[development] Status update: WYSIWYG support in Drupal core

[Chris Johnson]

On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 3:54 AM, Arancaytar Ilyaran
<arancaytar.ilyaran at gmail.com> wrote:
> Damien Tournoud wrote:
>> - It is doubtful that a WYSIWYG editor improve usability
>
> Hear, hear.
>
> BBCode and Markdown isn't hard to get into, and it's used on all forums
> I've ever seen.


I've got my own little rant here.

Folks who say WYSIWYG editors do not improve usability are myopic
programmers who I never want determining the specifications for
projects I work on for my customers.  Every customer we have demands
WYSIWYG as part of their deliverable -- and for good reason.  A lot of
their end users are barely capable of using email.  Expecting them to
learn Markdown or something similar is insane.

A lot of the time, my customers also expect to do things like
copy/paste from MS Word documents and have it "just work" as far as
formatting goes.  Making that work is even uglier and less reliable
than straight-up WYSIWYG.

However, it doesn't matter what we as developers think about the
crappy state of WYSIWYG editors and the impossibility of pasting
horrible Word formatting.  Our job is to make computer software work
better and more easily for the end users, not to force end users to
adapt to cryptic computer limitations.

End of rant.

Yup, all of the WYSIWYG editors out there have some sort of limitation
or another.  That's a technical challenge.  Can we solve it?  Or do we
throw up our hands and give up?

..chris