New attribute to control UA-provided writing assistance

[sanketj]

こんにちは TAG-さん!

I'm requesting a TAG review of a new attribute named writingsuggestions (final name TBD) to control UA-provided writing assistance.

UAs are starting to provide writing suggestions to users as they type on various editable fields across the web (see the use case section below). While this is generally useful for users, there are cases when developers may want to turn off UA-provided writing assistance, such as extensions or sites that wish to provide similar functionality on their own.

We propose the addition of a new attribute called writingsuggestions with values on/off that would allow developers to turn on/off browser-provided writing suggestions. This attribute will have a default state per element, as established by the UA. The attribute's state for an element can also be inherited from ancestor elements, thereby allowing developers to control this functionality at a per-element or per-document/sub-document scale.

• Explainer¹ (minimally containing user needs and example code): https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdgeExplainers/blob/main/WritingSuggestions/explainer.md
• Specification URL: https://github.com/whatwg/html/pull/10018
• Tests: https://github.com/web-platform-tests/wpt/pull/43780
• User research: https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdgeExplainers/blob/main/WritingSuggestions/explainer.md#use-case
• Security and Privacy self-review²: https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdgeExplainers/pull/727/files
• GitHub repo (if you prefer feedback filed there): Feedback can be filed in the WHATWG HTML repo.
• Primary contacts (and their relationship to the specification):
  • [Sanket Joshi] (sanketj), [Microsoft]
• Organization(s)/project(s) driving the specification: Microsoft
• Key pieces of existing multi-stakeholder review or discussion of this specification: Spec discussion: https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/9065 (support from multiple implementors and no objections)
• External status/issue trackers for this specification (publicly visible, e.g. Chrome Status): Not yet available.

Further details:

• [X] I have reviewed the TAG's Web Platform Design Principles
• Relevant time constraints or deadlines: We hope to implement and ship this ASAP, so the sooner we can hear back from the TAG, the better.
• The group where the work on this specification is currently being done: WHATWG HTML
• The group where standardization of this work is intended to be done (if current group is a community group or other incubation venue): WHATWG HTML
• Major unresolved issues with or opposition to this specification: Final name of the attribute is still TBD
• This work is being funded by: Microsoft

We'd prefer the TAG provide feedback as (please delete all but the desired option):

💬 leave review feedback as a comment in this issue and @-notify sanketj

[hober]

Hi @sanketj!

@matatk, @rhiaro, and I took a look at this during a breakout at the TAG F2F today, and we're overall supportive of where you've ended up with the proposal. Have you run this by the i18n folk? We suspect they'll have relevant thoughts.

Thanks for bringing this to us. Please don't hesitate to ask us to take another look should things substantively change.

Incidentally, we asked Google Bard to draft a supportive closing comment for us and here's what it came up with:

Strong support for writingsuggestions! Granular control & user/developer focus are excellent. Looking forward to implementation! @sanketj

[sanketj]

Hi @sanketj!

@matatk, @rhiaro, and I took a look at this during a breakout at the TAG F2F today, and we're overall supportive of where you've ended up with the proposal. Have you run this by the i18n folk? We suspect they'll have relevant thoughts.

Thanks for bringing this to us. Please don't hesitate to ask us to take another look should things substantively change.

Incidentally, we asked Google Bard to draft a supportive closing comment for us and here's what it came up with:

Strong support for writingsuggestions! Granular control & user/developer focus are excellent. Looking forward to implementation! @sanketj

Thanks @hober!

RE i18n: Were there any specific aspects you were concerned about?