Add field setting "Do not restrict maxlength on writing"

I was also looking for this functionality, (something similar to what happens when composing Tweets, where the counter will simply go to negative numbers when crossing the treshold, which basically allows you to first do a braindump, and then later edit to fit in the limits). However, I expected the setting "Force text truncate" ("Check this option if you want that the html (or the text) that the user inserts into the field to be truncated.") to do this.

From the code, it seems to do something quite similar to this; for items with a maxlength attribute (text inputs, presumably), it removes this attribute, causing the browser to stop enforcing the limit (correct me if I am wrong). Instead, it moves the validation to a validation hook, so that the limit is "soft enforced", i.e. only once you attempt to submit the value you get a validation error, instead of the browser stopping you to enter too many characters in the first place. However, I have a textarea field and on this, it doesn't seem to do anything (which kind of makes sense if the above is the only thing it does; textareas do not have a maxlength attribute).

Does it make sense to have this setting "double" as the switch for getting the functionality we are looking for here, since that effectively is for textareas what this already does for text inputs? Or am I missing something?

I agree that the "Force text truncate" option (unchecked) should provide this functionality - and it does in some cases. The issue is that the maxlength="" attribute is being used and in most browsers this will prevent the user from entering anything beyond the limit before it gets to this module's JavaScript. I'm attaching a patch which uses a data-maxlength="" attribute instead which causes the "Force text truncate" option to work as intended.

Re-roll for latest dev (9bbeb4b49ad624e38cd68e0d11514456b73ab080)

I feel this option is very important.
Any chance of this being re-rolled for 8.x?
Much appreciated!

Patch #5¸ breaks the module for normal text fields (screenshots below).

The screenshots are from a basic add content form (adding a new article which has 2 additional fields: text field and text area).

Before patch:

After patch:

@WiredEscape this is already an option in the D8 version. Simply don't check "Force truncate" in the widget settings.

I think I may have misspoken earlier. The feature works... but I don't believe it's intentional. Here's a patch to resolve on 8.x first.

Fixing PHP notices.

It'd help if I actually made the correct patch...

I didn't find this issue until after I'd done more or less the same thing ... I added the option for a 'soft limit' number field, and '@softlimit' & '@softremaining' tokens for the label.

In terms of UX it may be a little overkill ... but FWIW here's the patch.

Patch from #13 better for me. It more simple than #15 and more easy to review, test and commit.

Maybe we can finish #13 patch than create followup issue for #15?

What we actually need to complete work on #13 ?

#13 is working great for me - I vote that it gets committed.

-mike

Reroll #13 patch.

See #2916687: Soft limit does not work on plain text fields because the Maxlength HTML attribute is used