[webkit-dev] Overtype mode in WebKit for editable content?

[Peter Kasting]

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 4:21 PM, Ryosuke Niwa <rniwa at webkit.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 3:56 PM, Peter Kasting <pkasting at google.com>wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 2:59 PM, Ryosuke Niwa <rniwa at webkit.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Is it expected that overtype works on Windows or on Linux? e.g. If
>>> "Edit" and "RichEdit" window classes both support this feature natively on
>>> Windows (which I bet they do), then the answer is yes.
>>>
>>
>> The non-rich edit control on Windows (i.e. Notepad) does not support
>> overtype mode.  The rich edit control (Wordpad) does support it.  MS Word
>> also uses a rich edit control, and goes further by displaying an explicit
>> "normal vs. overtype" indicator in its UI.
>>
>
> I see. We already have a notion of editable vs. richly editable so we can
> enable this feature only inside a richly editable area.
>
> I'm not necessarily opposed to plumbing support for overtype mode, but I
>> suspect it may not make sense for all text input controls, e.g. single-line
>> controls; and even if we support it, we may want some mechanism to show the
>> user what mode they're in.
>>
>
> We should match whatever the platform norm is.
>

Well, that's the thing.  On Windows there isn't really a platform norm.
 Even a distinction like "editable versus richly editable" is not really a
user-level concept in Windows, it's more of an implementation distinction,
and there definitely is no obvious pattern for which applications or text
fields will support overtype mode, or whether there's some sort of visible
indicator of it.

PK
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