I'm posting this here because it was the best place I found to get CKEditor devs' attention. If it would be better placed elsewhere, please let me know.
I'm currently contracted by Google to write a specification for contenteditable, execCommand(), and related features. The goals are
- Allow rich-text editing libraries in HTML with few or no browser-specific workarounds.
- Make it as easy as possible to write a basic rich-text editor from scratch, by making all basic functionality available in the browser.
- Make it as easy as possible to write a sophisticated, complex rich-text editor, by making tools and building blocks available in the browser that help keep code size and complexity down.
I've currently written up in precise detail how most of the execCommand() commands should work, and also how some user actions like Enter/Backspace/etc. should work. Ehsan Akhgari of Mozilla and Ryosuke Niwa of Google are both on board with gradually converging on the specification so that Gecko and WebKit begin to behave the same, and IE will presumably follow at some point.
Probably nobody here wants to try reading the actual spec, since it's extremely long and technical (although it's here if you want). But I'd be very interested in hearing what the biggest problems are with how contenteditable/execCommand()/etc. work today, and what the top features are that HTML rich-text editor developers want. As far as I've heard so far, the number one request is consistency between browsers, and the number two request is extensibility. If anyone would like to fill me in on more details of what you need, I'd love to hear them.