Why do template refs have different behavior depending on applied element?

[senyaak]

So, I make some nasty things with tanstack :) For one case I need to get the ref as Element but since the element I use it on is a component - I always get the component instance. To get the Element ref I have to expose it from the component.
And this implementation seems to be very weird to me. Why do the both component ref and element ref are handled like the same. Shoudn't there be ref for components and refElm for Element? Were there already a discussion about it? I would like to understand why it is implemented like it is :)
Thank you for reading :)

[sadeghbarati]

• Add forwardRef API to make it possible let component handle ref itself rfcs#258 (comment)