Why form textarea doesn't parse WikiWords?

Form textarea doesn't parse WikiWords entered into it.

Normal text fields work correctly.

Is it a bug? Or a feature?

-- DanielKownacki

I'm not sure, so I created a task for it at Tasks.Item8461.

Might just need to be documented.

-- AndrewJones - 03 Feb 2010

That is how it has to work.

If we started rendering wikiwords in textarea then it would mean that every wiki application we have in which we have some default text would have wikiwords rendered as HTML links.

And being a part of an html form we would be submitting this HTML.

Naturally we could use a HTML to TML conversion when we save but that would be horrorble.

I cannot imagine the number of applications we would break. Even here no foswiki.org we take advantage of the text area being not rendered as HTML in several places. We use it in ApacheConfigGenerator. And we use it in the application I use for release notes. And I have plenty of places in my production Foswikis where we take advantage of text areas as input fields with default text. It would all be broken.

The guy says it works in text fields. If we do I would call it a bug.

Let us try. First with a wikiword

Then with same wikiword escaped.

Yes. I believe we have a bug here. But before fixing we better make sure this is not something someone else is taking advantage of. Looking at how it works here it does not work well at all. The input field is broken by the html.

If we fix the rendering we may break things for those that have put a lot of !-marks to escape the rendering. If we suddenly stop rendering these !-marks will become visible.

I would not know where to document the text area behavior. I cannot see where people would find this documentation in practical use.

-- KennethLavrsen - 04 Feb 2010

Big Kudos for explanation Kenneth, especially for such obscure feature.

Regards!

-- DanielKownacki - 04 Feb 2010