Oh hey, this looks a lot like something I was working on. https://github.com/nickretallack/richer https://github.com/nickretallack/richer React makes it easy

Oh hey, this looks a lot like something I was working on. https://github.com/nickretallack/richer https://github.com/nickretallack/richer React makes it easy to do a stateless transformation from your data model to some output, so you can model things the way you want to: as a series of overlays onto the text. My project uses the Google Drive Realtime API as its data model, so you can collaborate on the text too. Or use the in-memory version to edit alone. I never finished this thing. Was hoping to use it on a project at work, but got shot down. Emulating cursor movements without a text area was the fiddliest part. But I got pretty far into it as a proof of concept at least. I was impressed at how fast it was despite being a JavaScript emulation of content editable.