[Moin-user] FCK Editor

[Matthew Nuzum]

On 5/8/07, Shawn Hill <Shawn.Hill at soeidental.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> The usability of the GUI editor MoinMoin is a big issue for my users, so
> much so that I am being pressured daily on it.  I know the google summer
> of code is working on it, but is there a way I can get more visibility
> on this?

This may not be a satisfactory answer, but here's what I suggest doing:

Train your users not to use the wysiwyg. Wikis are about content, and
when it comes to writing content, there is *nothing* faster than the
wiki syntax[1]. From an aesthetic perspective, users should not be
styling their text. Instead, they should leave that to your css and
style guide.

In my opinion, the wysiwyg in Moin has just two useful features: It
makes creating and updating tables simpler and it has that nice tool
for inserting macros.

Baring tables, with the wysiwyg disabled, you can easily copy and
paste from your favorite office program and get pretty much just what
you wanted. Especially if you give your users a little training. In
the end, they will be much happier and more productive if they just
embrace Wiki markup.

The problem with WYSIWYG editors and wikis is that wiki != html, so
you can represent stuff in the wysiwyg editor that is not realistic in
the wiki. So in reality, it should be called wysi NOT wyg.

I wonder if it would be a better fit to do something like wordpress,
where you have the bold, italics, link and etc buttons above the
editor window, but instead of wysiwyg, it just wraps the appropriate
markup around your highlighted text when you hit the B for bold.
http://people.ubuntu.com/~mnuzum/tmp/wordpress-editor.png

[1] Stephen King wrote a book once where a character created a direct
interface from her brain to the typewriter to transcribe her dreams
while sleeping, which in theory is more efficient than wiki syntax,
but still a few years away
-- 
Matthew Nuzum
www.bearfruit.org
newz2000 on freenode