#2380: FCKEditor plugin for Wordpress developers' network
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Reporter: lrussi | Owner:
Type: New Feature | Status: new
Priority: Normal | Milestone:
Component: General | Version:
Keywords: |
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I have recently spent a fair amount of time browsing for a WYSIWYG Editor
plugin to implement on the [http://www.ilsuwps.org/ ILSU Wps website].
While, in fact, tinyMCE is not all bad, it does sometimes display awkward
behavior when switching from the Visual to the HTML view. Plus, it keeps
messing up <p>, <div> and <br/> tags.
I ultimately opted for [http://www.deanlee.cn/wordpress/fckeditor-for-
wordpress-plugin/ Dean’s FCKEditor WordPress Plugin], since it features an
up-to-date version of the FCKEditor sotware, featuring a user-friendly
interface to perform ordinary maintenance tasks (such as uploading images
or files in a specific folder on your server) and displaying the ability
not to mess up those tags which tinyMCE gives problems with.
However, my fear is that, since this plugin rests for now on the shoulders
of one man ([http://www.deanlee.cn/about/ Dean Lee], whom I personally
thank for giving birth to the plugin in the first place), it might one day
cease to be regularly updated to future versions of FCKEditor and
WordPress. After all, this is what (so it seems) happened to the
[http://plugins.baptiste.us/plugins/xinha4wp/ Xinha4WP] plugin, a
WordPress implementation of the Xinha open source editor, which “died” at
version 1.2 beta.
In my view, the problem with one-man plugins is not so much that users do
not improve them: quite on the contrary, I am fairly sure that, as with
all Open Source software, there exist scattered groups of people working
on the plugin code. However, the problem is that all such ”tweaks” (which
may often consist of important bug fixes) rarely get by to a larger
audience, meaning that plugin-hackers keep their findings and changes to
themselves, and might not - actually - even regard themselves as
developers. This, however, chills any incentive towards the creation of a
truly integrated social network of developers. In fact, the countless but
de-centralized efforts of many ultimately do not go into the generation of
newer and better versions of the plugin. Moreover, original developers
might get bored of constantly receving bug reports and help requests from
less tech-savvy users, and might ultimately decide to give up the regular
updating of the plugin altogether (after all - I believe - one thing is
developing, another is implementing, which sometimes requires personalized
care and might therefore be annoying to individually perform for free).
Newbie users will further get discouraged by a plugin that contains long-
known-but-never-fixed bugs, and ultimately look somewhere else, or just
bend their head, and submit to tinyMCE.
Hence, I believe that, if we truly believe that FCKEditor deserves to stay
in - and keep up with - WordPress (which - in my view - might become in
the near future THE content management system, for its incredible ease of
use, and hence the greatest source of FCKEditor users), the only way to
keep this piece of software alive, and to have it survive the interests of
its originator, is to set up a developers’ website, where users familiar
with the relevant code may submit and, most importantly, share bug fixes
to the FCKEditor plugin, to be ultimately integrated in newer versions. It
is only by joining the decentralized efforts of many toward a single goal
that it might be possible to achieve it, otherwise, they’ll just disperse.
--
Ticket URL: <http://dev.fckeditor.net/ticket/2380>
FCKeditor <http://www.fckeditor.net/>
The text editor for Internet
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