Gordon Smith recently responded to a TextArea HTML text issue and he stated:
"Adobe is developing a new Text Layout Framework (TLF) which works with the new Flash Text Engine (FTE) APIs in Player 10. (It will be used in Flex 4.) TLF will not support all of HTML, but it will be more capable than TextField's htmlText." I don't know what features are slated for TLF, but I'd like to put in a plug for some features that I desparately need in my work at customizing a TextArea/TextField component. 1) Better support for filtering keystrokes. We should have the ability to filter (call event.preventDefault() or equivalent) in the keyDownHandler() function. This allows to avoid the stupid hack of working around DELETE, BACKSPACE and keyboard navigation keys not being cancelable. 2) More control over copy/paste to clipboard. I recently posted an issue where if you set the htmlText property, copy to the clipboard loses all line breaks (unless I explicitly use <br/>). Ideally, there'd be an event or protected overridable function that indicates we're trying to do a copy/paste. 3) Ability to represent custom HTML tags or custom HTML attributes in a standard tag. I tried to store some metadata inside a <FONT> tag using a custom attribute, but I found that when I set the htmlText, and then examined the htmlText property after the set, the whole markup had been altered and "normalized", losing my custom attributes. It would be nice if this normalization did not occur. 4) Better support for caret to coordinates functions. There is a getCharBoundaries() function, but that returns a rectangle in virtual coordinates that does not account for the scroll positions. Adjusting for the horizontal scroll position is fairly easy because that is measured in pixels, but the vertical scroll position is measured in lines and calculating the correct viewport position is non-trivial and expensive (there are some posts on how to do this). Not to mention the fact that getCharBoundaries() returns null if the char is at EOL or in an empty line. This support is incomplete. Just adding a function like getCoordinatesAtCharIndex(charIndex:int):Point would help, or something similar to that. 5) A function get get the caret Index within the htmlText would also be useful, or more generally, getCharIndexInHtmlText (charIndex:int):int where charIndex is the character index in the raw text property. Thanks for your attention, Pete
