All browsers: Add ability to cancel character composition (IME) at the very beginning
Open
Nobody has claimed this yet.
TPAC2025
- Dominant language
- HTML
- Stars
- 202
- Forks
- 43
- PR merge metrics
- No merged PRs in 30d
Description
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/0ba63f65-96a9-4c8c-b080-d30e77d37052
Why is this a problem?
- My editor (and possible a lot of other editors/apps) have no way to prevent unintended DOM changes when the user presses a dead key when a contenteditable has a focus
- Particularly in reactive frameworks this is a problem, because React/Svelte and co, assume that all state changes happen on the component source data, and then propagate to the DOM, instead of the DOM being manipulated directly (without the framework noticing)
I don't see a reason why you shouldn't be able to cancel all inputs onbeforeinput, even those that would start a character composition workflow?
Could Blink/Webkit/Gecko & others change this behavior?
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by reviewing the issue description and its attached reproduction, focusing on beforeinput, contenteditable, dead keys, and character-composition behavior across browsers. Done would mean a resolved specification or browser-behavior change that allows the proposed cancellation at the beginning of composition without unintended DOM changes.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- html
- Domain
- frontend, web-dev
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 30/100