By Dubber Dan on

I've been using Drupal for a couple of yrs now and so far my sites have all been managed by me, and there hasn't been a need for users to be able to add content. As my skills are progressing and I'm looking to take on bigger and more complex sites, the ability for end-users to add/change content is cropping up.

I know there are various modules that allow different WYSIWYG implementations, but I've always wondered why Drupal doesn't have this built in as standard, especially as we've now reached version 6. Let's face it WordPress and most bulletin boards have it out-of-the-box, so why hasn't is been implemented for Drupal?

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

vm’s picture

vm commented

I don't know that there is a 100% official answer on this question and I don't offer this response as an official answer.

From my reading of threads over the past year or so on this type of issue, it seems a stable and viable editor just hasn't been produced as of yet that does what needs to be done to work 100% correctly and effectively with Drupal. There is a great deal of work going on in this area though including @ Acquia where the hope looks to be to include an editor in carbon.

I don't know that "core" should have an editor. forcing users to use any one specific editor can be problematic. Rather, I'd like to see core support the ability to use any editor, in the case that User A prefers tinymce over say, fckeditor or vise versa.

zirvap’s picture

zirvap commented

See http://groups.drupal.org/wysiwyg and http://drupal.org/project/wysiwyg for more info on the work being done on this.

raffi’s picture

raffi commented

For the reasons VeryMisunderstood mentioned, this is the case with most top Content Management Systems and frameworks and not only drupal.

Dubber Dan’s picture

Dubber Dan commented

Thanks for the input folks.

raffi - Strange you mention it being the case with most top content systems and frameworks. They may not be exactly the same sort of product, but pretty much every bulletin board I've used and WordPress all have something out of the box and they are some pretty big players.

I'm still amazed that it hasn't been sorted out seeing as we're on version 6! Sure choosing one solution might not be right for everyone. I would of thought picking one and making that work from the off, combined with the option to disable it and integrate others would of been a sensible way forward. But as it is, we've had all these years of development and it's not something that is resolved.

Would I be right in thinking that this reflects the heritage of Drupal as a CMS for developers before it's appeal widened?

lhtown’s picture

lhtown commented

Drupal is still a CMS for developers. It is, however, starting to appeal to a much wider group of people. I think that is more by accident than design.

I don't really like any of the big players in the WYSIWYG field, but it isn't too teribly hard to add in the editor you want. Indeed part of the difficulty in deciding whether or not to add them to core is deciding on a feature set. Should they be XHTML strict compliant, what feature set should be used and how should it be implemented and many other issues come up.

At the heart of this problem is that the Web is not a WYSIWYG environment by design.

Imagine a world where trucks were outawed and everyone had to use their cars and bicycles to move anything heavy. People would be very creative and come up with some pretty good solutions, but at the end of the day, we still wouldn't have any trucks and everyone would think that moving anything was a really big deal.

raffi’s picture

raffi commented

Drupal is still a CMS for developers. It is, however, starting to appeal to a much wider group of people. I think that is more by accident than design.