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V2 text string primitives should own the DOM text boundary

docs/solutions/logic-errors/2026-04-04-v2-text-string-primitives-should-own-the-dom-text-boundary.md

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V2 text string primitives should own the DOM text boundary

What happened

After the zero-width policy was split and proved in Chromium, the v2 proof surfaces were still hand-rolling ordinary text leaves with raw <span data-slate-string> markup.

That is the same low-level seam legacy Slate already treats specially.

Leaving it ad hoc in every proof surface would have been lazy and brittle.

What fixed it

slate-react-v2 now owns a reusable TextString primitive:

It follows the same real boundary as legacy Slate:

  • render a stable <span data-slate-string>
  • keep the initial text as the React child
  • repair actual DOM textContent in a layout effect when it drifts

The proof surfaces and matrix routes now consume that primitive instead of hand-rolled text spans.

Why this works

For editable text, the DOM is not a passive output target.

Native typing, composition, spellcheck, and selection can all mutate the text node outside React’s normal one-way expectations. If the renderer surface leaves each caller to improvise a text span, it has no single place to correct stale DOM text or protect the actual text-node boundary.

Owning that boundary in one primitive is the first real v2 text-renderer seam.

Reusable rule

For slate-react-v2 renderer/input work:

  • zero-width policy belongs in a shared ZeroWidthString
  • ordinary text-node rendering belongs in a shared TextString
  • proof surfaces should consume those primitives instead of restating the DOM contract by hand

If a renderer/input seam is already repeated in multiple proof surfaces, it is past due to become a package primitive.