[pmwiki-users] WYSIWYG editor

kirpi at kirpi.it kirpi at kirpi.it
Fri Feb 23 14:47:47 CST 2007


> why would wikis have reservations
> about having one as part of the package?

Be that TinyMCE, Xinha, FCKEditor or whatever, they are nice and
useful tools, at times.
But, as far as I know, their "buttons" help people insert html tags
into the textarea; while we want to write *wiki* tags.
We want a (normal) wiki page to be made by text and wiki commands: not html.

This is (maybe) one of the reason not to have those WYSIWYG editors at
work on a wiki.

The GUI buttons that you find in place when you edit a page in pmwiki
(and other wikis) do already a good job in helping people insert the
right wiki tag.
Then you just press the "preview" button, and have the page rendered.
Why bothering more?

Also, the very way the page is rendered is influenced by many factors,
not just a few tags. Offering a "quick" preview the way most WYSIWYG
editors do might be deceiving, while offering a full preview on the
flight might be a heavy load and a waste of resources: again, just
press the "preview" button, and have the page rendered.

Other people, with more fluent English and better technical knowledge,
will explain the whole thing better than I do now.
Anyway, I feel that a WYSIWYG editor is not of much use for wikis, at
the moment.

Maybe some more buttons in the GUI would do, but nothing more.

Luigi



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