Operations are the granular, low-level actions that occur while invoking transforms. A single transform could result in many low-level operations being applied to the editor.
Slate's core defines all of the possible operations that can occur on a richtext document. For example:
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editor.apply({
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type:'insert_text',
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path:[0,0],
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offset:15,
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text:'A new string of text to be inserted.',
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})
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​
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editor.apply({
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type:'remove_node',
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path:[0,0],
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node:{
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text:'A line of text!',
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},
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})
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​
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editor.apply({
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type:'set_selection',
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properties:{
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anchor:{path:[0,0],offset:0},
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},
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newProperties:{
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anchor:{path:[0,0],offset:15},
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},
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})
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Under the covers Slate converts complex transforms into the low-level operations and applies them to the editor automatically. So you rarely have to think about operations unless you're implementing collaborative editing.
🤖 Slate's editing behaviors being defined as operations is what makes things like collaborative editing possible, because each change is easily define-able, apply-able, compose-able and even undo-able!