WordPress/gutenberg

RichText: registerFormatType should allow identification by style rule

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#15478 opened on May 7, 2019

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 (2 comments) (1 reaction) (0 assignees)JavaScript (9,607 stars) (3,893 forks)batch import
Good First IssueNeeds Dev[Package] Format library[Package] Rich text[Type] Enhancement

Description

It seems only one formatType at a time can register itself for controlling a bare span element.

It looks like something went wrong implementing this in Gutenberg. The format should have received a class (maybe underline). Registering bare tags is meant for semantic elements, not span elements. Perhaps we need to allow identifying formats by style rules as well, when we want to avoid setting a class and detect existing formats in the content. Switching now would exclude previously applied formatting.

https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/pull/32808#issuecomment-489971816

Currently formatting in the content is identified either by "bare" element name (e.g. strong) or by class (e.g. span.my-custom-format). This can be limiting in cases where you can ID formatting by a style property, so you can also ID formatting that existed before Gutenberg, or wasn't applied by your format type. E.g.: underline and color.

Rules when matching:

  • Should match the tagName first.
  • Should only have one CSS rule.
  • Should match the rule's property, and store that with the value as a format attribute.

In case of underline, the rule is text-decoration. It's just an implementation detail that we're always going to set it to underline. Someone could decide to re-register underline with some style options.

For this reason, I'd also rename core/underline to core/text-decoration.

For color the above matching also makes sense.

Seems like a good first issue to me for anyone wanting to start with rich text. Happy to review it.

Contributor guide

Tech stack
javascriptreacthtmlcss
Domain
frontend
Issue type
feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
1-3 hours
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
fresh
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
mostly clear
Prerequisites
JavaScriptReactHTML/CSSGutenberg RichText component
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
70
Research direction
Examine the current format registration logic in the RichText component, specifically how tagName and className are used to match formats. The issue describes a need to also match by a single CSS style rule (property as identifier, value as attribute). Review the linked PR (#32808) for context. Files to explore: packages/rich text/src/ and related tests. Implement style rule matching in the format detection logic, ensuring only one CSS rule is used per format. Rename core/underline to core/text decoration if appropriate.