⛹️ 🤾🏾 🕧 JavaScript: get input text position (in characters) using mouse

with random existing text, say [12...">
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  <section class="page js-page"><div itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/QAPage" class="page"><div class="main-col" itemprop="mainEntity" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Question"><div class="question-header"><h1 itemprop="name">  JavaScript: get input text position (in characters) with the mouse </h1></div><div class="question"><div class="question-row"><div class="question-text"><div class="description" itemprop="text"><p> I have HTML <code><input type="text"></code> or <code><textarea></code> with random existing text, say [12345678] or [12345 <br>  67890] <br>  There is an occasional mouse click in this text.  I need to convert the 2D coordinates of mouse clicks to 1D character-based text coordinates in order to correctly position the JS carriage.  Obviously, the browser has a function that does this conversion internally;  it would be great to call it.  The input has a standard font of variable width and can be at any zoom level.  The browser is limited to FireFox.  We have jQuery and JCursor. </p><p>  Background: the input field is dynamically generated inside deeply nested blocks, each of which has a gross overload.  The combination of legacy code with the latest FF implementation somehow steals reproduction / focus between time and time delays when it gets into the default action for the default browser, which doesn't happen.  I need to adjust the carriage. </p></div><div class="favorite hidden"><i class="far fa-star"></i></div><div class="votes-question"><i class="glyphicon glyphicon-arrow-ups"></i><div class="vote-count greenc" itemprop="upvoteCount">  +4 </div><i class="glyphicon glyphicon-arrow-down"></i></div><div class="tags">  <a href="https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ru&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=" class="tag" title="show questions tagged with 'javascript'" rel="tag">javascript</a> <a href="https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ru&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=" class="tag" title="show questions tagged with 'input'" rel="tag">input</a> <a href="https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ru&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=" class="tag" title="show questions tagged with 'text'" rel="tag">text</a> <a href="https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ru&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=" class="tag" title="show questions tagged with 'cursor'" rel="tag">cursor</a> <a href="https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ru&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=" class="tag" title="show questions tagged with 'caret'" rel="tag">caret</a> </div><div class="clearfix"></div><div class="action-time">  <span itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><span itemprop="name"><a href="https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ru&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Dragonlord</a></span></span> <time title="2013-01-08 02:08" itemprop="dateCreated" datetime="2013-01-08T02:08:06+0000">  Jan 08  '13 at 2:08 </time></div>  <a class="aa-link" href="https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ru&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=" target="_blank" rel="noopener">source</a> <a class="s-link" href="https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ru&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=" title="share">share</a> <div class="clearfix"></div></div></div></div><ins style="height: 90px;display: block;" data-zxname="zx-adnet" data-zxadslot="ZX-QRST" data-zxw="0" data-zxh="90" data-zxid="2" data-overlay="false"></ins><div class="answers " id="answers_hash"><div class="answers-header">  <span class="pull-left"><span itemprop="answerCount">1</span> answer</span> <div class="clearfix"></div></div><div class="answer-pager hidden"></div><div class="answer last rltd" id="4481357_hash" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Answer" itemprop="suggestedAnswer"><div class="answer-row"><div class="answer-text"><div class="desc" itemprop="text"><p>  A workaround for this example is to use the Level 2 StopPropagation () call in the event, returning true (continue to propagate) for the onmousedown level 0 handler.  This circumvents further Level 2 challenges when sparging [into obsolete parent code], while maintaining that the actual default actions [carriage placement] do occur after the bubbling phase.  However, it still does not answer the original question that other applications have. </p></div><div class="votes-answer"><i class="glyphicon glyphicon-arrow-ups"></i><div class="vote-count " itemprop="upvoteCount">  0 </div><i class="glyphicon glyphicon-arrow-down"></i></div><div class="clearfix"></div><div class="action-time">  <span itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><span itemprop="name"><a href="https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ru&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Dragonlord</a></span></span> <time title="2013-01-09 03:18" itemprop="dateCreated" datetime="2013-01-09T03:18:15+0000">  Jan 9  '13 at 3:18 </time></div>  <a class="aa-link" href="https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ru&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=" target="_blank" rel="noopener">source</a> <a itemprop="url" class="s-link" href="https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ru&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=" title="share">share</a> <div class="clearfix"></div></div></div></div><ins style="height: 90px;display: block;margin-top: 15px;" data-zxname="zx-adnet" data-zxadslot="ZX-QRST" data-zxw="0" data-zxh="90" data-zxid="3" data-overlay="false"></ins><div class="answer-pager hidden"></div></div></div></div>
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