Switch to modern text editor

[avernet]

This RFE calls for switching from TinyMCE to a modern editor that uses contenteditable only as input, and then builds its own model of the document based on what is being typed, and renders that model. Candidates include Quill, ProseMirror, and Trix.

Trix is the editor created and used by Basecamp. We have quite a bit of experience with it as users, and, IMHO, it works quite well. So I have a mere-exposure effect bias towards it.

One downside of switching to another editor is compatibility: we'll break compatibility with TinyMCE configurations customers might have, and other TinyMCE-specific expectations on how the editor does behave.

• Decide on editor to use
  • We need the editor to work on the browsers we support for Form Runner
• Determine where we would be incompatible, if there is anything we can do about it
  • consider editor-agnostic configuration

[ebruchez]

TinyMCE is changing to GPL as of version 7. There is some discussion here. The licensing changes will apply to TinyMCE 7 , which is not yet released. TinyMCE 5 and 6 are unaffected, and we can use those versions forever. However, once TinyMCE 6 doesn't receive any further updates (at worst, June 2025), it looks like we will need to be ready to have an alternative.

[ebruchez]

In the short term, it seems that we need to upgrade to TinyMCE 6 to get the latest security upgrades.

[ebruchez]

Note that there could be some compatibility issues with existing data. We need to make sure the following works:

• bold
• italics
• indent/unindent
• links
• bullet points and numbered lists

read existing data correctly.

[carlosmintfan]

TinyMCE is changing to GPL as of version 7. There is some discussion here. The licensing changes will apply to TinyMCE 7 , which is not yet released. TinyMCE 5 and 6 are unaffected, and we can use those versions forever. However, once TinyMCE 6 doesn't receive any further updates (at worst, June 2025), it looks like we will need to be ready to have an alternative.

Yeah, too bad they changed to GPL.