EasyMDE plugin

[glebm]

I've done some looking around on the web, and EasyMDE is looking like a good candidate for a WYSIWYG-esque editor for Thredded.

+ Good things

• Seems easy to integrate. Can use a custom preview function so we can render a preview server-side there.
• Uses codemirror under the hood, so integrating other editing plugins that CodeMirror supports should be possible.
• Useful features such as localstorage autosave and code syntax highlighting via highlight.js.

- Bad things

• 85KiB gzipped. That's more than all of our current JS. This is not a concern if loaded asynchronously, but I imagine most Rails apps don't actually use async scripts.
  For comparison, the Trumbowyg editor is only 8KiB gzipped (but is not a markdown editor).
  * Doesn't scope its .CodeMirror styles. This is scheduled to be fixed in v2.0, so best wait for it until integrating it. https://github.com/NextStepWebs/simplemde-markdown-editor/issues/260

[shenhf]

Is there any possible to use a WYSIWYG? I'd like to see a guide or tutorial, Thanks.

[lawhorkl]

Any update on this? I am very interested in using this software but wysiwyg is a requirement for my needs

[rickychilcott]

If you can get to Rails 5 and then Rails 6, ActionText may be a good alternative and baked right in.

[jayroh]

Doesn't look like that simplemde editor even exists anymore 🤷‍♂

Correction - at least at that link above. Found a website here: https://simplemde.com/

[glebm]

Looks like there is a maintained fork now: https://github.com/Ionaru/easy-markdown-editor

[sudara]

Action Text might be a great move, as it's a core rails dependency and also could resolve #44 via its ActiveStorage implementation (image uploads are probably the 1 thing our forum is missing most!)

[glebm]

@sudara Can Action Text do markdown? Thredded has several markdown plugins, such as for rendering math.

I do agree that Action Text is the way to go for WYSIWIG but I'd like markdown to remain an option.

[sudara]

@glebm Good question. My understanding is that Action Text provides a very basic model that stores the blob of rendered content, and rendering is handled by Trix.

It looks like markdown support is a popularly requested feature for Trix, though it's hard to imagine basecamp deciding to build it in....

It doesn't seem like there are hooks to do processing before/after save...

I haven't looked at the Thredded side... Is your impression that content storage is too low level for Action Text to be a Thredded plugin, even if it's mutually exclusive with the other rendering plugins?