraneous line break, remove it from its parent.

To a node node:

  1. Let ref be node.
  2. While ref has children, set ref to its lastChild.
  3. While ref is invisible but not an extraneous line break, and ref does not equal node, set ref to the node before it in tree order.
  4. If ref is an editable extraneous line break:

    1. While ref's parent is editable and invisible, set ref to its parent.

    2. Remove ref from its parent.

To a node, first remove extraneous line breaks before it, then remove extraneous line breaks at the end of it.

Wrapping a list of nodes

To wrap a list node list of consecutive sibling nodes, run the following algorithm. In addition to node list, the algorithm accepts two inputs: an algorithm sibling criteria that accepts a node as input and outputs a boolean, and an algorithm new parent instructions that accepts nothing as input and outputs a node or null. If not provided, sibling criteria returns false and new parent instructions returns null.

This algorithm basically does two things. First, it looks at the previous and next siblings of the nodes in node list. If running sibling criteria on one or both of the siblings returns true, the nodes in node list are moved into the sibling(s). Otherwise, new parent instructions is run, and the result is used to wrap node list. For instance, to wrap node list in a <b>, one might invoke this algorithm with sibling criteria returning true only for <b> elements and new parent instructions creating and returning a new <b> element.

  1. If every member of node list is invisible, and none is a br, return null and abort these steps.

  2. If node list's first member's parent is null, return null and abort these steps.

  3. If node list's last member is an inline node that's not a br, and node list's last member's nextSibling is a br, append that br to node list.

  4. While node list's first member's previousSibling is invisible, prepend it to node list.

  5. While node list's last member's nextSibling is invisible, append it to node list.
  6. If the previousSibling of the first member of node list is editable and running sibling criteria on it returns true, let new parent be the previousSibling of the first member of node list.
  7. Otherwise, if the nextSibling of the last member of node list is editable and running sibling criteria on it returns true, let new parent be the nextSibling of the last member of node list.
  8. Otherwise, run new parent instructions, and let new parent be the result.

  9. If new parent is null, abort these steps and return null.

  10. If new parent's parent is null:

    1. Insert new parent into the parent of the first member of node list immediately before the first member of node list.

    2. If any range has a boundary point with node equal to the parent of new parent and offset equal to the index of new parent, add one to that boundary point's offset.

  11. Let original parent be the parent of the first member of node list.
  12. If new parent is before the first member of node list in tree order:
    1. If new parent is not an inline node, but the last visible child of new parent and the first visible member of node list are both inline nodes, and the last child of new parent is not a br, call createElement("br") on the ownerDocument of new parent and append the result as the last child of new parent.
    2. For each node in node list, append node as the last child of new parent, preserving ranges.
  13. Otherwise:
    1. If new parent is not an inline node, but the first visible child of new parent and the last visible member of node list are both inline nodes, and the last member of node list is not a br, call createElement("br") on the ownerDocument of new parent and insert the result as the first child of new parent.
    2. For each node in node list, in reverse order, insert node as the first child of new parent, preserving ranges.

  14. If original parent is editable and has no children, remove it from its parent.

  15. If new parent's nextSibling is editable and running sibling criteria on it returns true:

    1. If new parent is not an inline node, but new parent's last child and new parent's nextSibling's first child are both inline nodes, and new parent's last child is not a br, call createElement("br") on the ownerDocument of new parent and append the result as the last child of new parent.
    2. While new parent's nextSibling has children, append its first child as the last child of new parent, preserving ranges.
    3. Remove new parent's nextSibling from its parent.
  16. Remove extraneous line breaks from new parent.
  17. Return new parent.

Allowed children

A name of an element with inline contents is "a", "abbr", "b", "bdi", "bdo", "cite", "code", "dfn", "em", "h1", "h2", "h3", "h4", "h5", "h6", "i", "kbd", "mark", "p", "pre", "q", "rp", "rt", "ruby", "s", "samp", "small", "span", "strong", "sub", "sup", "u", "var", "acronym", "listing", "strike", "xmp", "big", "blink", "font", "marquee", "nobr", or "tt".

An element with inline contents is an HTML element whose local name is a name of an element with inline contents.

A node or string child is an allowed child of a node or string parent if the following algorithm returns true:

Often we move around nodes, and sometimes this can result in unreasonable things like two <p>'s nested inside one another. This algorithm checks for DOMs we never want to have, so that other algorithms can avoid creating them or fix them if they do happen. The fix disallowed ancestors algorithm is one frequently-invoked caller of this algorithm.

  1. If parent is "colgroup", "table", "tbody", "tfoot", "thead", "tr", or an HTML element with local name equal to one of those, and child is a Text node whose data does not consist solely of space characters, return false.

  2. If parent is "script", "style", "plaintext", or "xmp", or an HTML element with local name equal to one of those, and child is not a Text node, return false.

  3. If child is a document, DocumentFragment, or DocumentType, return false.
  4. If child is an HTML element, set child to the local name of child.
  5. If child is not a string, return true.
  6. If parent is an HTML element:

    1. If child is "a", and parent or some ancestor of parent is an a, return false.

    2. If child is a prohibited paragraph child name and parent or some ancestor of parent is an element with inline contents, return false.

    3. If child is "h1", "h2", "h3", "h4", "h5", or "h6", and parent or some ancestor of parent is an HTML element with local name "h1", "h2", "h3", "h4", "h5", or "h6", return false.

    4. Let parent be the local name of parent.

  7. If parent is an Element or DocumentFragment, return true.
  8. If parent is not a string, return false.

  9. If parent is on the left-hand side of an entry on the following list, then return true if child is listed on the right-hand side of that entry, and false otherwise.

    • colgroup: col
    • table: caption, col, colgroup, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr
    • tbody, tfoot, thead: td, th, tr
    • tr: td, th
    • dl: dt, dd
    • dir, ol, ul: dir, li, ol, ul
    • hgroup: h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6
  10. If child is "body", "caption", "col", "colgroup", "frame", "frameset", "head", "html", "tbody", "td", "tfoot", "th", "thead", or "tr", return false.

  11. If child is "dd" or "dt" and parent is not "dl", return false.

  12. If child is "li" and parent is not "ol" or "ul", return false.
  13. If parent is on the left-hand side of an entry on the following list and child is listed on the right-hand side of that entry, return false.
  14. Return true.

Inline formatting commands

Inline formatting command definitions

A node node is effectively contained in a range range if range is not collapsed, and at least one of the following holds:

A modifiable element is a b, em, i, s, span, strike, strong, sub, sup, or u element with no attributes except possibly style; or a font element with no attributes except possibly style, color, face, and/or size; or an a element with no attributes except possibly style and/or href.

A simple modifiable element is an HTML element for which at least one of the following holds:

  • It is an a, b, em, font, i, s, span, strike, strong, sub, sup, or u element with no attributes.
  • It is an a, b, em, font, i, s, span, strike, strong, sub, sup, or u element with exactly one attribute, which is style, which sets no CSS properties (including invalid or unrecognized properties).
  • It is an a element with exactly one attribute, which is href.
  • It is a font element with exactly one attribute, which is either color, face, or size.
  • It is a b or strong element with exactly one attribute, which is style, and the style attribute sets exactly one CSS property (including invalid or unrecognized properties), which is "font-weight".
  • It is an i or em element with exactly one attribute, which is style, and the style attribute sets exactly one CSS property (including invalid or unrecognized properties), which is "font-style".
  • It is an a, font, or span element with exactly one attribute, which is style, and the style attribute sets exactly one CSS property (including invalid or unrecognized properties), and that property is not "text-decoration".
  • It is an a, font, s, span, strike, or u element with exactly one attribute, which is style, and the style attribute sets exactly one CSS property (including invalid or unrecognized properties), which is "text-decoration", which is set to "line-through" or "underline" or "overline" or "none".

Conceptually, a simple modifiable element is a modifiable element which specifies a value for at most one command. As the names imply, inline formatting commands will try not to modify anything other than modifiable elements. For instance, <dfn> normally creates italics, but it's not modifiable, so running the italic command will not remove it: it will nest <span style="font-style: normal"> inside.

A formattable node is an editable visible node that is either a Text node, an img, or a br.

Two quantities are equivalent values for a command if either both are null, or both are strings and they're equal and the command does not define any equivalent values, or both are strings and the command defines equivalent values and they match the definition.

Two quantities are loosely equivalent values for a command if either they are equivalent values for the command, or if the command is the fontSize command; one of the quantities is one of "x-small", "small", "medium", "large", "x-large", "xx-large", or "xxx-large"; and the other quantity is the resolved value of "font-size" on a font element whose size attribute has the corresponding value set ("1" through "7" respectively).

Loose equivalence needs to be used when comparing effective command values to other values, while regular equivalence is used in other cases. The effective command value for fontSize is converted to pixels, so comparing it to a specified value literally would produce false negatives. But a specified value in pixels is actually different from a specified value like "small" or "x-large", because there is no precise mapping from such keywords to pixels.

If a command has inline command activated values defined but nothing else defines when it is indeterminate, it is indeterminate if among formattable nodes effectively contained in the active range, there is at least one whose effective command value is one of the given values and at least one whose effective command value is not one of the given values.

If a command has inline command activated values defined, its state is true if either no formattable node is effectively contained in the active range, and the active range's start node's effective command value is one of the given values; or if there is at least one formattable node effectively contained in the active range, and all of them have an effective command value equal to one of the given values.

If a command is a standard inline value command, it is indeterminate if among formattable nodes that are effectively contained in the active range, there are two that have distinct effective command values. Its value is the effective command value of the first formattable node that is effectively contained in the active range; or if there is no such node, the effective command value of the active range's start node; or if that is null, the empty string.

The notions of inline command activated values and standard inline value commands are mostly just shorthand to avoid repeating the same boilerplate half a dozen times.

Assorted inline formatting command algorithms

The effective command value of a node node for a given command is returned by the following algorithm, which will return either a string or null:

This is logically somewhat like CSS computed or resolved values, and in fact for most commands it's identical to CSS resolved values (see the end of the algorithm). We need a separate concept for some commands where we can't rely on CSS for some reason: createLink and unlink aren't CSS-related at all, backColor and hiliteColor need special treatment because background-color isn't an inherited property, subscript and superscript rely on <sub>/<sup> instead of CSS vertical-align, and strikethrough and underline don't map to unique CSS properties.

  1. If neither node nor its parent is an Element, return null.
  2. If node is not an Element, return the effective command value of its parent for command.
  3. If command is "createLink" or "unlink":
    1. While node is not null, and is not an a element that has an href attribute, set node to its parent.
    2. If node is null, return null.
    3. Return the value of node's href attribute.
  4. If command is "backColor" or "hiliteColor":
    1. While the resolved value of "background-color" on node is any fully transparent value, and node's parent is an Element, set node to its parent.

    2. Return the resolved value of "background-color" for node.

  5. If command is "subscript" or "superscript":
    1. Let affected by subscript and affected by superscript be two boolean variables, both initially false.
    2. While node is an inline node:

      1. If node is a sub, set affected by subscript to true.

      2. Otherwise, if node is a sup, set affected by superscript to true.
      3. Set node to its parent.
    3. If affected by subscript and affected by superscript are both true, return the string "mixed".
    4. If affected by subscript is true, return "subscript".
    5. If affected by superscript is true, return "superscript".
    6. Return null.
  6. If command is "strikethrough", and the "text-decoration" property of node or any of its ancestors has resolved value containing "line-through", return "line-through". Otherwise, return null.
  7. If command is "underline", and the "text-decoration" property of node or any of its ancestors has resolved value containing "underline", return "underline". Otherwise, return null.
  8. Return the resolved value for node of the relevant CSS property for command.

The specified command value of an Element element for a given command is returned by the following algorithm, which will return either a string or null:

This is logically somewhat like CSS inline style. In addition to the caveats for effective command value, we also treat elements like <b> and <font> as having the same meaning as <span>s with inline style set, because they're logically pretty much the same and can in fact be produced by the same command depending on the CSS styling flag.

  1. If command is "backColor" or "hiliteColor" and the Element's display property does not have resolved value "inline", return null.
  2. If command is "createLink" or "unlink":
    1. If element is an a element and has an href attribute, return the value of that attribute.
    2. Return null.
  3. If command is "subscript" or "superscript":
    1. If element is a sup, return "superscript".
    2. If element is a sub, return "subscript".
    3. Return null.
  4. If command is "strikethrough", and element has a style attribute set, and that attribute sets "text-decoration":
    1. If element's style attribute sets "text-decoration" to a value containing "line-through", return "line-through".
    2. Return null.
  5. If command is "strikethrough" and element is an s or strike element, return "line-through".
  6. If command is "underline", and element has a style attribute set, and that attribute sets "text-decoration":
    1. If element's style attribute sets "text-decoration" to a value containing "underline", return "underline".
    2. Return null.
  7. If command is "underline" and element is a u element, return "underline".
  8. Let property be the relevant CSS property for command.
  9. If property is null, return null.
  10. If element has a style attribute set, and that attribute has the effect of setting property, return the value that it sets property to.
  11. If element is a font element that has an attribute whose effect is to create a presentational hint for property, return the value that the hint sets property to. (For a size of 7, this will be the non-CSS value "xxx-large".)
  12. If element is in the following list, and property is equal to the CSS property name listed for it, return the string listed for it.
    • b, strong: font-weight: "bold"
    • i, em: font-style: "italic"
  13. Return null.

To record the values of a list of nodes node list:

When we move nodes around, we often change their parents. If their parents had any styles applied, this will make the nodes' styles change too, which often isn't what we want. For instance, if something is wrapped in <blockquote style="color: red">, and a script runs the outdent command on it, the blockquote will be removed and the style will go along with it. Recording the values of its children first, then restoring them afterward, will ensure the nodes don't change color when outdented.

  1. Let values be a list of (node, command, specified command value) triples, initially empty.

  2. For each node in node list, for each command in the list "subscript", "bold", "fontName", "fontSize", "foreColor", "hiliteColor", "italic", "strikethrough", and "underline" in that order:

    1. Let ancestor equal node.
    2. If ancestor is not an Element, set it to its parent.
    3. While ancestor is an Element and its specified command value for command is null, set it to its parent.
    4. If ancestor is an Element, add (node, command, ancestor's specified command value for command) to values. Otherwise add (node, command, null) to values.
  3. Return values.

To restore the values specified by a list values returned by the record the values algorithm:

  1. For each (node, command, value) triple in values:
    1. Let ancestor equal node.
    2. If ancestor is not an Element, set it to its parent.
    3. While ancestor is an Element and its specified command value for command is null, set it to its parent.
    4. If value is null and ancestor is an Element, push down values on node for command, with new value null.
    5. Otherwise, if ancestor is an Element and its specified command value for command is not equivalent to value, or if ancestor is not an Element and value is not null, force the value of command to value on node.

Clearing an element's value

To clear the value of an Element element:

The idea is to remove any specified command value that the element might have for the command. This might involve changing its attributes, setting its tag name, or removing it entirely while leaving its children in place. The key caller is set the selection's value, which clears the values of everything in the selection before doing anything else to keep the markup tidy.

  1. Let command be the current command.
  2. If element is not editable, return the empty list.

  3. If element's specified command value for command is null, return the empty list.

  4. If element is a simple modifiable element:
    1. Let children be the children of element.
    2. For each child in children, insert child into element's parent immediately before element, preserving ranges.
    3. Remove element from its parent.
    4. Return children.
  5. If command is "strikethrough", and element has a style attribute that sets "text-decoration" to some value containing "line-through", delete "line-through" from the value.
  6. If command is "underline", and element has a style attribute that sets "text-decoration" to some value containing "underline", delete "underline" from the value.
  7. If the relevant CSS property for command is not null, unset that property of element.
  8. If element is a font element:
    1. If command is "foreColor", unset element's color attribute, if set.
    2. If command is "fontName", unset element's face attribute, if set.
    3. If command is "fontSize", unset element's size attribute, if set.
  9. If element is an a element and command is "createLink" or "unlink", unset the href property of element.

  10. If element's specified command value for command is null, return the empty list.

  11. Set the tag name of element to "span", and return the one-node list consisting of the result.

Pushing down values

To push down values to a node node, given a new value new value:

The idea here is that if an undesired value is being propagated from an ancestor, we remove that style from the ancestor and re-apply it to all the descendants other than node. This way we don't have to have nested styles, which is usually more cluttered (although not always).

  1. Let command be the current command.

  2. If node's parent is not an Element, abort this algorithm.

  3. If the effective command value of command is loosely equivalent to new value on node, abort this algorithm.
  4. Let current ancestor be node's parent.
  5. Let ancestor list be a list of nodes, initially empty.
  6. While current ancestor is an editable Element and the effective command value of command is not loosely equivalent to new value on it, append current ancestor to ancestor list, then set current ancestor to its parent.
  7. If ancestor list is empty, abort this algorithm.
  8. Let propagated value be the specified command value of command on the last member of ancestor list.

  9. If propagated value is null and is not equal to new value, abort this algorithm.

  10. If the effective command value of command is not loosely equivalent to new value on the parent of the last member of ancestor list, and new value is not null, abort this algorithm.

  11. While ancestor list is not empty:
    1. Let current ancestor be the last member of ancestor list.
    2. Remove the last member from ancestor list.
    3. If the specified command value of current ancestor for command is not null, set propagated value to that value.
    4. Let children be the children of current ancestor.
    5. If the specified command value of current ancestor for command is not null, clear the value of current ancestor.
    6. For every child in children:
      1. If child is node, continue with the next child.

      2. If child is an Element whose specified command value for command is neither null nor equivalent to propagated value, continue with the next child.

      3. If child is the last member of ancestor list, continue with the next child.
      4. Force the value of child, with command as in this algorithm and new value equal to propagated value.

Forcing the value of a node

To force the value of a node node to new value:

This algorithm checks if the node has the desired value, and if not, it wraps the node (or, if that's not possible, its descendants) in a simple modifiable element. After forcing the value, descendants might still have a different value.

  1. Let command be the current command.
  2. If node's parent is null, abort this algorithm.
  3. If new value is null, abort this algorithm.
  4. If node is an allowed child of "span":

    1. Reorder modifiable descendants of node's previousSibling.

    2. Reorder modifiable descendants of node's nextSibling.

    3. Wrap the one-node list consisting of node, with sibling criteria returning true for a simple modifiable element whose specified command value is equivalent to new value and whose effective command value is loosely equivalent to new value and false otherwise, and with new parent instructions returning null.

  5. If node is invisible, abort this algorithm.

  6. If the effective command value of command is loosely equivalent to new value on node, abort this algorithm.
  7. If node is not an allowed child of "span":
    1. Let children be all children of node, omitting any that are Elements whose specified command value for command is neither null nor equivalent to new value.

    2. Force the value of each node in children, with command and new value as in this invocation of the algorithm.

    3. Abort this algorithm.
  8. If the effective command value of command is loosely equivalent to new value on node, abort this algorithm.
  9. Let new parent be null.
  10. If the CSS styling flag is false:
    1. If command is "bold" and new value is "bold", let new parent be the result of calling createElement("b") on the ownerDocument of node.
    2. If command is "italic" and new value is "italic", let new parent be the result of calling createElement("i") on the ownerDocument of node.

    3. If command is "strikethrough" and new value is "line-through", let new parent be the result of calling createElement("s") on the ownerDocument of node.

    4. If command is "underline" and new value is "underline", let new parent be the result of calling createElement("u") on the ownerDocument of node.

    5. If command is "foreColor", and new value is fully opaque with red, green, and blue components in the range 0 to 255:

      1. Let new parent be the result of calling createElement("font") on the ownerDocument of node.
      2. Set the color attribute of new parent to the result of applying the rules for serializing simple color values to new value (interpreted as a simple color).
    6. If command is "fontName", let new parent be the result of calling createElement("font") on the ownerDocument of node, then set the face attribute of new parent to new value.
  11. If command is "createLink" or "unlink":
    1. Let new parent be the result of calling createElement("a") on the ownerDocument of node.
    2. Set the href attribute of new parent to new value.

    3. Let ancestor be node's parent.

    4. While ancestor is not null:

      1. If ancestor is an a, set the tag name of ancestor to "span", and let ancestor be the result.

      2. Set ancestor to its parent.

  12. If command is "fontSize"; and new value is one of "x-small", "small", "medium", "large", "x-large", "xx-large", or "xxx-large"; and either the CSS styling flag is false, or new value is "xxx-large": let new parent be the result of calling createElement("font") on the ownerDocument of node, then set the size attribute of new parent to the number from the following table based on new value:

    • x-small: 1
    • small: 2
    • normal: 3
    • large: 4
    • x-large: 5
    • xx-large: 6
    • xxx-large: 7

  13. If command is "subscript" or "superscript" and new value is "subscript", let new parent be the result of calling createElement("sub") on the ownerDocument of node.

  14. If command is "subscript" or "superscript" and new value is "superscript", let new parent be the result of calling createElement("sup") on the ownerDocument of node.
  15. If new parent is null, let new parent be the result of calling createElement("span") on the ownerDocument of node.

  16. Insert new parent in node's parent before node.

  17. If the effective command value of command for new parent is not loosely equivalent to new value, and the relevant CSS property for command is not null, set that CSS property of new parent to new value (if the new value would be valid).

    Need to be explicit. I think "if the new value would be valid" means "if the new value isn't xxx-large for font-size", need to double-check.

  18. If command is "strikethrough", and new value is "line-through", and the effective command value of "strikethrough" for new parent is not "line-through", set the "text-decoration" property of new parent to "line-through".
  19. If command is "underline", and new value is "underline", and the effective command value of "underline" for new parent is not "underline", set the "text-decoration" property of new parent to "underline".
  20. Append node to new parent as its last child, preserving ranges.
  21. If node is an Element and the effective command value of command for node is not loosely equivalent to new value:
    1. Insert node into the parent of new parent before new parent, preserving ranges.
    2. Remove new parent from its parent.
    3. Let children be all children of node, omitting any that are Elements whose specified command value for command is neither null nor equivalent to new value.
    4. Force the value of each node in children, with command and new value as in this invocation of the algorithm.

To reorder modifiable descendants of a node node, given a command command and a value new value:

  1. Let candidate equal node.
  2. While candidate is a modifiable element, and candidate has exactly one child, and that child is also a modifiable element, and candidate is not a simple modifiable element or candidate's specified command value for command is not equivalent to new value, set candidate to its child.
  3. If candidate is node, or is not a simple modifiable element, or its specified command value is not equivalent to new value, or its effective command value is not loosely equivalent to new value, abort these steps.
  4. While candidate has children, insert the first child of candidate into candidate's parent immediately before candidate, preserving ranges.

  5. Insert candidate into node's parent immediately after node.

  6. Append the node as the last child of candidate, preserving ranges.

Setting the selection's value

To set the selection's value to new value:

The effect of this algorithm is to ensure that all nodes effectively contained in the selection have the value requested, producing the simplest markup possible to achieve that effect. It's inspired by the approach WebKit takes. The only places where the algorithm should fail are when there's an !important CSS rule that conflicts with the requested style (which we don't try to override because we assume it's !important for a reason), or when it's literally impossible to succeed (such as when a text-decoration or link URL is propagated from a non-editable ancestor). Any other failures are bugs.

First, if a node has a specified command value for the command, we unset it (clear its value). This step also removes simple modifiable elements entirely, and replaces elements like b or font with spans if they aren't simple modifiable elements. This will be sufficient if the desired value is inherited from an ancestor, or if it's the default (like font-style: normal) and no conflicting value is inherited from an ancestor. Even if clearing values doesn't actually fix the style of the node we're dealing with, we do it anyway to simplify the generated markup.

If clearing values didn't work, and it looks like an ancestor has a specified command value that we're inheriting, we push the value down from that ancestor. Thus if we're unbolding the letter "r" in

&lt;b&gt;foo &lt;i&gt;bar&lt;/i&gt; baz&lt;/b&gt;,

we get

&lt;b&gt;foo &lt;/b&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;b&gt;ba&lt;/b&gt;r&lt;/i&gt;&lt;b&gt; baz&lt;/b&gt;.

If we didn't push down values, the final step (forcing values) would instead give us

&lt;b&gt;foo &lt;i&gt;ba&lt;span style="font-weight: normal"&gt;r&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/i&gt; baz&lt;/b&gt;,

which is much longer and uglier. We take care not to disturb the style or semantics of anything but the node we're dealing with.

We'll only push down values if some ancestor actually has the value we want, so we can inherit it. Otherwise, it will just create useless markup.

Finally, if neither of the above strategies worked, we have to add new markup to get the desired value (forcing the value). First we try just sticking it into its previous or next sibling, if that's a simple modifiable element (so it won't add any styles or semantics we don't want). Otherwise, we create a new simple modifiable element and wrap it in that. It's common that a previous sibling is the simple modifiable element we want, because often we'll set the value of several consecutive siblings in succession. In that case, the element created for the first can be reused for the later ones.

This last step works a bit differently if the node isn't an allowed child of "span". In that case, wrapping it in a simple modifiable element would make the document less conforming than it already was, or would cause other problems. Instead, we recursively force the value of its children. The recursion will terminate when we hit a node that's an allowed child of "span", or when there are no further descendants. (In the latter case, there are no descendants that are text nodes or such, so we don't really need to style anything.)

After all this, the node is guaranteed to have the value we want, barring bugs in the algorithm or the two exceptions noted earlier (!important style rules, and impossible cases). We then re-run the algorithm on each child recursively. Typically this means just clearing the value of each descendant, because it should then inherit the value we just set on its ancestor. In the unusual case that a descendant's value is wrong even after we clear its value, such as because of a non-inline style rule (like trying to unbold a heading), we'll repeat the above steps to ensure that the value really gets set as desired.

  1. Let command be the current command.

  2. If there is no formattable node effectively contained in the active range:

    1. If command has inline command activated values, set the state override to true if new value is among them and false if it's not.
    2. If command is "subscript", unset the state override for "superscript".
    3. If command is "superscript", unset the state override for "subscript".
    4. If new value is null, unset the value override (if any).
    5. Otherwise, if command is "createLink" or it has a value specified, set the value override to new value.
    6. Abort these steps.

  3. If the active range's start node is an editable Text node, and its start offset is neither zero nor its start node's length, call splitText() on the active range's start node, with argument equal to the active range's start offset. Then set the active range's start node to the result, and its start offset to zero.

  4. If the active range's end node is an editable Text node, and its end offset is neither zero nor its end node's length, call splitText() on the active range's end node, with argument equal to the active range's end offset.
  5. Let element list be all editable Elements effectively contained in the active range.
  6. For each element in element list, clear the value of element.

  7. Let node list be all editable nodes effectively contained in the active range.

  8. For each node in node list:

    1. Push down values on node.

    2. If node is an allowed child of "span", force the value of node.

The backColor command

For historical reasons, backColor and hiliteColor behave identically.

Action:

  1. If value is not a valid CSS color, prepend "#" to it.
  2. If value is still not a valid CSS color, or if it is currentColor, return false.
  3. Set the selection's value to value.
  4. Return true.

Standard inline value command

Relevant CSS property: "background-color"

Equivalent values: Either both strings are valid CSS colors and have the same red, green, blue, and alpha components, or neither string is a valid CSS color.

The bold command

Action: If queryCommandState("bold") returns true, set the selection's value to "normal". Otherwise set the selection's value to "bold". Either way, return true.

Inline command activated values: "bold", "600", "700", "800", or "900"

Relevant CSS property: "font-weight"

Equivalent values: Either the two strings are equal, or one is "bold" and the other is "700", or one is "normal" and the other is "400".

The createLink command

Action:

  1. If value is the empty string, return false.

  2. For each editable a element that has an href attribute and is an ancestor of some node effectively contained in the active range, set that a element's href attribute to value.

  3. Set the selection's value to value.
  4. Return true.

The fontName command

Action: Set the selection's value to value, then return true.

Standard inline value command

Relevant CSS property: "font-family"

The fontSize command

Action:

  1. Strip leading and trailing whitespace from value.
  2. If value is not a valid floating point number, and would not be a valid floating point number if a single leading "+" character were stripped, return false.
  3. If the first character of value is "+", delete the character and let mode be "relative-plus".
  4. Otherwise, if the first character of value is "-", delete the character and let mode be "relative-minus".
  5. Otherwise, let mode be "absolute".
  6. Apply the rules for parsing non-negative integers to value, and let number be the result.
  7. If mode is "relative-plus", add three to number.
  8. If mode is "relative-minus", negate number, then add three to it.
  9. If number is less than one, let number equal 1.
  10. If number is greater than seven, let number equal 7.
  11. Set value to the string here corresponding to number:
    • 1: x-small
    • 2: small
    • 3: medium
    • 4: large
    • 5: x-large
    • 6: xx-large
    • 7: xxx-large
  12. Set the selection's value to value.
  13. Return true.

Indeterminate: True if among formattable nodes that are effectively contained in the active range, there are two that have distinct effective command values. Otherwise false.

Value:

  1. If the active range is null, return the empty string.

  2. Let pixel size be the effective command value of the first formattable node that is effectively contained in the active range, or if there is no such node, the effective command value of the active range's start node, in either case interpreted as a number of pixels.

  3. Return the legacy font size for pixel size.

Relevant CSS property: "font-size"

The legacy font size for an integer pixel size is returned by the following algorithm:

  1. Let returned size be 1.
  2. While returned size is less than 7:
    1. Let lower bound be the resolved value of "font-size" in pixels of a font element whose size attribute is set to returned size.
    2. Let upper bound be the resolved value of "font-size" in pixels of a font element whose size attribute is set to one plus returned size.
    3. Let average be the average of upper bound and lower bound.
    4. If pixel size is less than average, return the one-code unit string consisting of the digit returned size.
    5. Add one to returned size.
  3. Return "7".

The foreColor command

Action:

  1. If value is not a valid CSS color, prepend "#" to it.

  2. If value is still not a valid CSS color, or if it is currentColor, return false.

  3. Set the selection's value to value.
  4. Return true.

Standard inline value command

Relevant CSS property: "color"

Equivalent values: Either both strings are valid CSS colors and have the same red, green, blue, and alpha components, or neither string is a valid CSS color.

The hiliteColor command

For historical reasons, backColor and hiliteColor behave identically.

Action:

  1. If value is not a valid CSS color, prepend "#" to it.

  2. If value is still not a valid CSS color, or if it is currentColor, return false.

  3. Set the selection's value to value.
  4. Return true.

Standard inline value command

Relevant CSS property: "background-color"

Equivalent values: Either both strings are valid CSS colors and have the same red, green, blue, and alpha components, or neither string is a valid CSS color.

The italic command

Action: If queryCommandState("italic") returns true, set the selection's value to "normal". Otherwise set the selection's value to "italic". Either way, return true.

Inline command activated values: "italic" or "oblique"

Relevant CSS property: "font-style"

The removeFormat command

A removeFormat candidate is an editable HTML element with local name "abbr", "acronym", "b", "bdi", "bdo", "big", "blink", "cite", "code", "dfn", "em", "font", "i", "ins", "kbd", "mark", "nobr", "q", "s", "samp", "small", "span", "strike", "strong", "sub", "sup", "tt", "u", or "var".

Action:

  1. Let elements to remove be a list of every removeFormat candidate effectively contained in the active range.
  2. For each element in elements to remove:
    1. While element has children, insert the first child of element into the parent of element immediately before element, preserving ranges.
    2. Remove element from its parent.

  3. If the active range's start node is an editable Text node, and its start offset is neither zero nor its start node's length, call splitText() on the active range's start node, with argument equal to the active range's start offset. Then set the active range's start node to the result, and its start offset to zero.

  4. If the active range's end node is an editable Text node, and its end offset is neither zero nor its end node's length, call splitText() on the active range's end node, with argument equal to the active range's end offset.
  5. Let node list consist of all editable nodes effectively contained in the active range.

  6. For each node in node list, while node's parent is a removeFormat candidate in the same editing host as node, split the parent of the one-node list consisting of node.

  7. For each of the entries in the following list, in the given order, set the selection's value to null, with command as given.

    1. subscript
    2. bold
    3. fontName
    4. fontSize
    5. foreColor
    6. hiliteColor
    7. italic
    8. strikethrough
    9. underline
  8. Return true.

The strikethrough command

Action: If queryCommandState("strikethrough") returns true, set the selection's value to null. Otherwise set the selection's value to "line-through". Either way, return true.

Inline command activated values: "line-through"

The subscript command

Action:

  1. Call queryCommandState("subscript"), and let state be the result.
  2. Set the selection's value to null.
  3. If state is false, set the selection's value to "subscript".
  4. Return true.

Indeterminate: True if either among formattable nodes that are effectively contained in the active range, there is at least one with effective command value "subscript" and at least one with some other effective command value; or if there is some formattable node effectively contained in the active range with effective command value "mixed". Otherwise false.

Inline command activated values: "subscript"

The superscript command

Action:

  1. Call queryCommandState("superscript"), and let state be the result.
  2. Set the selection's value to null.
  3. If state is false, set the selection's value to "superscript".
  4. Return true.

Indeterminate: True if either among formattable nodes that are effectively contained in the active range, there is at least one with effective command value "superscript" and at least one with some other effective command value; or if there is some formattable node effectively contained in the active range with effective command value "mixed". Otherwise false.

Inline command activated values: "superscript"

The underline command

Action: If queryCommandState("underline") returns true, set the selection's value to null. Otherwise set the selection's value to "underline". Either way, return true.

Inline command activated values: "underline"

The unlink command

Action:

  1. Let hyperlinks be a list of every a element that has an href attribute and is contained in the active range or is an ancestor of one of its boundary points.
  2. Clear the value of each member of hyperlinks.
  3. Return true.

Block formatting commands

Block formatting command definitions

An indentation element is either a blockquote, or a div that has a style attribute that sets "margin" or some subproperty of it.

A simple indentation element is an indentation element that has no attributes except possibly

  • a style attribute that sets no properties other than "margin", "border", "padding", or subproperties of those; and/or
  • a dir attribute.

The notions of indentation element and simple indentation element parallel those of modifiable element and simple modifiable element.

A non-list single-line container is an HTML element with local name "address", "div", "h1", "h2", "h3", "h4", "h5", "h6", "listing", "p", "pre", or "xmp".

A single-line container is either a non-list single-line container, or an HTML element with local name "li", "dt", or "dd".

The block node of a node node is either a block node or null, as returned by the following algorithm:

  1. While node is an inline node, set node to its parent.
  2. Return node.

If a command preserves overrides, then before taking its action, the user agent must record current overrides. After taking the action, if the active range is collapsed, it must restore states and values from the recorded list.

All block commands preserve overrides except the insertText command, which treats overrides specially.

Assorted block formatting command algorithms

To fix disallowed ancestors of node:

We often run this algorithm after we move a node someplace, just in case it wound up somewhere it's not supposed to be. This avoids things like unserializable DOMs, blocks nested inside inlines, etc.

  1. If node is not editable, abort these steps.

  2. If node is not an allowed child of any of its ancestors in the same editing host:

    1. If node is a dd or dt, wrap the one-node list consisting of node, with sibling criteria returning true for any dl with no attributes and false otherwise, and new parent instructions returning the result of calling createElement("dl") on the context object. Then abort these steps.

    2. If "p" is not an allowed child of the editing host of node, abort these steps.

    3. If node is not a prohibited paragraph child, abort these steps.
    4. Set the tag name of node to the default single-line container name, and let node be the result.

    5. Fix disallowed ancestors of node.

    6. Let children be node's children.
    7. For each child in children, if child is a prohibited paragraph child:
      1. Record the values of the one-node list consisting of child, and let values be the result.
      2. Split the parent of the one-node list consisting of child.
      3. Restore the values from values.
    8. Abort these steps.
  3. Record the values of the one-node list consisting of node, and let values be the result.
  4. While node is not an allowed child of its parent, split the parent of the one-node list consisting of node.
  5. Restore the values from values.

To normalize sublists in a node item:

  1. If item is not an li or it is not editable or its parent is not editable, abort these steps.
  2. Let new item be null.
  3. While item has an ol or ul child:
    1. Let child be the last child of item.
    2. If child is an ol or ul, or new item is null and child is a Text node whose data consists of zero of more space characters:
      1. Set new item to null.
      2. Insert child into the parent of item immediately following item, preserving ranges.
    3. Otherwise:
      1. If new item is null, let new item be the result of calling createElement("li") on the ownerDocument of item, then insert new item into the parent of item immediately after item.
      2. Insert child into new item as its first child, preserving ranges.

The selection's list state is returned by the following algorithm:

This is just a helper to tell the state and indeterminacy of the insertOrderedList command and the insertUnorderedList command:

ol indeterm ol state ul indeterm ul state
ol false true false false
ul false false false true
mixed true false true false
mixed ol true false false false
mixed ul false false true false
none false false false false
  1. If the active range is null, return "none".
  2. Block-extend the active range, and let new range be the result.
  3. Let node list be a list of nodes, initially empty.
  4. For each node contained in new range, append node to node list if the last member of node list (if any) is not an ancestor of node; node is editable; node is not an indentation element; and node is either an ol or ul, or the child of an ol or ul, or an allowed child of "li".
  5. If node list is empty, return "none".

  6. If every member of node list is either an ol or the child of an ol or the child of an li child of an ol, and none is a ul or an ancestor of a ul, return "ol".

  7. If every member of node list is either a ul or the child of a ul or the child of an li child of a ul, and none is an ol or an ancestor of an ol, return "ul".

  8. If some member of node list is either an ol or the child or ancestor of an ol or the child of an li child of an ol, and some member of node list is either a ul or the child or ancestor of a ul or the child of an li child of a ul, return "mixed".
  9. If some member of node list is either an ol or the child or ancestor of an ol or the child of an li child of an ol, return "mixed ol".
  10. If some member of node list is either a ul or the child or ancestor of a ul or the child of an li child of a ul, return "mixed ul".
  11. Return "none".

The alignment value of a node node is returned by the following algorithm:

This is basically like the resolved value of text-align, but with two key differences. First, it only ever evaluates to center/justify/left/right, since that's the model that the justify commands work with. Second, it ignores inline elements, because text-align has no effect on them and their alignment is actually governed by their nearest block ancestor (if any).

  1. While node is neither null nor an Element, or it is an Element but its "display" property has resolved value "inline" or "none", set node to its parent.

  2. If node is not an Element, return "left".

  3. If node's "text-align" property has resolved value "start", return "left" if the directionality of node is "ltr", "right" if it is "rtl".
  4. If node's "text-align" property has resolved value "end", return "right" if the directionality of node is "ltr", "left" if it is "rtl".
  5. If node's "text-align" property has resolved value "center", "justify", "left", or "right", return that value.
  6. Return "left".

Sometimes one location corresponds to multiple distinct boundary points. For instance, in the DOM <p>Hello</p>, a boundary point might lie at the beginning of the text node or the beginning of the element node, but these don't logically differ much and will appear the same to the user, so we often want to treat them the same. The algorithms here allow navigating through such equivalent boundary points, for when we want to make the selection as inclusive or exclusive as possible. For deletion, we want to delete as few nodes as possible, so we move the start node forward and the end node backward. In other cases we might do the reverse, expanding the selection. In still other cases we might want to move forward or backward to try getting to a text node.

Given a boundary point (node, offset), the next equivalent point is either a boundary point or null, as returned by the following algorithm:

  1. If node's length is zero, return null.
  2. We don't want to move into or out of zero-length nodes, because that would move us straight through them. For instance, if {}<span></span> were equivalent to <span>{}</span>, it would also be equivalent to <span></span>{}. This produces very unexpected results for nodes like <br>.
  3. If offset is node's length, and node's parent is not null, and node is an inline node, return (node's parent, 1 + node's index).
  4. For instance, <span>foo[]</span> is equivalent to <span>foo{}</span>, which is equivalent to <span>foo</span>{}. However, <p>foo{}</p> is not equivalent to <p>foo</p>{} – the cursor might look like it's in a visibly different position.
  5. If node has a child with index offset, and that child's length is not zero, and that child is an inline node, return (that child, 0).
  6. For instance, {}<span>foo</span> is equivalent to <span>{}foo</span>, which is equivalent to <span>[]foo</span>. As noted before, though, we don't descend into empty nodes. And again, {}<p>foo</p> is different from <p>{}foo</p>.
  7. Return null.

Given a boundary point (node, offset), the previous equivalent point is either a boundary point or null, as returned by the following algorithm:

  1. If node's length is zero, return null.
  2. If offset is 0, and node's parent is not null, and node is an inline node, return (node's parent, node's index).
  3. If node has a child with index offset − 1, and that child's length is not zero, and that child is an inline node, return (that child, that child's length).
  4. Return null.

The first equivalent point of a boundary point (node, offset) is returned by the following algorithm:

  1. While (node, offset)'s previous equivalent point is not null, set (node, offset) to its previous equivalent point.
  2. Return (node, offset).

The last equivalent point of a boundary point (node, offset) is returned by the following algorithm:

  1. While (node, offset)'s next equivalent point is not null, set (node, offset) to its next equivalent point.
  2. Return (node, offset).

Block-extending a range

A boundary point (node, offset) is a block start point if either node's parent is null and offset is zero; or node has a child with index offset − 1, and that child is either a visible block node or a visible br.

A boundary point (node, offset) is a block end point if either node's parent is null and offset is node's length; or node has a child with index offset, and that child is a visible block node.

A boundary point is a block boundary point if it is either a block start point or a block end point.

When a user agent is to block-extend a range range, it must run the following steps:

Generally, block commands work on any block that contains part of the selection, even if the selection doesn't include the whole block. This algorithm takes an input range, copies it, stretches out the copy to contain entire blocks, and returns the result. Then the caller will normally use it instead of the range it started with. For instance, if the cursor is collapsed in a text node inside a paragraph, this will generally return a range that includes the whole paragraph.

Two bits of magic worth noting. First, <br> counts as a block delimiter here, since it looks the same as a block boundary (assuming no margin etc.) and this is a visual API. We include the <br> as part of the line that precedes it. Second, if the selection is inside an <li>, this will extend it to include the whole <li>. This latter point is weird, and I should re-examine it sometime, but it seems to work.

  1. Let start node, start offset, end node, and end offset be the start and end nodes and offsets of range.
  2. If some inclusive ancestor of start node is an li, set start offset to the index of the last such li in tree order, and set start node to that li's parent.
  3. If (start node, start offset) is not a block start point, repeat the following steps:
    1. If start offset is zero, set it to start node's index, then set start node to its parent.
    2. Otherwise, subtract one from start offset.
    3. If (start node, start offset) is a block boundary point, break from this loop.

  4. While start offset is zero and start node's parent is not null, set start offset to start node's index, then set start node to its parent.

  5. If some inclusive ancestor of end node is an li, set end offset to one plus the index of the last such li in tree order, and set end node to that li's parent.
  6. If (end node, end offset) is not a block end point, repeat the following steps:
    1. If end offset is end node's length, set it to one plus end node's index, then set end node to its parent.
    2. Otherwise, add one to end offset.
    3. If (end node, end offset) is a block boundary point, break from this loop.
  7. While end offset is end node's length and end node's parent is not null, set end offset to one plus end node's index, then set end node to its parent.
  8. Let new range be a new range whose start and end nodes and offsets are start node, start offset, end node, and end offset.
  9. Return new range.

A node node follows a line break if the following algorithm returns true:

  1. Let offset be zero.
  2. While (node, offset) is not a block boundary point:
    1. If node has a visible child with index offset minus one, return false.
    2. If offset is zero or node has no children, set offset to node's index, then set node to its parent.
    3. Otherwise, set node to its child with index offset minus one, then set offset to node's length.
  3. Return true.

A node node precedes a line break if the following algorithm returns true:

  1. Let offset be node's length.
  2. While (node, offset) is not a block boundary point:
    1. If node has a visible child with index offset, return false.
    2. If offset is node's length or node has no children, set offset to one plus node's index, then set node to its parent.
    3. Otherwise, set node to its child with index offset and set offset to zero.
  3. Return true.

Recording and restoring overrides

To record current overrides:

  1. Let overrides be a list of (string, string or boolean) ordered pairs, initially empty.

  2. If there is a value override for "createLink", add ("createLink", value override for "createLink") to overrides.

  3. For each command in the list "bold", "italic", "strikethrough", "subscript", "superscript", "underline", in order: if there is a state override for command, add (command, command's state override) to overrides.

  4. For each command in the list "fontName", "fontSize", "foreColor", "hiliteColor", in order: if there is a value override for command, add (command, command's value override) to overrides.
  5. Return overrides.

To record current states and values:

  1. Let overrides be a list of (string, string or boolean) ordered pairs, initially empty.
  2. Let node be the first formattable node effectively contained in the active range, or null if there is none.
  3. If node is null, return overrides.
  4. Add ("createLink", node's effective command value for "createLink") to overrides.

  5. For each command in the list "bold", "italic", "strikethrough", "subscript", "superscript", "underline", in order: if node's effective command value for command is one of its inline command activated values, add (command, true) to overrides, and otherwise add (command, false) to overrides.

  6. For each command in the list "fontName", "foreColor", "hiliteColor", in order: add (command, command's value) to overrides.

  7. Add ("fontSize", node's effective command value for "fontSize") to overrides.

    This is wrong: it will convert non-pixel sizes to pixel sizes. But I don't see any way to avoid it. Hopefully it won't come up too often. font-size is a real problem, because the mapping from specified value to computed value is lossy and not fully defined (e.g., how many px is "small"?).

  8. Return overrides.

To restore states and values specified by a list overrides returned by the record current overrides or record current states and values algorithm:

  1. Let node be the first formattable node effectively contained in the active range, or null if there is none.
  2. If node is not null, then for each (command, override) pair in overrides, in order:
    1. If override is a boolean, and queryCommandState(command) returns something different from override, take the action for command, with value equal to the empty string.
    2. Otherwise, if override is a string, and command is neither "createLink" nor "fontSize", and queryCommandValue(command) returns something not equivalent to override, take the action for command, with value equal to override.

    3. Otherwise, if override is a string; and command is "createLink"; and either there is a value override for "createLink" that is not equal to override, or there is no value override for "createLink" and node's effective command value for "createLink" is not equal to override: take the action for "createLink", with value equal to override.

    4. Otherwise, if override is a string; and command is "fontSize"; and either there is a value override for "fontSize" that is not equal to override, or there is no value override for "fontSize" and node's effective command value for "fontSize" is not loosely equivalent to override:

      1. Convert override to an integer number of pixels, and set override to the legacy font size for the result.
      2. Take the action for "fontSize", with value equal to override.
    5. Otherwise, continue this loop from the beginning.

    6. Set node to the first formattable node effectively contained in the active range, if there is one.

  3. Otherwise, for each (command, override) pair in overrides, in order:
    1. If override is a boolean, set the state override for command to override.
    2. If override is a string, set the value override for command to override.

Deleting the selection

To delete the selection, given a block merging flag that defaults to true, a strip wrappers flag that defaults to true, and a string direction that defaults to "forward":

The idea behind this algorithm is self-explanatory, but the details wind up being remarkably complicated.

First, any editable nodes inside the selection will be deleted, and the selection will be collapsed. By way of contrast, effectively contained tries to expand the range to include as much as possible, so <p>[foo]</p> contains the <p>. What we do here is contract the range to include as little as possible, so {<p>foo</p>} contains only foo and doesn't delete the paragraph.

After that, if the selection originally started and ended in different blocks, and the block merging flag is true, the end block will get merged into the start block. This is needed so if the user selects text on several lines and deletes it, the text immediately that was before the selection winds up on the same line as the text immediately after it. For example, <p>fo[o</p><div>b]ar</div> becomes <p>fo[]ar</p>. This procedure winds up being tricky, and takes up a large chunk of the logic.

Tables are a notable special case. If an entire table is contained in the range, it will be deleted. If it's anything less, only the contents of the cells will be deleted and the table structure will be left intact.

The strip wrappers flag controls what happens if the deletion removes all the contents of an inline element. If wrappers are being stripped, the empty inline element will be removed: this is usually what you want, because the user can't position the selection inside it. But callers like the insertText command that intend to immediately insert new contents want to leave the wrappers, so the new contents are wrapped by the same thing as the old.

Even if strip wrappers is true, the algorithm will set a state override and value override for any styles it winds up removing. This way, if the user deletes a wrapper that adds a style (or link for that matter), then types something, the new text will get the style from the old text.

  1. If the active range is null, abort these steps and do nothing.
  2. Canonicalize whitespace at the active range's start.
  3. Canonicalize whitespace at the active range's end.
  4. Let (start node, start offset) be the last equivalent point for the active range's start.
  5. Let (end node, end offset) be the first equivalent point for the active range's end.
  6. If (end node, end offset) is not after (start node, start offset):

    This is a selection like <span>foo[</span></span>]bar</span>, where the boundary points are equivalent but not identical. We just collapse it and abort, since there's nothing to delete.

    1. If direction is "forward", call collapseToStart() on the context object's selection.
    2. Otherwise, call collapseToEnd() on the context object's selection.
    3. Abort these steps.
  7. If start node is a Text node and start offset is 0, set start offset to the index of start node, then set start node to its parent.
  8. If end node is a Text node and end offset is its length, set end offset to one plus the index of end node, then set end node to its parent.

    The previous two steps are so that we won't leave empty text nodes anywhere.

  9. Call collapse(start node, start offset) on the context object's selection.
  10. Call extend(end node, end offset) on the context object's selection.

  11. When we delete a selection that spans multiple blocks, we merge the end block's contents into the start block, like 

    <p>fo[o</p><pre>b]ar</pre>
-> <p>fo[]ar</p>.

    We figure out what the start and end blocks are before we start deleting anything.

  12. Let start block be the active range's start node.
  13. While start block's parent is in the same editing host and start block is an inline node, set start block to its parent.

  14. If start block is neither a block node nor an editing host, or "span" is not an allowed child of start block, or start block is a td or th, set start block to null.

  15. Let end block be the active range's end node.
  16. While end block's parent is in the same editing host and end block is an inline node, set end block to its parent.
  17. If end block is neither a block node nor an editing host, or "span" is not an allowed child of end block, or end block is a td or th, set end block to null.

  18. Later on we'll restore overrides. This ensures that if we delete inline formatting elements and the user then types something, the typed text will have the same style as before.

  19. Record current states and values, and let overrides be the result.

  20. Now we actually begin deleting things.

  21. If start node and end node are the same, and start node is an editable Text node:

    1. Call deleteData(start offset, end offset − start offset) on start node.
    2. Canonicalize whitespace at (start node, start offset), with fix collapsed space false.
    3. If direction is "forward", call collapseToStart() on the context object's selection.
    4. Otherwise, call collapseToEnd() on the context object's selection.

    5. Restore states and values from overrides.

    6. Abort these steps.
  22. If start node is an editable Text node, call deleteData() on it, with start offset as the first argument and (length of start node − start offset) as the second argument.
  23. Let node list be a list of nodes, initially empty.

  24. For each node contained in the active range, append node to node list if the last member of node list (if any) is not an ancestor of node; node is editable; and node is not a thead, tbody, tfoot, tr, th, or td.

  25. For each node in node list:
    1. Let parent be the parent of node.
    2. Remove node from parent.

    3. If the block node of parent has no visible children, and parent is editable or an editing host, call createElement("br") on the context object and append the result as the last child of parent.

    4. If strip wrappers is true or parent is not an inclusive ancestor of start node, while parent is an editable inline node with length 0, let grandparent be the parent of parent, then remove parent from grandparent, then set parent to grandparent.

      Even if strip wrappers is false, we still want to strip wrappers that aren't inclusive ancestors of start node. The idea of not stripping wrappers is that we're going to insert new content right afterward, like text or an image, but that new content will be inserted at the start node. Wrappers in other places still need to be removed, because they would otherwise remain empty.

  26. If end node is an editable Text node, call deleteData(0, end offset) on it.
  27. Canonicalize whitespace at the active range's start, with fix collapsed space false.
  28. Canonicalize whitespace at the active range's end, with fix collapsed space false.

  29. Now we need to merge blocks. The simplest case is something like 

    <p>fo[o</p><p>bar</p><p>b]az</p>
-> <p>fo</p>{}<p>az</p>
-> <p>fo{}az</p>

    where neither block descends from the other. More complicated is something like 

    foo[<p>]bar</p>
-> foo[]bar

    or 

    <p>foo[</p>]bar
-> <p>foo[]bar</p>

    where one descends from the other.

  30. If block merging is false, or start block or end block is null, or start block is not in the same editing host as end block, or start block and end block are the same:
    1. If direction is "forward", call collapseToStart() on the context object's selection.
    2. Otherwise, call collapseToEnd() on the context object's selection.
    3. Restore states and values from overrides.
    4. Abort these steps.

  31. If start block has one child, which is a collapsed block prop, remove its child from it.

  32. If start block is an ancestor of end block:

    1. Let reference node be end block.
    2. While reference node is not a child of start block, set reference node to its parent.
    3. Call collapse() on the context object's selection, with first argument start block and second argument the index of reference node.
    4. If end block has no children:
      1. While end block is editable and is the only child of its parent and is not a child of start block, let parent equal end block, then remove end block from parent, then set end block to parent.
      2. If end block is editable and is not an inline node, and its previousSibling and nextSibling are both inline nodes, call createElement("br") on the context object and insert it into end block's parent immediately after end block.
      3. If end block is editable, remove it from its parent.
      4. Restore states and values from overrides.
      5. Abort these steps.
    5. If end block's firstChild is not an inline node, restore states and values from record, then abort these steps.
    6. Let children be a list of nodes, initially empty.
    7. Append the first child of end block to children.
    8. While children's last member is not a br, and children's last member's nextSibling is an inline node, append children's last member's nextSibling to children.
    9. Record the values of children, and let values be the result.
    10. While children's first member's parent is not start block, split the parent of children.
    11. If children's first member's previousSibling is an editable br, remove that br from its parent.

  33. Otherwise, if start block is a descendant of end block:

    1. Call collapse() on the context object's selection, with first argument start block and second argument start block's length.
    2. Let reference node be start block.
    3. While reference node is not a child of end block, set reference node to its parent.
    4. If reference node's nextSibling is an inline node and start block's lastChild is a br, remove start block's lastChild from it.
    5. Let nodes to move be a list of nodes, initially empty.
    6. If reference node's nextSibling is neither null nor a block node, append it to nodes to move.
    7. While nodes to move is nonempty and its last member isn't a br and its last member's nextSibling is neither null nor a block node, append its last member's nextSibling to nodes to move.
    8. Record the values of nodes to move, and let values be the result.
    9. For each node in nodes to move, append node as the last child of start block, preserving ranges.

  34. Otherwise:

    1. Call collapse() on the context object's selection, with first argument start block and second argument start block's length.
    2. If end block's firstChild is an inline node and start block's lastChild is a br, remove start block's lastChild from it.
    3. Record the values of end block's children, and let values be the result.
    4. While end block has children, append the first child of end block to start block, preserving ranges.
    5. While end block has no children, let parent be the parent of end block, then remove end block from parent, then set end block to parent.

  35. We might have deleted the contents between two lists, in which case we should merge them. See bug 13976.

  36. Let ancestor be start block.
  37. While ancestor has an inclusive ancestor ol in the same editing host whose nextSibling is also an ol in the same editing host, or an inclusive ancestor ul in the same editing host whose nextSibling is also a ul in the same editing host:
    1. While ancestor and its nextSibling are not both ols in the same editing host, and are also not both uls in the same editing host, set ancestor to its parent.
    2. While ancestor's nextSibling has children, append ancestor's nextSibling's firstChild as the last child of ancestor, preserving ranges.
    3. Remove ancestor's nextSibling from its parent.
  38. Restore the values from values.
  39. If start block has no children, call createElement("br") on the context object and append the result as the last child of start block.
  40. Remove extraneous line breaks at the end of start block.
  41. Restore states and values from overrides.

Splitting a node list's parent

To split the parent of a list node list of consecutive sibling nodes:

This algorithm breaks up the parent of node list. If they're the only children of their parent, the parent is removed entirely. If there are preceding or following siblings, the original parent is left intact as the parent of those siblings. If there are both preceding and following siblings, the original parent is left as the parent of the following siblings and a clone is used for the parent of the preceding siblings.

We make sure not to disrupt the appearance any more than necessary. Obviously margins or such on the parent will be lost, but the children will not wind up on the same line as anything they weren't already on the same line as. E.g., if we split the parent of "bar" in foo<p>bar</p>, we get foo<br>bar, not foobar. (This is amazingly complicated and error-prone.) We don't preserve inline styles: callers that want to do that should call record the values and restore the values themselves.

All this is useful in a lot of situations, like for outdenting. For inline formatting commands, we almost always rely on pushing down values instead, since that often leads to tidier markup.

  1. Let original parent be the parent of the first member of node list.
  2. If original parent is not editable or its parent is null, do nothing and abort these steps.
  3. If the first child of original parent is in node list, remove extraneous line breaks before original parent.
  4. If the first child of original parent is in node list, and original parent follows a line break, set follows line break to true. Otherwise, set follows line break to false.
  5. If the last child of original parent is in node list, and original parent precedes a line break, set precedes line break to true. Otherwise, set precedes line break to false.

  6. If the first child of original parent is not in node list, but its last child is:

    1. For each node in node list, in reverse order, insert node into the parent of original parent immediately after original parent, preserving ranges.
    2. If precedes line break is true, and the last member of node list does not precede a line break, call createElement("br") on the context object and insert the result immediately after the last member of node list.
    3. Remove extraneous line breaks at the end of original parent.
    4. Abort these steps.
  7. If the first child of original parent is not in node list:
    1. Let cloned parent be the result of calling cloneNode(false) on original parent.
    2. If original parent has an id attribute, unset it.
    3. Insert cloned parent into the parent of original parent immediately before original parent.
    4. While the previousSibling of the first member of node list is not null, append the first child of original parent as the last child of cloned parent, preserving ranges.

  8. For each node in node list, insert node into the parent of original parent immediately before original parent, preserving ranges.

  9. If follows line break is true, and the first member of node list does not follow a line break, call createElement("br") on the context object and insert the result immediately before the first member of node list.
  10. If the last member of node list is an inline node other than a br, and the first child of original parent is a br, and original parent is not an inline node, remove the first child of original parent from original parent.
  11. If original parent has no children:
    1. Remove original parent from its parent.
    2. If precedes line break is true, and the last member of node list does not precede a line break, call createElement("br") on the context object and insert the result immediately after the last member of node list.
  12. Otherwise, remove extraneous line breaks before original parent.

  13. If node list's last member's nextSibling is null, but its parent is not null, remove extraneous line breaks at the end of node list's last member's parent.

To remove a node node while preserving its descendants, split the parent of node's children if it has any. If it has no children, instead remove it from its parent.

Canonical space sequences

Whitespace in HTML normally collapses. However, if the user hits the space bar twice in an HTML editor, they expect to see two spaces, not one. Even if they hit the space bar once at the beginning or end of a line, it would collapse without special handling. The only good solution here is for the author to set white-space: pre-wrap on the editable area, and on everywhere the content is reproduced. But if they don't, we have to painfully hack around the problem.

This is a basically intractable problem because of the unfortunate confluence of three factors. One, our characters are Unicode, and Unicode doesn't know about whitespace collapsing, so it provides no special characters to control it. Two, HTML itself provides no features that control whitespace collapsing without undesired side effects (like inhibiting line breaks or not being allowed inside <p>). Three, we need to support user agents that don't reliably support CSS, since that includes many popular mail clients.

The upshot is we have no good way to control whitespace collapse, so we rely on the least bad way available: &nbsp;. This doesn't collapse with adjacent whitespace in browsers, which is good. But it also doesn't allow a line break opportunity, which is bad. In any run of whitespace that we don't want to collapse, any two regular spaces must be separated by an &nbsp; so they don't collapse together, but we need to carefully limit runs of consecutive &nbsp;s to minimize the damage to line-breaking behavior.

The result is an elaborate and meticulously-crafted hodgepodge of bad compromises that frankly isn't worth the effort to explain here. The saving grace is that it all gets disabled if white-space is set to pre-wrap as it should be, so authors can opt out of the insanity. Interested readers will find detailed rationale for the exact sequences required in the comments.

The canonical space sequence of length n, with boolean flags non-breaking start and non-breaking end, is returned by the following algorithm:

  1. If n is zero, return the empty string.
  2. If n is one and both non-breaking start and non-breaking end are false, return a single space (U+0020).
  3. If n is one, return a single non-breaking space (U+00A0).
  4. Let buffer be the empty string.
  5. If non-breaking start is true, let repeated pair be U+00A0 U+0020. Otherwise, let it be U+0020 U+00A0.
  6. While n is greater than three, append repeated pair to buffer and subtract two from n.
  7. If n is three, append a three-code unit string to buffer depending on non-breaking start and non-breaking end:
    non-breaking start and non-breaking end false
    U+0020 U+00A0 U+0020
    non-breaking start true, non-breaking end false
    U+00A0 U+00A0 U+0020
    non-breaking start false, non-breaking end true
    U+0020 U+00A0 U+00A0
    non-breaking start and non-breaking end both true
    U+00A0 U+0020 U+00A0
  8. Otherwise, append a two-code unit string to buffer depending on non-breaking start and non-breaking end:
    non-breaking start and non-breaking end false
    non-breaking start true, non-breaking end false
    U+00A0 U+0020
    non-breaking start false, non-breaking end true
    U+0020 U+00A0
    non-breaking start and non-breaking end both true
    U+00A0 U+00A0
  9. Return buffer.

To canonicalize whitespace at (node, offset), given an optional boolean argument fix collapsed space that defaults to true:

  1. If node is neither editable nor an editing host, abort these steps.
  2. Let start node equal node and let start offset equal offset.

  3. Repeat the following steps:

    1. If start node has a child in the same editing host with index start offset minus one, set start node to that child, then set start offset to start node's length.

    2. Otherwise, if start offset is zero and start node does not follow a line break and start node's parent is in the same editing host, set start offset to start node's index, then set start node to its parent.

    3. Otherwise, if start node is a Text node and its parent's resolved value for "white-space" is neither "pre" nor "pre-wrap" and start offset is not zero and the (start offset − 1)st code unit of start node's data is a space (0x0020) or non-breaking space (0x00A0), subtract one from start offset.
    4. Otherwise, break from this loop.

  4. Let end node equal start node and end offset equal start offset.

  5. Let length equal zero.

  6. Let collapse spaces be true if start offset is zero and start node follows a line break, otherwise false.

  7. Repeat the following steps:
    1. If end node has a child in the same editing host with index end offset, set end node to that child, then set end offset to zero.

    2. Otherwise, if end offset is end node's length and end node does not precede a line break and end node's parent is in the same editing host, set end offset to one plus end node's index, then set end node to its parent.

    3. Otherwise, if end node is a Text node and its parent's resolved value for "white-space" is neither "pre" nor "pre-wrap" and end offset is not end node's length and the end offsetth code unit of end node's data is a space (0x0020) or non-breaking space (0x00A0):
      1. If fix collapsed space is true, and collapse spaces is true, and the end offsetth code unit of end node's data is a space (0x0020): call deleteData(end offset, 1) on end node, then continue this loop from the beginning.
      2. Set collapse spaces to true if the end offsetth code unit of end node's data is a space (0x0020), false otherwise.
      3. Add one to end offset.
      4. Add one to length.
    4. Otherwise, break from this loop.

  8. If fix collapsed space is true, then while (start node, start offset) is before (end node, end offset):

    1. If end node has a child in the same editing host with index end offset − 1, set end node to that child, then set end offset to end node's length.
    2. Otherwise, if end offset is zero and end node's parent is in the same editing host, set end offset to end node's index, then set end node to its parent.
    3. Otherwise, if end node is a Text node and its parent's resolved value for "white-space" is neither "pre" nor "pre-wrap" and end offset is end node's length and the last code unit of end node's data is a space (0x0020) and end node precedes a line break:
      1. Subtract one from end offset.
      2. Subtract one from length.
      3. Call deleteData(end offset, 1) on end node.
    4. Otherwise, break from this loop.

  9. Let replacement whitespace be the canonical space sequence of length length. non-breaking start is true if start offset is zero and start node follows a line break, and false otherwise. non-breaking end is true if end offset is end node's length and end node precedes a line break, and false otherwise.

  10. While (start node, start offset) is before (end node, end offset):
    1. If start node has a child with index start offset, set start node to that child, then set start offset to zero.
    2. Otherwise, if start node is not a Text node or if start offset is start node's length, set start offset to one plus start node's index, then set start node to its parent.
    3. Otherwise:
      1. Remove the first code unit from replacement whitespace, and let element be that code unit.
      2. If element is not the same as the start offsetth code unit of start node's data:

        1. Call insertData(start offset, element) on start node.

        2. Call deleteData(start offset + 1, 1) on start node.
      3. Add one to start offset.

Indenting and outdenting

There are two basically different types of indent/outdent: lists, and everything else. For lists we'll wrap the item in a nested list to indent, and split its parent to outdent. For everything else we'll wrap in a <blockquote> to indent, and try breaking it out of an ancestor indentation element to outdent.

Indenting winds up being pretty simple: just add an appropriate wrapper. There's not really anything to think about here except which wrapper we want (<ol> or <ul> or <blockquote>), and establishing that is not rocket science.

Outdenting is considerably more complicated. The basic idea we follow is to first find the nearest editable ancestor that's a list or indentation element. If we succeed, and the node we're trying to outdent is the only descendant of the ancestor, of course we can just remove the ancestor and that's that. Otherwise, what we do is remove the ancestor and then indent all its other descendants, much like pushing down values.

But of course, there are complications. We don't always actually want to remove the closest ancestor that's causing indentation. For one thing, we prefer ancestors that we can remove completely, i.e., simple indentation elements. When outdenting <blockquote><blockquote id="abc">foo</blockquote></blockquote>, removing the inner tag would result in <blockquote><div id="abc">foo</div></blockquote>, since we don't want to lose the id. Thus we prefer to remove the outer tag and wind up with <blockquote id="abc">foo</blockquote>.

Also, if the node we're outdenting is itself a list, we prefer to remove an ancestor indentation element rather than the list. Otherwise, if the user selected some text, indented it, then added a list, there would be no way to remove the indentation without removing the list first. This way, the user could remove the list with the appropriate list-toggling command or remove the indentation with the outdent command.

To indent a list node list of consecutive sibling nodes:

  1. If node list is empty, do nothing and abort these steps.
  2. Let first node be the first member of node list.
  3. If first node's parent is an ol or ul:
    1. Let tag be the local name of the parent of first node.

    2. Wrap node list, with sibling criteria returning true for an HTML element with local name tag and false otherwise, and new parent instructions returning the result of calling createElement(tag) on the ownerDocument of first node.

    3. Abort these steps.

  4. Wrap node list, with sibling criteria returning true for a simple indentation element and false otherwise, and new parent instructions returning the result of calling createElement("blockquote") on the ownerDocument of first node. Let new parent be the result.

  5. Fix disallowed ancestors of new parent.

To outdent a node node:

  1. If node is not editable, abort these steps.

  2. If node is a simple indentation element, remove node, preserving its descendants. Then abort these steps.

  3. If node is an indentation element:

    1. Unset the dir attribute of node, if any.
    2. Unset the margin, padding, and border CSS properties of node.
    3. Set the tag name of node to "div".
    4. Abort these steps.

  4. Let current ancestor be node's parent.

  5. Let ancestor list be a list of nodes, initially empty.
  6. While current ancestor is an editable Element that is neither a simple indentation element nor an ol nor a ul, append current ancestor to ancestor list and then set current ancestor to its parent.
  7. If current ancestor is not an editable simple indentation element:
    1. Let current ancestor be node's parent.
    2. Let ancestor list be the empty list.
    3. While current ancestor is an editable Element that is neither an indentation element nor an ol nor a ul, append current ancestor to ancestor list and then set current ancestor to its parent.

  8. If node is an ol or ul and current ancestor is not an editable indentation element:

    1. Unset the reversed, start, and type attributes of node, if any are set.
    2. Let children be the children of node.

    3. If node has attributes, and its parent is not an ol or ul, set the tag name of node to "div".

    4. Otherwise:
      1. Record the values of node's children, and let values be the result.
      2. Remove node, preserving its descendants.
      3. Restore the values from values.
    5. Fix disallowed ancestors of each member of children.
    6. Abort these steps.
  9. If current ancestor is not an editable indentation element, abort these steps.

  10. Append current ancestor to ancestor list.

  11. Let original ancestor be current ancestor.

  12. While ancestor list is not empty:
    1. Let current ancestor be the last member of ancestor list.
    2. Remove the last member from ancestor list.
    3. Let target be the child of current ancestor that is equal to either node or the last member of ancestor list.
    4. If target is an inline node that is not a br, and its nextSibling is a br, remove target's nextSibling from its parent.
    5. Let preceding siblings be the precedings siblings of target, and let following siblings be the followings siblings of target.
    6. Indent preceding siblings.
    7. Indent following siblings.
  13. Outdent original ancestor.

Toggling lists

This is the action for the insertOrderedList command and the insertUnorderedList command, which behave identically except for which list type they target. It does several things that vary contextually.

If everything in the selection is contained in the target list type already, this more or less just outdents everything one step. This is relatively simple.

Otherwise, it's slightly more complicated:

First, any lists of the opposite list type (other tag name) get converted to the target list type (tag name). They get merged into a sibling if appropriate, otherwise we set the tag name.

Then we go through all the affected nodes, handling each run of consecutive siblings separately. Any line that's not already wrapped in an <li> gets wrapped. If the parent at this point isn't a list at all, the run gets wrapped in a list. If it's the wrong type of list, we split the parent and rewrap it in the right type of list. That's basically it, except that we have to exercise the usual care to try merging with siblings and so forth.

To toggle lists, given a string tag name (either "ol" or "ul"):

  1. Let mode be "disable" if the selection's list state is tag name, and "enable" otherwise.
  2. Let other tag name be "ol" if tag name is "ul", and "ul" if tag name is "ol".
  3. Let items be a list of all lis that are inclusive ancestors of the active range's start and/or end node.

  4. For each item in items, normalize sublists of item.

  5. Block-extend the active range, and let new range be the result.
  6. If mode is "enable", then let lists to convert consist of every editable HTML element with local name other tag name that is contained in new range, and for every list in lists to convert:

    1. If list's previousSibling or nextSibling is an editable HTML element with local name tag name:

      1. Let children be list's children.
      2. Record the values of children, and let values be the result.
      3. Split the parent of children.
      4. Wrap children, with sibling criteria returning true for an HTML element with local name tag name and false otherwise.
      5. Restore the values from values.
    2. Otherwise, set the tag name of list to tag name.
  7. Let node list be a list of nodes, initially empty.

  8. For each node node contained in new range, if node is editable; the last member of node list (if any) is not an ancestor of node; node is not an indentation element; and either node is an ol or ul, or its parent is an ol or ul, or it is an allowed child of "li"; then append node to node list.

  9. If mode is "enable", remove from node list any ol or ul whose parent is not also an ol or ul.

  10. If mode is "disable", then while node list is not empty:
    1. Let sublist be an empty list of nodes.
    2. Remove the first member from node list and append it to sublist.
    3. If the first member of sublist is an HTML element with local name tag name, outdent it and continue this loop from the beginning.
    4. While node list is not empty, and the first member of node list is the nextSibling of the last member of sublist and is not an HTML element with local name tag name, remove the first member from node list and append it to sublist.
    5. Record the values of sublist, and let values be the result.
    6. Split the parent of sublist.
    7. Fix disallowed ancestors of each member of sublist.
    8. Restore the values from values.
  11. Otherwise, while node list is not empty:
    1. Let sublist be an empty list of nodes.

    2. While either sublist is empty, or node list is not empty and its first member is the nextSibling of sublist's last member:

      1. If node list's first member is a p or div, set the tag name of node list's first member to "li", and append the result to sublist. Remove the first member from node list.

      2. Otherwise, if the first member of node list is an li or ol or ul, remove it from node list and append it to sublist.
      3. Otherwise:
        1. Let nodes to wrap be a list of nodes, initially empty.
        2. While nodes to wrap is empty, or node list is not empty and its first member is the nextSibling of nodes to wrap's last member and the first member of node list is an inline node and the last member of nodes to wrap is an inline node other than a br, remove the first member from node list and append it to nodes to wrap.
        3. Wrap nodes to wrap, with new parent instructions returning the result of calling createElement("li") on the context object. Append the result to sublist.

    3. If sublist's first member's parent is an HTML element with local name tag name, or if every member of sublist is an ol or ul, continue this loop from the beginning.

    4. If sublist's first member's parent is an HTML element with local name other tag name:
      1. Record the values of sublist, and let values be the result.
      2. Split the parent of sublist.
      3. Wrap sublist, with sibling criteria returning true for an HTML element with local name tag name and false otherwise, and new parent instructions returning the result of calling createElement(tag name) on the context object.
      4. Restore the values from values.
      5. Continue this loop from the beginning.
    5. Wrap sublist, with sibling criteria returning true for an HTML element with local name tag name and false otherwise, and new parent instructions being the following:

      1. If sublist's first member's parent is not an editable simple indentation element, or sublist's first member's parent's previousSibling is not an editable HTML element with local name tag name, call createElement(tag name) on the context object and return the result.

      2. Let list be sublist's first member's parent's previousSibling.
      3. Normalize sublists of list's lastChild.
      4. If list's lastChild is not an editable HTML element with local name tag name, call createElement(tag name) on the context object, and append the result as the last child of list.
      5. Return the last child of list.
    6. Fix disallowed ancestors of the previous step's result.

Justifying the selection

This is the action for the four justify* commands. It's pretty straightforward, with no notable gotchas or special cases. It works more or less like a stripped-down version of set the selection's value, except it gets to be much simpler because it's much less general. (It's not similar enough to just invoke that algorithm: too many things differ between block and inline elements.)

To justify the selection to a string alignment (either "center", "justify", "left", or "right"):

  1. Block-extend the active range, and let new range be the result.

  2. Let element list be a list of all editable Elements contained in new range that either has an attribute in the HTML namespace whose local name is "align", or has a style attribute that sets "text-align", or is a center.

  3. For each element in element list:
    1. If element has an attribute in the HTML namespace whose local name is "align", remove that attribute.
    2. Unset the CSS property "text-align" on element, if it's set by a style attribute.
    3. If element is a div or span or center with no attributes, remove it, preserving its descendants.
    4. If element is a center with one or more attributes, set the tag name of element to "div".

  4. Block-extend the active range, and let new range be the result.

  5. Let node list be a list of nodes, initially empty.

  6. For each node node contained in new range, append node to node list if the last member of node list (if any) is not an ancestor of node; node is editable; node is an allowed child of "div"; and node's alignment value is not alignment.

  7. While node list is not empty:
    1. Let sublist be a list of nodes, initially empty.
    2. Remove the first member of node list and append it to sublist.
    3. While node list is not empty, and the first member of node list is the nextSibling of the last member of sublist, remove the first member of node list and append it to sublist.

    4. Wrap sublist. Sibling criteria returns true for any div that has one or both of the following two attributes and no other attributes, and false otherwise:

      • An align attribute whose value is an ASCII case-insensitive match for alignment.
      • A style attribute which sets exactly one CSS property (including unrecognized or invalid attributes), which is "text-align", which is set to alignment.

      New parent instructions are to call createElement("div") on the context object, then set its CSS property "text-align" to alignment and return the result.

Automatic linking

When the user inserts whitespace immediately following something that looks like a URL or e-mail address, we automatically run the createLink command on it.

An autolinkable URL is a string of the following form:

  1. Either a string matching the scheme pattern from RFC 3986 section 3.1 followed by the literal string ://, or the literal string mailto:; followed by

  2. Zero or more characters other than space characters; followed by

  3. A character that is not one of the ASCII characters !"'(),-.:;<>[]`{}.

To autolink (node, end offset):

  1. While (node, end offset)'s previous equivalent point is not null, set it to its previous equivalent point.
  2. If node is not a Text node, or has an a ancestor, do nothing and abort these steps.
  3. Let search be the largest substring of node's data whose end is end offset and that contains no space characters.
  4. If some substring of search is an autolinkable URL:
    1. While there is no substring of node's data ending at end offset that is an autolinkable URL, decrement end offset.
    2. Let start offset be the start index of the longest substring of node's data that is an autolinkable URL ending at end offset.
    3. Let href be the substring of node's data starting at start offset and ending at end offset.
  5. Otherwise, if some substring of search is a valid e-mail address:
    1. While there is no substring of node's data ending at end offset that is a valid e-mail address, decrement end offset.
    2. Let start offset be the start index of the longest substring of node's data that is a valid e-mail address ending at end offset.
    3. Let href be "mailto:" concatenated with the substring of node's data starting at start offset and ending at end offset.
  6. Otherwise, do nothing and abort these steps.
  7. Let original range be the active range.
  8. Create a new range with start (node, start offset) and end (node, end offset), and set the context object's selection's range to it.
  9. Take the action for "createLink", with value equal to href.
  10. Set the context object's selection's range to original range.

The delete command

This is the same as hitting backspace (see Additional requirements). The easy part is if the selection isn't collapsed: just delete the selection. But it turns out rich-text editors have a lot of special behaviors for hitting backspace with a collapsed selection. Most obviously, if there's a text node right before the cursor (maybe wrapped in some inline elements), we delete its last character. But some of the special cases we run into are:

  • Invisible nodes are removed before anything else happens.
  • An <a> gets removed if you backspace while the cursor is right after it, so the link disappears.
  • A <br> or <hr> or <img> gets deleted.
  • Backspacing at the start of most blocks merges with the previous block. (Visually, this is a matter of deleting a line break.)
  • Backspacing at the start of an indentation element, or an <li> or <dt> or <dd> that's at the beginning of a list, outdents the current block (rather than merging with the previous block).
  • Backspacing at the start of a table cell does nothing.
  • Backspacing immediately after a table selects the table, so a second backspace deletes it.
  • Backspacing at the start of a list item that's not at the beginning of a list merges with the previous list item, but keeps the contents on a separate line, so you have to hit backspace a second time to get them on the same line.

Preserves overrides

Action:

  1. If the active range is not collapsed, delete the selection and return true.

  2. Canonicalize whitespace at the active range's start.

  3. Let node and offset be the active range's start node and offset.

  4. Repeat the following steps:

    1. If offset is zero and node's previousSibling is an editable invisible node, remove node's previousSibling from its parent.

    2. Otherwise, if node has a child with index offset − 1 and that child is an editable invisible node, remove that child from node, then subtract one from offset.
    3. Otherwise, if offset is zero and node is an inline node, or if node is an invisible node, set offset to the index of node, then set node to its parent.

    4. Otherwise, if node has a child with index offset − 1 and that child is an editable a, remove that child from node, preserving its descendants. Then return true.

    5. Otherwise, if node has a child with index offset − 1 and that child is not a block node or a br or an img, set node to that child, then set offset to the length of node.
    6. Otherwise, break from this loop.

  5. If node is a Text node and offset is not zero, or if node is a block node that has a child with index offset − 1 and that child is a br or hr or img:

    1. Call collapse(node, offset) on the context object's selection.
    2. Call extend(node, offset − 1) on the context object's selection.
    3. Delete the selection.
    4. Return true.

  6. If node is an inline node, return true.

  7. If node is an li or dt or dd and is the first child of its parent, and offset is zero:

    1. Let items be a list of all lis that are ancestors of node.
    2. Normalize sublists of each item in items.
    3. Record the values of the one-node list consisting of node, and let values be the result.
    4. Split the parent of the one-node list consisting of node.
    5. Restore the values from values.

    6. If node is a dd or dt, and it is not an allowed child of any of its ancestors in the same editing host, set the tag name of node to the default single-line container name and let node be the result.

    7. Fix disallowed ancestors of node.
    8. Return true.

  8. Let start node equal node and let start offset equal offset.

  9. Repeat the following steps:
    1. If start offset is zero, set start offset to the index of start node and then set start node to its parent.
    2. Otherwise, if start node has an editable invisible child with index start offset minus one, remove it from start node and subtract one from start offset.
    3. Otherwise, break from this loop.

  10. If offset is zero, and node has an editable inclusive ancestor in the same editing host that's an indentation element:

    1. Block-extend the range whose start and end are both (node, 0), and let new range be the result.
    2. Let node list be a list of nodes, initially empty.
    3. For each node current node contained in new range, append current node to node list if the last member of node list (if any) is not an ancestor of current node, and current node is editable but has no editable descendants.
    4. Outdent each node in node list.
    5. Return true.

  11. If the child of start node with index start offset is a table, return true.

  12. If start node has a child with index start offset − 1, and that child is a table:

    1. Call collapse(start node, start offset − 1) on the context object's selection.
    2. Call extend(start node, start offset) on the context object's selection.
    3. Return true.

  13. If offset is zero; and either the child of start node with index start offset minus one is an hr, or the child is a br whose previousSibling is either a br or not an inline node:

    1. Call collapse(start node, start offset − 1) on the context object's selection.
    2. Call extend(start node, start offset) on the context object's selection.
    3. Delete the selection.
    4. Call collapse(node, offset) on the selection.
    5. Return true.

  14. If the child of start node with index start offset is an li or dt or dd, and that child's firstChild is an inline node, and start offset is not zero:

    1. Let previous item be the child of start node with index start offset minus one.

    2. If previous item's lastChild is an inline node other than a br, call createElement("br") on the context object and append the result as the last child of previous item.

    3. If previous item's lastChild is an inline node, call createElement("br") on the context object and append the result as the last child of previous item.

  15. If start node's child with index start offset is an li or dt or dd, and that child's previousSibling is also an li or dt or dd:

    1. Call cloneRange() on the active range, and let original range be the result.
    2. Set start node to its child with index start offset − 1.
    3. Set start offset to start node's length.
    4. Set node to start node's nextSibling.
    5. Call collapse(start node, start offset) on the context object's selection.
    6. Call extend(node, 0) on the context object's selection.
    7. Delete the selection.
    8. Call removeAllRanges() on the context object's selection.
    9. Call addRange(original range) on the context object's selection.
    10. Return true.

  16. While start node has a child with index start offset minus one:

    1. If start node's child with index start offset minus one is editable and invisible, remove it from start node, then subtract one from start offset.
    2. Otherwise, set start node to its child with index start offset minus one, then set start offset to the length of start node.
  17. Call collapse(start node, start offset) on the context object's selection.
  18. Call extend(node, offset) on the context object's selection.
  19. Delete the selection, with direction "backward".
  20. Return true.

The formatBlock command

This command lets you change what block element particular lines are wrapped in. It will convert an existing wrapper if one exists, and otherwise will create a new one.

A formattable block name is "address", "dd", "div", "dt", "h1", "h2", "h3", "h4", "h5", "h6", "p", or "pre".

Preserves overrides

Action:

  1. If value begins with a "<" character and ends with a ">" character, remove the first and last characters from it.

  2. Let value be converted to ASCII lowercase.

  3. If value is not a formattable block name, return false.

  4. Block-extend the active range, and let new range be the result.
  5. Let node list be an empty list of nodes.
  6. For each node node contained in new range, append node to node list if it is editable, the last member of original node list (if any) is not an ancestor of node, node is either a non-list single-line container or an allowed child of "p" or a dd or dt, and node is not the ancestor of a prohibited paragraph child.
  7. Record the values of node list, and let values be the result.

  8. For each node in node list, while node is the descendant of an editable HTML element in the same editing host, whose local name is a formattable block name, and which is not the ancestor of a prohibited paragraph child, split the parent of the one-node list consisting of node.

  9. Restore the values from values.

  10. While node list is not empty:

    1. If the first member of node list is a single-line container:

      1. Let sublist be the children of the first member of node list.

      2. Record the values of sublist, and let values be the result.
      3. Remove the first member of node list from its parent, preserving its descendants.
      4. Restore the values from values.
      5. Remove the first member from node list.
    2. Otherwise:
      1. Let sublist be an empty list of nodes.
      2. Remove the first member of node list and append it to sublist.
      3. While node list is not empty, and the first member of node list is the nextSibling of the last member of sublist, and the first member of node list is not a single-line container, and the last member of sublist is not a br, remove the first member of node list and append it to sublist.
    3. Wrap sublist. If value is "div" or "p", sibling criteria returns false; otherwise it returns true for an HTML element with local name value and no attributes, and false otherwise. New parent instructions return the result of running createElement(value) on the context object. Then fix disallowed ancestors of the result.
  11. Return true.

Indeterminate:

  1. If the active range is null, return the empty string.
  2. Block-extend the active range, and let new range be the result.
  3. Let node list be all visible editable nodes that are contained in new range and have no children.
  4. If node list is empty, return false.
  5. Let type be null.
  6. For each node in node list:
    1. While node's parent is editable and in the same editing host as node, and node is not an HTML element whose local name is a formattable block name, set node to its parent.
    2. Let current type be the empty string.
    3. If node is an editable HTML element whose local name is a formattable block name, and node is not the ancestor of a prohibited paragraph child, set current type to node's local name.
    4. If type is null, set type to current type.
    5. Otherwise, if type does not equal current type, return true.
  7. Return false.

Value:

  1. If the active range is null, return the empty string.
  2. Block-extend the active range, and let new range be the result.
  3. Let node be the first visible editable node that is contained in new range and has no children. If there is no such node, return the empty string.

  4. While node's parent is editable and in the same editing host as node, and node is not an HTML element whose local name is a formattable block name, set node to its parent.

  5. If node is an editable HTML element whose local name is a formattable block name, and node is not the ancestor of a prohibited paragraph child, return node's local name, converted to ASCII lowercase.

  6. Return the empty string.

The forwardDelete command

This is the same as hitting the delete key (see Additional requirements). It behaves much the same as the delete command, except of course backwards. Also, some of the special cases for backspacing don't apply, as noted in the comments. The one special case you get when deleting forward but not backward is that if the cursor is before a grapheme cluster that consists of multiple characters, like a base character with combining diacritics, we delete the diacritics too. (Backspacing just deletes the last diacritic, so you have to backspace several times to remove the whole cluster.)

Preserves overrides

Action:

  1. If the active range is not collapsed, delete the selection and return true.
  2. Canonicalize whitespace at the active range's start.
  3. Let node and offset be the active range's start node and offset.
  4. Repeat the following steps:
    1. If offset is the length of node and node's nextSibling is an editable invisible node, remove node's nextSibling from its parent.
    2. Otherwise, if node has a child with index offset and that child is an editable invisible node, remove that child from node.
    3. Otherwise, if offset is the length of node and node is an inline node, or if node is invisible, set offset to one plus the index of node, then set node to its parent.

    4. Otherwise, if node has a child with index offset and that child is neither a block node nor a br nor an img nor a collapsed block prop, set node to that child, then set offset to zero.

    5. Otherwise, break from this loop.
  5. If node is a Text node and offset is not node's length:
    1. Let end offset be offset plus one.

    2. While end offset is not node's length and the end offsetth code unit of node's data has general category M when interpreted as a Unicode code point, add one to end offset.

    3. Call collapse(node, offset) on the context object's selection.
    4. Call extend(node, end offset) on the context object's selection.
    5. Delete the selection.
    6. Return true.
  6. If node is an inline node, return true.
  7. If node has a child with index offset and that child is a br or hr or img, but is not a collapsed block prop:
    1. Call collapse(node, offset) on the context object's selection.
    2. Call extend(node, offset + 1) on the context object's selection.
    3. Delete the selection.
    4. Return true.

  8. Let end node equal node and let end offset equal offset.

  9. If end node has a child with index end offset, and that child is a collapsed block prop, add one to end offset.
  10. Repeat the following steps:
    1. If end offset is the length of end node, set end offset to one plus the index of end node and then set end node to its parent.
    2. Otherwise, if end node has an editable invisible child with index end offset, remove it from end node.
    3. Otherwise, break from this loop.

  11. If the child of end node with index end offset minus one is a table, return true.

  12. If the child of end node with index end offset is a table:
    1. Call collapse(end node, end offset) on the context object's selection.
    2. Call extend(end node, end offset + 1) on the context object's selection.
    3. Return true.

  13. If offset is the length of node, and the child of end node with index end offset is an hr or br:

    1. Call collapse(end node, end offset) on the context object's selection.
    2. Call extend(end node, end offset + 1) on the context object's selection.
    3. Delete the selection.
    4. Call collapse(node, offset) on the selection.
    5. Return true.

  14. While end node has a child with index end offset:

    1. If end node's child with index end offset is editable and invisible, remove it from end node.
    2. Otherwise, set end node to its child with index end offset and set end offset to zero.
  15. Call collapse(node, offset) on the context object's selection.
  16. Call extend(end node, end offset) on the context object's selection.
  17. Delete the selection.

The indent command

Preserves overrides

Action:

  1. Let items be a list of all lis that are inclusive ancestors of the active range's start and/or end node.

  2. For each item in items, normalize sublists of item.

  3. Block-extend the active range, and let new range be the result.
  4. Let node list be a list of nodes, initially empty.
  5. For each node node contained in new range, if node is editable and is an allowed child of "div" or "ol" and if the last member of node list (if any) is not an ancestor of node, append node to node list.

  6. If the first visible member of node list is an li whose parent is an ol or ul:

    1. Let sibling be node list's first visible member's previousSibling.
    2. While sibling is invisible, set sibling to its previousSibling.
    3. If sibling is an li, normalize sublists of sibling.
  7. While node list is not empty:
    1. Let sublist be a list of nodes, initially empty.
    2. Remove the first member of node list and append it to sublist.
    3. While the first member of node list is the nextSibling of the last member of sublist, remove the first member of node list and append it to sublist.
    4. Indent sublist.

The insertHorizontalRule command

Preserves overrides

Action:

  1. Let start node, start offset, end node, and end offset be the active range's start and end nodes and offsets.
  2. While start offset is 0 and start node's parent is not null, set start offset to start node's index, then set start node to its parent.
  3. While end offset is end node's length, and end node's parent is not null, set end offset to one plus end node's index, then set end node to its parent.
  4. Call collapse(start node, start offset) on the context object's selection.
  5. Call extend(end node, end offset) on the context object's selection.
  6. Delete the selection, with block merging false.
  7. If the active range's start node is neither editable nor an editing host, return true.

  8. If the active range's start node is a Text node and its start offset is zero, call collapse() on the context object's selection, with first argument the active range's start node's parent and second argument the active range's start node's index.

  9. If the active range's start node is a Text node and its start offset is the length of its start node, call collapse() on the context object's selection, with first argument the active range's start node's parent, and the second argument one plus the active range's start node's index.
  10. Let hr be the result of calling createElement("hr") on the context object.
  11. Run insertNode(hr) on the active range.

  12. Fix disallowed ancestors of hr.

  13. Run collapse() on the context object's selection, with first argument hr's parent and the second argument equal to one plus hr's index.
  14. Return true.

The insertHTML command

Preserves overrides

Action:

  1. Delete the selection.

  2. If the active range's start node is neither editable nor an editing host, return true.

  3. Let frag be the result of calling createContextualFragment(value) on the active range.

  4. Let last child be the lastChild of frag.

  5. If last child is null, return true.

  6. Let descendants be all descendants of frag.

  7. If the active range's start node is a block node:

    1. Let collapsed block props be all editable collapsed block prop children of the active range's start node that have index greater than or equal to the active range's start offset.
    2. For each node in collapsed block props, remove node from its parent.

  8. Call insertNode(frag) on the active range.

  9. If the active range's start node is a block node with no visible children, call createElement("br") on the context object and append the result as the last child of the active range's start node.

  10. Call collapse() on the context object's selection, with last child's parent as the first argument and one plus its index as the second.

  11. Fix disallowed ancestors of each member of descendants.

  12. Return true.

The insertImage command

Preserves overrides

Action:

  1. If value is the empty string, return false.

  2. Delete the selection, with strip wrappers false.

  3. Let range be the active range.
  4. If the active range's start node is neither editable nor an editing host, return true.

  5. If range's start node is a block node whose sole child is a br, and its start offset is 0, remove its start node's child from it.

  6. Let img be the result of calling createElement("img") on the context object.

  7. Run setAttribute("src", value) on img.

  8. Run insertNode(img) on range.

  9. Let selection be the result of calling getSelection() on the context object.
  10. Run collapse() on selection, with first argument equal to the parent of img and the second argument equal to one plus the index of img.
  11. Return true.

The insertLineBreak command

This is the same as hitting Shift-Enter or such (see Additional requirements). It deletes the selection, and replaces it with a <br>. No real complications.

Preserves overrides

Action:

  1. Delete the selection, with strip wrappers false.

  2. If the active range's start node is neither editable nor an editing host, return true.

  3. If the active range's start node is an Element, and "br" is not an allowed child of it, return true.

  4. If the active range's start node is not an Element, and "br" is not an allowed child of the active range's start node's parent, return true.

  5. If the active range's start node is a Text node and its start offset is zero, call collapse() on the context object's selection, with first argument equal to the active range's start node's parent and second argument equal to the active range's start node's index.

  6. If the active range's start node is a Text node and its start offset is the length of its start node, call collapse() on the context object's selection, with first argument equal to the active range's start node's parent and second argument equal to one plus the active range's start node's index.
  7. Let br be the result of calling createElement("br") on the context object.
  8. Call insertNode(br) on the active range.
  9. Call collapse() on the context object's selection, with br's parent as the first argument and one plus br's index as the second argument.
  10. If br is a collapsed line break, call createElement("br") on the context object and let extra br be the result, then call insertNode(extra br) on the active range.
  11. Return true.

The insertOrderedList command

Preserves overrides

Action: Toggle lists with tag name "ol", then return true.

Indeterminate: True if the selection's list state is "mixed" or "mixed ol", false otherwise.

State: True if the selection's list state is "ol", false otherwise.

The insertParagraph command

This is the same as hitting enter (see Additional requirements). The general rule is that we find the nearest single-line container ancestor, clone it and insert the clone after it, and then move all the contents after the cursor (along with the cursor itself) to the clone. But there are a few special cases:

  • If we can't find a single-line container to use, first we wrap the current line in a new container with the default single-line container name.
  • For <address>, <listing>, and <pre>, we add a <br> instead of cloning it. These are all elements that are meant to contain multiple lines, not have one line per element.
  • If the cursor is in a list item with no contents, hitting enter breaks out of the list entirely, outdenting the current item. This means that if you're in a list, you can hit enter twice to break out.
  • If the cursor is at the end of a heading, hitting enter doesn't make a new heading, it switches to the default single-line container name.
  • If the cursor is at the end of a <dt> or <dd>, the new element is the opposite type, so you naturally switch between entering terms and definitions.

Preserves overrides

Action:

  1. Delete the selection.
  2. If the active range's start node is neither editable nor an editing host, return true.
  3. Let node and offset be the active range's start node and offset.
  4. If node is a Text node, and offset is neither 0 nor the length of node, call splitText(offset) on node.
  5. If node is a Text node and offset is its length, set offset to one plus the index of node, then set node to its parent.
  6. If node is a Text or Comment node, set offset to the index of node, then set node to its parent.
  7. Call collapse(node, offset) on the context object's selection.
  8. Let container equal node.
  9. While container is not a single-line container, and container's parent is editable and in the same editing host as node, set container to its parent.

  10. If container is an editable single-line container in the same editing host as node, and its local name is "p" or "div":

    1. Let outer container equal container.
    2. While outer container is not a dd or dt or li, and outer container's parent is editable, set outer container to its parent.
    3. If outer container is a dd or dt or li, set container to outer container.

  11. If container is not editable or not in the same editing host as node or is not a single-line container:

    1. Let tag be the default single-line container name.
    2. Block-extend the active range, and let new range be the result.
    3. Let node list be a list of nodes, initially empty.
    4. Append to node list the first node in tree order that is contained in new range and is an allowed child of "p", if any.
    5. If node list is empty:

      1. If tag is not an allowed child of the active range's start node, return true.

      2. Set container to the result of calling createElement(tag) on the context object.
      3. Call insertNode(container) on the active range.
      4. Call createElement("br") on the context object, and append the result as the last child of container.
      5. Call collapse(container, 0) on the context object's selection.
      6. Return true.

    6. While the nextSibling of the last member of node list is not null and is an allowed child of "p", append it to node list.

    7. Wrap node list, with sibling criteria returning false and new parent instructions returning the result of calling createElement(tag) on the context object. Set container to the result.

  12. If container's local name is "address", "listing", or "pre":

    1. Let br be the result of calling createElement("br") on the context object.
    2. Call insertNode(br) on the active range.
    3. Call collapse(node, offset + 1) on the context object's selection.

    4. If br is the last descendant of container, let br be the result of calling createElement("br") on the context object, then call insertNode(br) on the active range.

    5. Return true.

  13. If container's local name is "li", "dt", or "dd"; and either it has no children or it has a single child and that child is a br:

    1. Split the parent of the one-node list consisting of container.
    2. If container has no children, call createElement("br") on the context object and append the result as the last child of container.

    3. If container is a dd or dt, and it is not an allowed child of any of its ancestors in the same editing host, set the tag name of container to the default single-line container name and let container be the result.

    4. Fix disallowed ancestors of container.
    5. Return true.
  14. Let new line range be a new range whose start is the same as the active range's, and whose end is (container, length of container).

  15. While new line range's start offset is zero and its start node is not a prohibited paragraph child, set its start to (parent of start node, index of start node).

  16. While new line range's start offset is the length of its start node and its start node is not a prohibited paragraph child, set its start to (parent of start node, 1 + index of start node).
  17. Let end of line be true if new line range contains either nothing or a single br, and false otherwise.

  18. If the local name of container is "h1", "h2", "h3", "h4", "h5", or "h6", and end of line is true, let new container name be the default single-line container name.

  19. Otherwise, if the local name of container is "dt" and end of line is true, let new container name be "dd".

  20. Otherwise, if the local name of container is "dd" and end of line is true, let new container name be "dt".
  21. Otherwise, let new container name be the local name of container.
  22. Let new container be the result of calling createElement(new container name) on the context object.
  23. Copy all attributes of container to new container.
  24. If new container has an id attribute, unset it.
  25. Insert new container into the parent of container immediately after container.
  26. Let contained nodes be all nodes contained in new line range.

  27. Let frag be the result of calling extractContents() on new line range.

  28. Unset the id attribute (if any) of each Element descendant of frag that is not in contained nodes.
  29. Call appendChild(frag) on new container.

  30. While container's lastChild is a prohibited paragraph child, set container to its lastChild.

  31. While new container's lastChild is a prohibited paragraph child, set new container to its lastChild.
  32. If container has no visible children, call createElement("br") on the context object, and append the result as the last child of container.

  33. If new container has no visible children, call createElement("br") on the context object, and append the result as the last child of new container.

  34. Call collapse(new container, 0) on the context object's selection.
  35. Return true.

The insertText command

This is the same as typing text (see Additional requirements). If the input string is more than one character, first we split it up into one execution per character, for simplicity. The general rule is then that we record each command's state override or value override, insert the new character and select it, restore any overrides that we saved, and collapse the selection to its end.

The idea of the override business is that the user might run a command like bold when the selection is collapsed. There's nothing to bold in that case, but if the user runs bold and then types a character, they expect it to be bold. Thus we save the requested state in an override and restore it when the user types. Deleting things can also set overrides, if the deleted text was styled.

Whitespace is a special case. The note for canonical space sequences gives some of the background. If the user tries typing a space, we make it non-breaking so it doesn't collapse with anything, then canonicalize whitespace around the insertion point so line breaking isn't adversely affected.

One last special case is a newline. For that we just pass off to the insertParagraph command.

Action:

  1. Delete the selection, with strip wrappers false.

  2. If the active range's start node is neither editable nor an editing host, return true.
  3. If value's length is greater than one:
    1. For each code unit el in value, take the action for the insertText command, with value equal to el.
    2. Return true.
  4. If value is the empty string, return true.

  5. If value is a newline (U+00A0), take the action for the insertParagraph command and return true.

  6. Let node and offset be the active range's start node and offset.

  7. If node has a child whose index is offset − 1, and that child is a Text node, set node to that child, then set offset to node's length.

  8. If node has a child whose index is offset, and that child is a Text node, set node to that child, then set offset to zero.
  9. Record current overrides, and let overrides be the result.
  10. Call collapse(node, offset) on the context object's selection.
  11. Canonicalize whitespace at (node, offset).
  12. Let (node, offset) be the active range's start.
  13. If node is a Text node:
    1. Call insertData(offset, value) on node.
    2. Call collapse(node, offset) on the context object's selection.
    3. Call extend(node, offset + 1) on the context object's selection.
  14. Otherwise:

    1. If node has only one child, which is a collapsed line break, remove its child from it.

    2. Let text be the result of calling createTextNode(value) on the context object.
    3. Call insertNode(text) on the active range.
    4. Call collapse(text, 0) on the context object's selection.
    5. Call extend(text, 1) on the context object's selection.
  15. Restore states and values from overrides.
  16. Canonicalize whitespace at the active range's start, with fix collapsed space false.
  17. Canonicalize whitespace at the active range's end, with fix collapsed space false.
  18. If value is a space character, autolink the active range's start.
  19. Call collapseToEnd() on the context object's selection.
  20. Return true.

The insertUnorderedList command

Preserves overrides

Action: Toggle lists with tag name "ul", then return true.

Indeterminate: True if the selection's list state is "mixed" or "mixed ul", false otherwise.

State: True if the selection's list state is "ul", false otherwise.

The justifyCenter command

Preserves overrides

Action: Justify the selection with alignment "center", then return true.

Indeterminate: Return false if the active range is null. Otherwise, block-extend the active range. Return true if among visible editable nodes that are contained in the result and have no children, at least one has alignment value "center" and at least one does not. Otherwise return false.

State: Return false if the active range is null. Otherwise, block-extend the active range. Return true if there is at least one visible editable node that is contained in the result and has no children, and all such nodes have alignment value "center". Otherwise return false.

Value: Return the empty string if the active range is null. Otherwise, block-extend the active range, and return the alignment value of the first visible editable node that is contained in the result and has no children. If there is no such node, return "left".

The justifyFull command

Preserves overrides

Action: Justify the selection with alignment "justify", then return true.

Indeterminate: Return false if the active range is null. Otherwise, block-extend the active range. Return true if among visible editable nodes that are contained in the result and have no children, at least one has alignment value "justify" and at least one does not. Otherwise return false.

State: Return false if the active range is null. Otherwise, block-extend the active range. Return true if there is at least one visible editable node that is contained in the result and has no children, and all such nodes have alignment value "justify". Otherwise return false.

Value: Return the empty string if the active range is null. Otherwise, block-extend the active range, and return the alignment value of the first visible editable node that is contained in the result and has no children. If there is no such node, return "left".

The justifyLeft command

Preserves overrides

Action: Justify the selection with alignment "left", then return true.

Indeterminate: Return false if the active range is null. Otherwise, block-extend the active range. Return true if among visible editable nodes that are contained in the result and have no children, at least one has alignment value "left" and at least one does not. Otherwise return false.

State: Return false if the active range is null. Otherwise, block-extend the active range. Return true if there is at least one visible editable node that is contained in the result and has no children, and all such nodes have alignment value "left". Otherwise return false.

Value: Return the empty string if the active range is null. Otherwise, block-extend the active range, and return the alignment value of the first visible editable node that is contained in the result and has no children. If there is no such node, return "left".

The justifyRight command

Preserves overrides

Action: Justify the selection with alignment "right", then return true.

Indeterminate: Return false if the active range is null. Otherwise, block-extend the active range. Return true if among visible editable nodes that are contained in the result and have no children, at least one has alignment value "right" and at least one does not. Otherwise return false.

State: Return false if the active range is null. Otherwise, block-extend the active range. Return true if there is at least one visible editable node that is contained in the result and has no children, and all such nodes have alignment value "right". Otherwise return false.

Value: Return the empty string if the active range is null. Otherwise, block-extend the active range, and return the alignment value of the first visible editable node that is contained in the result and has no children. If there is no such node, return "left".

The outdent command

Preserves overrides

Action:

  1. Let items be a list of all lis that are inclusive ancestors of the active range's start and/or end node.

  2. For each item in items, normalize sublists of item.

  3. Block-extend the active range, and let new range be the result.
  4. Let node list be a list of nodes, initially empty.

  5. For each node node contained in new range, append node to node list if the last member of node list (if any) is not an ancestor of node; node is editable; and either node has no editable descendants, or is an ol or ul, or is an li whose parent is an ol or ul.

  6. While node list is not empty:
    1. While the first member of node list is an ol or ul or is not the child of an ol or ul, outdent it and remove it from node list.
    2. If node list is empty, break from these substeps.
    3. Let sublist be a list of nodes, initially empty.
    4. Remove the first member of node list and append it to sublist.
    5. While the first member of node list is the nextSibling of the last member of sublist, and the first member of node list is not an ol or ul, remove the first member of node list and append it to sublist.
    6. Record the values of sublist, and let values be the result.
    7. Split the parent of sublist.
    8. Fix disallowed ancestors of each member of sublist.
    9. Restore the values from values.
  7. Return true.

Miscellaneous commands

The copy command

Action: The user agent must either copy the current selection to the clipboard as though the user had requested it, or throw a SecurityError exception. This specification does not define exactly how the selection is to be copied to the clipboard, but the Clipboard API and events specification might be useful.

User agents should exercise caution in respecting this command, because sites could abuse it to confuse and annoy the user by overwriting the clipboard with extremely long, obscene, or otherwise objectionable content.

User agents may choose not to support this command at all. If a user agent will only honor the command for some whitelisted sites depending on configuration, it may either throw a SecurityError exception for non-whitelisted sites, or it may act as though the command is unsupported on those sites.

The cut command

Action: The user agent must either copy the current selection to the clipboard and then delete it, as though the user had requested it, or throw a SecurityError exception. This specification does not define exactly how the selection is to be deleted or copied to the clipboard, but the Clipboard API and events specification might be useful.

User agents should exercise caution in respecting this command, because sites could abuse it to confuse and annoy the user by overwriting the clipboard with extremely long, obscene, or otherwise objectionable content.

User agents may choose not to support this command at all. If a user agent will only honor the command for some whitelisted sites depending on configuration, it may either throw a SecurityError exception for non-whitelisted sites, or it may act as though the command is unsupported on those sites.

The defaultParagraphSeparator command

This is a new feature, added by request in bug 15527. (Opera already had an o-defaultblock command that worked similarly.) If you are implementing this, please make sure to file any feedback as bugs. The spec is not finalized yet and can still be easily changed.

Action: Let value be converted to ASCII lowercase. If value is then equal to "p" or "div", set the context object's default single-line container name to value, then return true. Otherwise, return false.

Value: Return the context object's default single-line container name.

The paste command

Action: The user agent must either delete the selection and then paste the clipboard's contents to the current cursor position, as though the user had requested it, or throw a SecurityError exception. This specification does not define exactly how the clipboard is to be converted to HTML for pasting, but the Clipboard API and events specification might be useful.

User agents should exercise caution in respecting this command, because sites could abuse it to read private information from the clipboard.

User agents may choose not to support this command at all. If a user agent will only honor the command for some whitelisted sites depending on configuration, it may either throw a SecurityError exception for non-whitelisted sites, or it may act as though the command is unsupported on those sites.

The redo command

Action: As defined by the UndoManager specification.

The selectAll command

This is totally broken: if executed inside an editing host, it has to select the editing host contents, not the whole document. See bug.

Action:

  1. Let target be the body element of the context object.

    If target is null, let target be the context object's documentElement.

  2. If target is null, call getSelection() on the context object, and call removeAllRanges() on the result.
  3. Otherwise, call getSelection() on the context object, and call selectAllChildren(target) on the result.
  4. Return true.

The styleWithCSS command

Action: If value is an ASCII case-insensitive match for the string "false", set the CSS styling flag to false. Otherwise, set the CSS styling flag to true. Either way, return true.

State: True if the CSS styling flag is true, otherwise false.

The undo command

Action: As defined by the UndoManager specification.

The useCSS command

Action: If value is an ASCII case-insensitive match for the string "false", set the CSS styling flag to true. Otherwise, set the CSS styling flag to false. Either way, return true.

Since the effect of this command is the opposite of what one would expect, user agents are encouraged to point authors to styleWithCSS when useCSS is used, such as by logging a warning to an error console.

No state is defined for this command, so queryCommandState("useCSS") must always return false. To query the CSS styling flag's current value, authors have to use the styleWithCSS command.

Additional requirements

It has been suggested that some things here need to be platform-dependent, not fully standardized. For now I'm standardizing them anyway, because the large majority of behavior should be platform-agnostic. If anyone has suggestions as to particular things that should be left up to platform behavior, please say so.

When the user instructs the user agent to insert a line break inside an editing host, such as by pressing the Enter key while the cursor is in an editable node, the user agent must call execCommand("insertparagraph") on the relevant document.

When the user instructs the user agent to insert a line break inside an editing host without breaking out of the current block, such as by pressing Shift-Enter or Option-Enter while the cursor is in an editable node, the user agent must call execCommand("insertlinebreak") on the relevant document.

When the user instructs the user agent to delete the previous character inside an editing host, such as by pressing the Backspace key while the cursor is in an editable node, the user agent must call execCommand("delete") on the relevant document.

When the user instructs the user agent to delete the next character inside an editing host, such as by pressing the Delete key while the cursor is in an editable node, the user agent must call execCommand("forwarddelete") on the relevant document.

When the user instructs the user agent to insert text inside an editing host, such as by typing on the keyboard while the cursor is in an editable node, the user agent must call execCommand("inserttext", false, value) on the relevant document, with value equal to the text the user provided. If the user inserts multiple characters at once or in quick succession, this specification does not define whether it is treated as one insertion or several consecutive insertions.

The user agent may allow the user to make other changes to editable content, such as causing Ctrl-B to call execCommand("bold"). Any such change must be accomplished by calling execCommand(), so that in particular, "beforeinput" and "input" events fire as appropriate. The command invoked should be one of the standard commands defined in this specification if possible, and otherwise must be a vendor-specific command.

Acknowledgements

This section is not normative.

Thanks to:

  • Google and Mozilla, for funding this work
  • Ian Hickson, for overseeing it initially
  • Ian Hickson and Ms2ger, for starting the selection work
  • Julie Parent, Ojan Vafai, Alex Russel, and Eric Seidel for their research on how browsers and other rich text editors behave in many common scenarios
  • Ehsan Akhgari, Tab Atkins, Mathias Bynens, Tim Down, Markus Ernst, Daniel Glazman, Tali Gregor (née Fuss), Stig Halvorsen, Jeff Harris, Ian Hickson, Cameron Heavon-Jones, Anne van Kesteren, Alfonso Martínez de Lizarrondo, Glenn Maynard, Ms2ger, Ryosuke Niwa, Robert O'Callahan, Julie Parent, Simon Pieters, Michael A. Puls II, Rich Schwerdtfeger, Jonas Sicking, Henri Sivonen, Smylers, Hallvord R. M. Steen, Roland Steiner, Annie Sullivan, timeless, Ojan Vafai, Brett Zamir, and Boris Zbarsky for their feedback, participation, or other helpful contributions