Does any WYSIWYG exist at all for Drupal?

Not the usual which one is best, but does one exist at all.

Well...if the usual is asking what WYSIWYG editor is best doesn't that kinda mean that at least two of 'em exist?

http://drupal.org/project/widgeditor
http://drupal.org/project/fckeditor
http://drupal.org/project/htmlarea
http://drupal.org/project/tinymce
http://drupal.org/project/wymeditor

Hope this help:

http://www.standards-schmandards.com/2007/wysiwyg-editor-test-2/

Also, I don't think any WYSIWYG editor support PHP code.

It seems to me, although I might be wrong, that we are not seeing what each other means in this discussion. I think John (original poster) is saying that when you type into an editor it looks different from what will appear after you click "submit" and the page is viewed. So you can set some text to be H1, but that text will look different in the editor than it will when finally displayed. This is the difference between true WYSIWYG and "pretty" editors as he calls them.

So (again I think this is what he is saying) what he wants is the editor to use the CSS that will eventually be used when displaying the content.

What he is not disputing is that you can get many editors that can do bold, italic, H1, H2 etc.

I have only ever used TinyMCE so far. I agree that I get this problem with this editor, but it is quite possible that there are work-a-rounds that make it work "properly". I wish it would work as John is requesting, however I also find that most of my users can deal with the fact that it will come out a little differently when they see it in the final web page.

Hope this helps rather than clouds this discussion.

Chris

John,

I share your sentiments 100% - maybe it is because we are old school and we understand what WYSIWYG means and because we have actually written some C++ editors that DOES do it?

I have really studied TinyMCE and in my opinion it is not solid. As the main developer states it is xHTML complient, but it is not. It uses align statements to align tables etc etc.

I have looked at the other options, but it all boils down to the fact:

As far as I can see all GPL CMS's uses 3rd party editors and herein lies the imminent problem of integration.

I have found that Drupal devs shift the blame onto TinyMCE, e107 devs shift the blame onto TinyMCE, joomla devs shift the blame onto TinyMCE et al. The blame MUST lie on the shoulders of the devs - it is after all their overall package they are sending out into the world.

IMHO the golden rule remains: If you want to make use of third party software, make sure it complies with your standards and you understand how to integrate it into your software's framework. DO NOT rely on us as users to be your test bench!

Well, that said .... where can I find a decent WYSIWYG editor ???

John Bryan,

Let's me share my experiences in wysiwyg area. After hacking TinyMCE, openWYSIWYG and WYSIWYGnow editors than I found that only Drupal has seriously problem in editor sections. You never found this problem in Joomla. Why?

Because Joomla (and many CMSs) by default support an editor and this mean that they put a basic way how to provide an editor on their CMS way. On other side, Drupal supports for an editor is still premature. Drupal only supports an id for textarea that will be used for 3rd party editor.

What does this mean for developers? They are conflict of Drupal js, jQuery and the 3rd Party js. And, some of these js are redundant/duplicate. Your idea is great, but until the core dev of Drupal include an editor.

In short, Drupal architecture must provide a better way for wysiwyg editor by including a default editor. I think this will be a very2 long time because Drupal has no roadmap for this issue (where's Drupal roadmap?). As I remember, the core dev didn't like to provide a default editor because they want Drupal still simple (and small size). Another issue is Drupal rule, Drupal doesn't like to include any non GPL s/w (FYI: TinyMCE, FCKeditor, and openWYSIWYG is not GPL but they are LGPL!), I don't know if Drupal accepts LGPL or not (on Drupal handbooks only say: All code must be licensed under GNU/GPL).

Otherwise your idea will be a dream only. Better you speak to the core dev, maybe they already include this issue in next version, Drupal 6.

HTH

So to take WYSIWYG in the strict sense, what would the requirements be?
Perhaps make a list and arrange user voting on the importance of each item (within the context/focus of finding a spec that fits the "strict definition")?

That could be useful as a guideline and hopefully serve as temptation for developers.

Hmmm, lets see - from the top of my tiny head:
(not necessarily in prioritised order, nor a complete or "most important list", merely a quick brainstorm list to initiate some discussion on what such a list "should" include.)

• The text should be based on the site CSS and simply show the text that way, exactly as it will after saving the node.
• Simple way to insert images into the text (ok using existing/other contributed module), but the point is that it should imediately show up in the text exactly as it will after saving the node.
• A really working convenient way to select existing CSS-styles from a drop-down list. I havent seen that work "out of the box" in the exiting editors I have tried.)
• It should probably be possible to zoom in to enlarge the text for "editing convenience".
• Full-screen feature (also for editing convenience, still as true WYSIWYG, of course)
• The standard Preview button for the node post would only display the node with its categories etc., (content that other modules would affect), but the body text would not need preview.
• Possibility to get "backstage" to code view and back to WYSIWYG without needing "preview" button for that.
• Potentially make sure it can be used with interesting developments such as the Collaborative editor project: See http://drupal.org/project/collaborative_editor and http://groups.drupal.org/soc-collaborative-editor
• etc... (chime in, please)

I'm just throwing in my 0.02€ here but:

I have had the idea of a true Drupal WYSIWYG for some time. My plan is to hack/modify/write plugins for wymeditor. The latest version is even jQuery-based! If you haven't already, peek around a little with it feel for yourself. It feels really lightweight and have the potential to become really web 2.0-isch. Most exciting is however the code. Since it's rather new it's still clean and weel-thought IMO.

I'm not sure what I want to say with this post.

Ohh, and this site can be a little bit tricky to find, http://trac.wymeditor.org/trac

I wouldn't normally get involved in this - too much potential for a flame war here.

But

@John Bryan I simply have to say this. I'm a Drupal end-user i.e. I design / develop site with Drupal. I'm not particulalrly involved with the community here, though I am so with the Ubercart modules.

My first reaction when reading the thread was to "roll my eyes". I've taken a deep breath now.

So this contribution is positive, I'll give an overview of what I do to get TinyMCE working the way you want it - entriely with css.

• use the YUI reset and fonts and css files in your theme. Include them first in your list of css files. They simplify your css by removing all default browser styling, and force you to specify exactly how you want things to look.
• Structure you site's css to fully separate the major section positioning (i.e. layout of page, block positioning etc) from the styling of editable elements (h tags, p tags etc). I do this by using the example found with the zen theme of having a layout.css file for major layout, and a sep[arate dcss file that deals with "styling" stuff.
• any css rules referencing the "body" tag need a second rule referencing "body.mceContentBody" eg:

body, body.mceContentBody {background:#ffffff;font-size:m;}1em;}

• any css rules referencing your "main content area" tag need a second rule referencing "body.mceContentBody" eg:

div#maincontent blockquote, body.mceContentBody blockquote {
	font: italic 1.1em Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
	background: url("../images/quote-left.png") no-repeat left top;
	padding-top: 10px;
	padding-left:70px;}

• make tinymce use a defined css file for the editor. (use %h\%t\editor.css) in the css file path box - this will set the css path to the path of your current theme + css file editor.css.
• in editor.css use @import rules to include all css files except you layout.css - not necessary and often these rules introduce "funny" stuff into the editor window

et voila your problem is solved.

Ignore the actual css I used - it is only important to know that when TinyMCE is on it is in an iframe (i.e. acts as a standalone page) so you have to slightly refactor your css to reference this standalone page which has the class "mceContentBody" applied to is body tag.

Can I just say that whilst you request and enquiry are very much valid, your approach could have been improved so it solicited answers rather than flames.

My problem has been that I can't even get the available WYSIWYGs to even work in drupal 5.x. Both FCK and Tiny worked in 4.7.x (at least worked!) but neither work on 5.x.

While I have not yet fully tested this editor, it certainly appears to be able to display content through the sites stylesheet, making it truly WYSIWYG (as you explained was your requirement John). The one downside (and what will probably prevent a number of people from being able to use it on their site) is that you have to install it to your computer first. It seems more suited to websites with staff posted content, not community driven content.

It has a lite version for free here: http://xstandard.com/ (and a paid beefier version).

Some more interesting links (probably have to install it first):
http://xstandard.com/en/test-drive/lite/separating-content-from-formatting/
http://xstandard.com/en/test-drive/lite/semantic-markup/

Worth checking out anyway, might suit some of you out there.

It would greatly help this issue if people really tried to stop thinking like developers and instead see this issue from the perspective of 'Granny', 'Mr Grocer' and the 99.999% of the human race who know nothing about coding, do not want to build their own CMS, cannot afford to employ a coding expert, and just want Drupal to work as easily as Yahoo, Blogger or MS Word out of the box.

Many publishers (me included) choose open source CMSs because we cannot afford to hire web development experts. There are millions of small sites with only 1 or 2 authors, or church sites, or country club sites, etc etc, that have no IT staff. They (I) need a Drupal that out of the box allows the WYSIWYG editing capability we are used to when we type e-mails in Yahoo or compose letters in Word, or update our Blogger blogs. And we don't want to install it ourselves.

It's no more about pretty code. The buzzword these days is 'ease-of-use'. This is because the man on the street is sick of software that requires an IT degree to install and use. The commercial guys are falling all over themselves to sell their products as being easy to use 'without HTML knowledge'. Alas, the open source guys still sneer at users who want things easier: 'Install XYZ', 'Configure ABC', blah blah blah. Easy for YOU to say- I can't tell a CSS from a pink elephant.

I moved from Joomla because it didn't have comments and a forum at core. I was excited to see Drupal had these, and was faster than Joomla. Now I find that the image uploading in Drupal is atrocious, and it has no WYSIWYG rich text editor. These are the 2 most complained-about features in Drupal, and for many potential users, it's a make or break issue.

If the expert developers would just fix these two elephants in the room, instead of continually being defensive and putting up technical arguments, Drupal would be the best CMS in the world. If Joomla, Movable Type, Blogger, Open CMS, Wordpress, etc all have at least rudimentary WYSIWYG RTEs, there is no excuse for Drupal not having one- except just human stubbornness.

Joomla used to have a horrendous image upload function. It's just been fixed in the latest version. These things can be solved. It may be a big task or it may not- I don't know, I'm not a geek, I'm an accountant who publishes as a hobby. But whether it takes a week of coding or a year, until it is done, Drupal is just not accessible to the ordinary user who doesn't have a web developer on payroll- and I thought they're the ones who matter most.

I mean, how riduculous is this: at the bottom of this comment box is a link saying 'More information about formatting options'. Clicking it takes you to the HTML manual I have copied and pasted below, which tells you how to format your comments- using code. Obviously, the Drupal developers know that people need to format text when making comments. But instead of this long manual which is hieroglyhpics to the non-geek, is it not easier to just have a rich text editor? Why would non-IT people want to learn HTML when they're used to doing without it on Word and Yahoo?

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I think that a simple, integrated WYSIWYG solution like the one for Wordpress could be good.
I think that the TinyMCE module in drupal need to be cleaned and to be simplified.
I would like to see TinyMCE (or FCKEditor or some other) working out of the box in Drupal6, for all browsers and O.S. .

Is there are WYSIWYG editor that's v6 compatible?

Hi,

I jump on this topic after reading this long thread here
I am just evaluating a lot of CMSs to find the one which fits the demands for a project
I know Joomla, I checked Redaxo, Etomite, Contenido, Typolight and others

and everywhere the situation is nearly the same:

text must be entered
entered text must be formatted
images must be uploaded and integrated

I expect to have more than a one-liner-textinputfield or a naked textarea

Drupal looks nice, comes with templates, but lets you alone when you need to enter text (what is the main topic of this system)

and not only with Drupal, but here as well: you then dive into forum searches, find hints, tips, edit configuration files, mix different versions, and so on ... this is a nightmare and frustrates a lot

if there should be hooks, an integrated feature, a core plugin ... this is not the point.

The point is that all users need editors and not naked input fields.

Brian, I think you are right and express my needs (even when I do not need to have so much CSS-template-compliancy...)

Even young users do not know <b> or <strong>... how many support calls you have because users don't know how to get some bold or italic text?

Please, all the people out there:
try to understand the need for an editor and for clear instructions how to get them working!

There's a new module, NicEdit, not quite ready for prime time but I like the idea behind it -- it doesn't rely on a 3rd party editor and is really just AJAX. I'm not sure about whether its WYSIWYG capabilities will be up to snuff as picking up the current design (I doubt it), and I'm positive its extended functionalities (like paste-from-word, drag/drop upload, etc) are quite limited, but for some primary stuff, for bold, indent, etc., it seems like a light-weight AJAX editor is appropriate. If I currently making a site that was primarily forum-based, with lots of user input, I would want an editor like NicEdit, easy to understand, easy on the load.