[development] WYSIWYG editors considered harmful for site admins (and in general, but that's a separate thread)

[Gabor Hojtsy]

Greg Knaddison - GVS wrote:
> I'm thinking about going through all the WYSIWYG editors and adding a
> critical issue that they disable themselves on all textareas in the
> admin/* url-space.
> 
> I post this here because I want to
> 
> 1) get some collective ideas on brainstorming
> 2) warn other users from using WYSIWYG editors on admin/ pages
> 3) alert module maintainers that if your settings page has a textarea
> input you should be aware of this as a possible cause of problems

Greg, the site mission statement, footer and other settings definitely 
need a textarea for easier editing for newbies. Turning off wysiwyg on 
all admin/* is IMHO not an option. Maybe we can add FAPI hints on 
textareas (a new FAPI property of a textarea) to allow wysiwg editing, 
and label such 'frontend' content with this propery. Or the other way 
around, label disallowed textareas, where a visual editor should not be 
used. Then this can be generated into the HTML, and editors should obey.

Gabor