When cut content with `ctrl + x` there is problem with tables

[shiz-ceo]

Problem

When the user wants to cut the content and the starting point is a table, a small bug occurs: the table is not completely deleted, only one cell remains. As I understand it, this is related to deleteSelection.

if (cut) view.dispatch(view.state.tr.deleteSelection().scrollIntoView().setMeta("uiEvent", "cut"))

If we select not only the table, but also, for example, the text from below, then we set the default TextSelection.

Screen.Recording.2025-08-09.133149.mp4

If we select only the table, everything works well, the content disappears, but the table remains, because CellSelection comes into play.

Screen.Recording.2025-08-09.134233.mp4

It all lies in how the replace method works for TextSelection and CellSelection, to be honest, I do not know how to fix this behavior. Alternatively, you can check for a table, but this method is not universal for other cases (with the same nested structure as a table or for other wrappers of the Selection class).

Other behaviors

• Google docs

Screen.Recording.2025-08-09.135008.mp4

• MS Word

Screen.Recording.2025-08-09.135139.mp4

[ocavue]

Thank you for your detailed report!

This issue happens not only with Ctrl-X but also with other replacement actions, such as using Backspace to delete selected content or pressing Ctrl-V to paste something over the selected content.

When I start selecting text outside the table and then move the mouse into the table, I notice some different behaviors:

⬇️ In ProseMirror, every position is treated as a unit. You can choose an ambiguous head selection point inside the table. This leads to strange behavior when I press Backspace. You’ll see that the table dimensions change, and 66 moves out of the table.

CleanShot.2025-08-10.at.10.43.56.mp4

⬇️ In MS Word, each row is treated as a unit. You can select the entire row. In the demo below, pressing Backspace will delete the first row while keeping the second row intact.

CleanShot.2025-08-10.at.10.45.24.mp4

⬇️ In Google Docs, the entire table is considered a unit. You can either select the whole table or not. Therefore, pressing Backspace will either delete the entire table or leave it as is.

CleanShot.2025-08-10.at.10.47.00.mp4

I believe Google Docs' behavior is quite effective and relatively easy to implement since we don’t have to worry about merged cells within a table. To implement this, we would need to add new logic in normalizeSelection, which will be called inside the appendTransaction method. If the selection originates from outside a table, the logic would update the selection to either include the entire table or exclude it entirely.

[shiz-ceo]

Thank you very much for a clear answer explaining why this is happening. Everything is very detailed!

I think so. The behavior reflected in the Google Doc is the best. Will this solution work for ctrl + a, or can it be set manually from the beginning to the end of the document using setSelection?