Migrate to beforeInput

[Reinmar]

📝 Provide a description of the improvement

AFAICT https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=970802 and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1449831 landed in Firefox 76. That means that we can replace the current mutation-based typing handling with beforeInput 🎉.

It'd probably be good to keep the mutation handler for environments that do not support beforeInput yet, even if we don't officially support them (probably older versions of FF or Safari). On all environments that support beforeInput we should use it, though.

The goal is to use beforeInput to handle:

• typing (all types of it, including IME and autocorrect)
• spellchecking
• enter
• delete

As next steps we can also consider using it as an additional trigger for:

• inline formatting: bold, italic, etc.,
• and perhaps more

Some additional issues that might get fixed with it:

• Crash when undoing typing (model-nodelist-offset-out-of-bounds) #7903 - Crash when undoing typing (model-nodelist-offset-out-of-bounds)
• Exception thrown when undoing link with a non-collapsed selection #8052 - Exception thrown when undoing link with a non-collapsed selection

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• Implement the beforeInput support detection #7995 – Implement the beforeInput support detection
• Improve InputObserver so the event passes and normalizes additional information #7996 – Improve InputObserver so the event passes and normalizes additional information
• Migrate the Input plugin to the beforeInput event #7997 – Migrate the Input plugin to the beforeInput event
• Migrate the Delete plugin to the beforeInput event #7998 – Migrate the Delete plugin to the beforeInput event
• Migrate the Enter and ShiftEnter plugins to beforeInput #7999 – Migrate the Enter and ShiftEnter plugins to beforeInput
• Use format* beforeInput types across the features #8000 – Use format* beforeInput types across the features
• Use insert* beforeInput types across the features (list, horizontal line, etc.) #8001 – Use insert* beforeInput types across the features (list, horizontal line, etc.)
• Test and stabilize composition (IME) using beforeInput on desktop browsers (Mac) #8008 – Test and stabilize composition (IME) using beforeInput on desktop browsers (Mac)
• Test and stabilize composition (IME) using beforeInput on desktop browsers (Windows) #8009 – Test and stabilize composition (IME) using beforeInput on desktop browsers (Windows)
• Test and stabilize composition (IME) using beforeInput on desktop browsers (Linux) #8010 – Test and stabilize composition (IME) using beforeInput on desktop browsers (Linux)
• Test and stabilize composition (IME) using beforeInput on Android #8011 – Test and stabilize composition (IME) using beforeInput on Android
• Test and stabilize composition (IME) using beforeInput on iOS #8012 – Test and stabilize composition (IME) using beforeInput on iOS
• Test and stabilize beforeInput in Collaboration Features #8013 – Test and stabilize beforeInput in Cloud Features

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If you'd like to see this improvement implemented, add a 👍 reaction to this post.

[oleq]

Order of things:

1. In the beginning, we're merging into a feature branch (i/7462-beforeinput-wip).
2. Then we merge the feature branch to master but the feature is disabled by default (see Implement the beforeInput support detection #7995).
3. Then we merge issues to master.
4. Then we pray.

[oleq]

FYI: Firefox supports beforeinput since v87 (Mar 2021). The current version is v93. This will dramatically simplify our codebase.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Releases/87

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLElement/beforeinput_event#browser_compatibility

[keng0o]

hi, any progress here?

[keng0o]

The same problem is occurring in Japanese.
What is the current situation?

[vdfor]

hi, any progress here?

[Reinmar]

There's been a lot of work put in this ticket in the past, but then we had to stop for about 1 year. 

The good news is that we restarted the work 🎉 . However, we continue in a new ticket to have a clearer picture of where we are because a lot of things happened in the meantime.

The new ticket is #11438 and I'm closing this one.