I don't think this is a very specific task. As you've seen in the post, other people have similar requirements (text editor, selection retrieval, etc.) and similar desire for keeping `innerText`.
> Pulling large chunks of plain text as a string to process for any low latency tasks constrains the size of text you can reasonably work with. JS strings are immutable as well, that's a lot of copying.
Pulling large chunks of plain text — that's a plausible argument, but no different than pulling, say, `innerHTML` (large chunk) or `textContent` (large chunk) or really anything else in JS land (which if often full of strings — JSON, templates, whatever).
> Another issue is this whole handling of converting lists and tables to some kind of plain text markup. Is that a two translation? Are tabs going to turn into table elements if I have them in a string and set innerText? That seems pretty crazy, but not doing so would just make it very weirdly asymmetrical.
That's a very good point! But don't forget that we already have a standard way of setting element contents from plain text — `textContent`. Yes, innerText setting would have to be assymetrical; I doubt anyone would want to go down the rabbit hole of backwards conversion. Everyone usually agrees that when it comes to setting, `innerText` should simply act like `textContent` (to quote spec: "on setting, no parsing is performed either, the input string is taken as pure textual content.")
> How much horribly slower do you want the DOM to be? Well, as app devs, we still need to implement plain text retrieval. By not having it natively in Mozilla, the joke is really on the users — more strings (in JS land), more DOM iteration, more everything. How is that for a "slow DOM"? ;)