5 ms·

All of these new browser rich text editors look really nice, but without basic table support there is no way anyone can switch from TinyMCE (which is about as h

by orf 11y ago

All of these new browser rich text editors look really nice, but without basic table support there is no way anyone can switch from TinyMCE (which is about as horrible as you can get). Are tables really hard to support? Every time I see one of these projects I check excitedly if they do but am always disappointed.

tpiha 11y ago
These are not TinyMCE replacements and if you ask me, the trend is that the architecture is going around those huge editors because nobody likes them and nobody wants to use them. They simply don't have the right thing for their users. They are too complicated for the end user and if you know how to write HTML, you don't even need it, it just complicates things.
jhchen 11y ago
Tables are hard to do well and there’s ambiguity as to what constitutes basic. After being able to create an NxM table, should you be able to add/remove rows/columns? What about resizing the width or height of rows or columns. Does using <th> violate the promise of semantic output? Merging rows/columns? And of course now there’s copy/paste support for tables to contend with. What if that table had merging and yours didn’t? Tables also require more complex UI than just a button like most other formats. But outside of word processing, tables are just not used very much. How many times have you added a table to an email? A task manager description? A blog post? None of the big sites using Quill are clamoring for tables. For the other newly launched editors out there, I can only imagine they made a similar calculation to not included in the launch shortlist.
- orf 11y ago
  > But outside of word processing I'm not sure what you mean by that, surely word processing is exactly what Quill is meant to be used for? Table use outside of word processing could just be achieved by something other than Quill entirely. > tables are just not used very much. ... None of the big sites using Quill are clamoring for tables. That's fair enough, I doubt they would be used in the context of writing an email, blog post (but that is debatable, I often include tables of figures/results) or a task manager description. But there are many, many back office applications that take user input through a WYSIWYG editor and put it into some kind of report. I think tables are critical here (I was also surprised to see nested lists[2] are not supported in Quill, that's also pretty important). Maybe Quill isn't aiming for those kind of use cases though, but it's just such a shame that TinyMCE is the best solution. It's possible to do right, we used to use Redactor[1] and that handles the basic use cases extremely well while producing super clean output. 1. https://imperavi.com/redactor/plugins/table/ https://imperavi.com/redactor/plugins/table/ 2. https://github.com/quilljs/quill/issues/118 https://github.com/quilljs/quill/issues/118
  - jhchen 11y ago
    I'm not sure if I'm using the terminology correctly but to me Microsoft Word and Google Docs are word processors. They offer a whole new level of formatting capabilities with thousands of options to support that goal, with a feature set so complete they are products all by themselves. The use cases I mentioned utilizes composing text, but that's not the main product. If you want to build a CMS, add in app messaging, add formatting to textboxes, then Quill could be the answer. If you want to build the next Google Docs, out of the box Quill will probably not be enough.
- DanBC 11y ago
  People working for the NHS or Public Health England would frequently want to share snippets of larger datasets. My twitter stream is full of people sharing PDFs or charts or links to sites serving excel sheets. So there's a niche there - people wanting to write a small blog post, and share a small table (no more than 4 x 10) of data.
lhl 11y ago
I think @jhchen does a good job summarizing about why tables are hard. If you absolutely need table support, Froala[1] is the only relatively modern/complete editor I've come across w/ decent table editing, but it's not open source/free. (Aloha v1 has a table plugin, but v2 AFAIK does not. Mercury and Medium Editor (w/ the tables extension) allow insertion, but not editing). One interesting thing I found looking for table support a while back is that there is a medium-editor-handsontable extension[2]. Something like this w/ the ability to attach a dedicated grid object (or embed a gdoc) is probably the way to go. [1] https://www.froala.com/wysiwyg-editor https://www.froala.com/wysiwyg-editor [2] https://github.com/asselinpaul/medium-editor-handsontable https://github.com/asselinpaul/medium-editor-handsontable
- lhl 11y ago
  I'll also add that there is an editor that I think basically is the "holy grail": * super fast/responsive * inline/contextual UI * automatic transmogrification (s to ULs, ``` for code blocks, etc) annotations * revision tracking * collaborative editing * image uploads + formatting * table insertion + editing * task lists * attachments It's Dropbox's Paper editing component, but I don't think that's going to be open-sourced anytime soon. Maybe ProseMirror, Trix, ContentTools, or Quill or one of the other squajillion editors will get there someday. It really is a shame that there are so many partial solutions out there.

by orf 11y ago

tpiha 11y ago

These are not TinyMCE replacements and if you ask me, the trend is that the architecture is going around those huge editors because nobody likes them and nobody wants to use them. They simply don't have the right thing for their users. They are too complicated for the end user and if you know how to write HTML, you don't even need it, it just complicates things.

jhchen 11y ago

Tables are hard to do well and there’s ambiguity as to what constitutes basic. After being able to create an NxM table, should you be able to add/remove rows/columns? What about resizing the width or height of rows or columns. Does using <th> violate the promise of semantic output? Merging rows/columns? And of course now there’s copy/paste support for tables to contend with. What if that table had merging and yours didn’t? Tables also require more complex UI than just a button like most other formats. But outside of word processing, tables are just not used very much. How many times have you added a table to an email? A task manager description? A blog post? None of the big sites using Quill are clamoring for tables. For the other newly launched editors out there, I can only imagine they made a similar calculation to not included in the launch shortlist.

orf 11y ago
> But outside of word processing I'm not sure what you mean by that, surely word processing is exactly what Quill is meant to be used for? Table use outside of word processing could just be achieved by something other than Quill entirely. > tables are just not used very much. ... None of the big sites using Quill are clamoring for tables. That's fair enough, I doubt they would be used in the context of writing an email, blog post (but that is debatable, I often include tables of figures/results) or a task manager description. But there are many, many back office applications that take user input through a WYSIWYG editor and put it into some kind of report. I think tables are critical here (I was also surprised to see nested lists[2] are not supported in Quill, that's also pretty important). Maybe Quill isn't aiming for those kind of use cases though, but it's just such a shame that TinyMCE is the best solution. It's possible to do right, we used to use Redactor[1] and that handles the basic use cases extremely well while producing super clean output. 1. https://imperavi.com/redactor/plugins/table/ https://imperavi.com/redactor/plugins/table/ 2. https://github.com/quilljs/quill/issues/118 https://github.com/quilljs/quill/issues/118
- jhchen 11y ago
  I'm not sure if I'm using the terminology correctly but to me Microsoft Word and Google Docs are word processors. They offer a whole new level of formatting capabilities with thousands of options to support that goal, with a feature set so complete they are products all by themselves. The use cases I mentioned utilizes composing text, but that's not the main product. If you want to build a CMS, add in app messaging, add formatting to textboxes, then Quill could be the answer. If you want to build the next Google Docs, out of the box Quill will probably not be enough.
DanBC 11y ago
People working for the NHS or Public Health England would frequently want to share snippets of larger datasets. My twitter stream is full of people sharing PDFs or charts or links to sites serving excel sheets. So there's a niche there - people wanting to write a small blog post, and share a small table (no more than 4 x 10) of data.

lhl 11y ago

I think @jhchen does a good job summarizing about why tables are hard. If you absolutely need table support, Froala[1] is the only relatively modern/complete editor I've come across w/ decent table editing, but it's not open source/free. (Aloha v1 has a table plugin, but v2 AFAIK does not. Mercury and Medium Editor (w/ the tables extension) allow insertion, but not editing). One interesting thing I found looking for table support a while back is that there is a medium-editor-handsontable extension[2]. Something like this w/ the ability to attach a dedicated grid object (or embed a gdoc) is probably the way to go. [1] https://www.froala.com/wysiwyg-editor https://www.froala.com/wysiwyg-editor [2] https://github.com/asselinpaul/medium-editor-handsontable https://github.com/asselinpaul/medium-editor-handsontable

lhl 11y ago
I'll also add that there is an editor that I think basically is the "holy grail": * super fast/responsive * inline/contextual UI * automatic transmogrification (s to ULs, ``` for code blocks, etc) annotations * revision tracking * collaborative editing * image uploads + formatting * table insertion + editing * task lists * attachments It's Dropbox's Paper editing component, but I don't think that's going to be open-sourced anytime soon. Maybe ProseMirror, Trix, ContentTools, or Quill or one of the other squajillion editors will get there someday. It really is a shame that there are so many partial solutions out there.