NPAPI:CocoaCompositionClarification

Status

Under consideration.

Contributors

• Last modified: November 16, 2010
• Authors: Josh Aas (Mozilla)
• Contributors: Stuart Morgan (Google)

Overview

This proposal modifies the existing Cocoa NPAPI specification (NPAPI:CocoaEventModel). After a plugin returns "kNPEventStartIME" for a "NPCocoaEventKeyDown" event the plugin has no way of knowing that it should start handling key events again if IME input is canceled by the browser and no "NPCocoaEventTextInput" is sent.

Specification Change

In order to provide the plugin with information about whether or not there is a complex text composition in progress we will bump the 'NPCocoaEvent' version to '2'. If a plugin receives an 'NPCocoaEvent' with a version of '2' or higher then the key structure will contain a field of type 'NPBool' called 'compositionInProgress'. This will be set to false when no composition is in progress and true when a composition is in progress.

When 'compositionInProgress' there is not necessarily an input method window open. For example, consider the last key press for a composition which is typically the "enter" key. The sequence of events resulting from that physical key press might be:

1. Input method window closes. 2. Plugin receives 'NPCocoaEventKeyDown' event for enter key with 'compositionInProgress' set to true. 3. Plugin receives 'NPCocoaEventTextInput' for completed composition. 4. Plugin receives 'NPCocoaEventKeyUp' event for enter key with 'compositionInProgress' set to false.

Another situation might be one in which returning "kNPEventStartIME" for a 'NPCocoaEventKeyDown' event does not open an input method window. In this case the sequence of events would look like:

1. Plugin receives 'NPCocoaEventKeyDown' event for 'g' key with 'compositionInProgress' set to true. 2. Plugin receives 'NPCocoaEventTextInput' for completed composition, the string "g".