Forum OpenACS Development: Re: HTMLArea - Current Issues and Future Development

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Posted by Richard Hamilton on
OK, well that is interesting to know. I can see why RTE was chosen - simple, effective, functional. I agree with all of those requirements and I see that it fits them.

However, having now played with the demos for all of the editors listed in my other thread (which I will paste into this thread to keep it all together), I don't think that this is necessarily the best choice. Here's why:

1) No apparent activity since 2003 - is this going to end up discontinued as well?

2) Uses deprecated html to acheive formatting (i.e. font and style tags to mention just two).

3) Creates poorly formatted and therefore unreadable 'spagetti' html.

4) Throws errors when I use it(!) - buggy?

The three editors that seems to fit the bill most closely for the requirements stated by Malte above are:

1) aynhtml

This is simple and uncluttered, and works really well. Seems to produce really beautifully clean and readable html with inline CSS. Very nice - GPL.

2) Whizzywig - ?GPL

Basic but seems to work well and load very quickly. Produces html with inline CSS styles and supports uploading of style sheets (though implementation of oacs would need thought). Free of charge but not clear if GPL.

😟
Spagetti html using deprecated tags.

3) Areaedit (based on htmlarea codebase) - GPL

A fork from Xinha which means a fork from the original HTMLArea that we are using. In active development , simple (not ladened down with features), targeted at business users so suitable for oacs, loads quickly - seems to work well. GPL.

😟
Spagetti html using deprecated tags.

So my own assessment based on what I have seen is that aynhtml would probably be the best option, followed by Whizzywig then Areaedit and fourth place goes to RTE.

Regards
Richard