195050 - use STRONG/EM instead of B/I in Composer's HTML mode

Status: NEW

(SeaMonkey :: Composer, enhancement)

Description

[Daniel Glazman (:glazou) (not active in Mozilla any more)]

User's request : be able to bind B and I buttons from Composer's format
toolbar to STRONG/EM instead of B/I elements.
Very low priority bug but still an valid request.

Comment 1

[Patrick]

FYI:
a few months ago there was a brief discussion on this in the newsgroups :
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=nl&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&threadm=Xns92629E6969583BAHhumbug%40204.29.187.156&rnum=3&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Dmozilla%2Bstrong%2BEric%2Bmail%26hl%3Dnl%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26selm%3DXns92629E6969583BAHhumbug%2540204.29.187.156%26rnum%3D3

Comment 2

[Kathleen :Brade]

how would this impact css mode?

Comment 3

[Kathleen :Brade]

This should probably be dependent on toolbar configurability bug....

Comment 4

[Greg K.]

See also historical bug 34894.

Comment 5

[Vidar Haarr (not reading bugmail)]

*** Bug 216548 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6

[Tobias Herp]

> Very low priority bug but still an valid request.

I don't agree about the "very low priority".

Consider a web-based content management system which allows users to edit
content using a WYSIWYG-editor (see http://htmlarea3beta.demo.tobias-herp.de/).
Some of the users use Mozilla, others use MSIE. When changing the content
someone else has written, it shouldn't matter which browser either of them has used.

MSIE inserts logical tags (strong and em). When a Mozilla user tries to edit
text which contains strong and em tags, (s)he can't remove them, and instead of
<strong> and <em> tags <span> tags with style attributes are inserted.

Mozilla is incompatible here to

 1. the recommendation to use logical markup

 2. the de-facto standard (MSIE was the first one [known to me] to support
WYSIWYG editing, and it does it right).

Ok, it might make some sense to let the user choose what type of markup (s)he
wants to use. But by default

 1. logical markup should be used! The current default seems to be to use styles;

 2. unchanged text should be saved like it had been read

As you can see on the demo page montioned above, it is possible to make the
bold, italic etc. buttons to act like in a text processor: when the cursor is
located in bold text, the button is pressed. This comfort should be available to
those who use logical markup!

Comment 7

[Tobias Herp]

I finally found an "official" demo page for HtmlArea (besides the demo for my
Zope product): http://dynarch.com/htmlarea/.

Comment 8

[Daniel Glazman (:glazou) (not active in Mozilla any more)]

me says with module owner hat on: this should be solved in Standalone Composer
by toolbar customization.

Comment 9

[Tobias Herp]

> this should be solved in Standalone Composer ...

I'm not sure if I got you right: are you saying that the browser's behaviour
won't be changed?

> ... by toolbar customization.

What about the default?

Comment 10

[Kathleen :Brade]

If we are discussing the "rich-text editor" feature in the browser (once known
affectionately as Midas), this is a non-issue.  A site that wants its users to
use strong/em can send the command with "strong" or "em" instead of "b" or "i";
in this sense, Midas is fully configurable.  As for Composer, it should have
flexible toolbars as Daniel describes so this bug should be specific to Composer
application and not the core editor.

Comment 11

[Tobias Herp]

> A site that wants its users to use strong/em
> can send the command with "strong" or "em"
> instead of "b" or "i";
> in this sense, Midas is fully configurable.

Are you saying that Midas can use logical markup?
How? Can you provide a link?

When the text which is to be edited contains <em> and <strong> tags, Midas can't
do nothing about this; it can't make the text look normal. If this isn't a bug,
find another name for it; but it must be fixed.

Comment 12

[Kathleen :Brade]

regarding comment 11:
  If I wanted to change the demo at http://mozilla.org/editor/midasdemo/
  I would change the div with the id "bold" to be "strong" (and "italic" to "em")

  In your own page you could do something like:
document.getElementById('edit').contentWindow.document.execCommand("em",false,null);

If toggling "strong" or "em" doesn't work as it should, please file a bug and
assign it to me (brade@comcast); that is a separate issue.

Bug 194957 is already filed about "removeformat" not working (a regression after
1.4).

Comment 13

[Mihai Bazon]

>
document.getElementById('edit').contentWindow.document.execCommand("em",false,null);

The above doesn't work :-(  It throws an exception which basically says "not
implemented".

The only way that seems to work currently is using execCommand("useCSS", false,
false); before each call to execCommand("bold" ["italic", etc.] ...).  But this
unfortunately doesn't switch to semantic tags (strong, em) but to old HTML tags
"b", "i", "u", etc.

So, is there any way to use semantic tags (strong, em) like IE does?

Comment 14

[Kathleen :Brade]

Mihai Bazon (comment 13) -- that sounds like a Midas-specific problem.  Please
file a new bug and include (attach) an html file that shows the problem.  Please
cc the following people on that bug:  [e-mail], [e-mail]

Thanks!

Comment 15

[Alfonso Martinez]

filed Bug 317093 according to comment 14