How to use only one editor window

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This is my summary of the issues with selected posts for flavor. It might help others to understand why a WYSIWYG (What you See Is What You Get) editor is not going to be a development in core Discourse:

  1. The stated position is that Discourse will not be developing a WYSIWYG editor.
    1. This position has been unchanged since the first request for a WYSIWYG editor.
    2. There is not widespread support for changing this position.
  2. The current editor affects this topic in two ways:
    1. The Discourse editor is relatively complex.
    2. The Discourse editor is completely owned within Discourse.
  3. The primary issue is that WYSIWYG solutions will be extremely difficult to implement.
    1. No reliable solution currently exists.
    2. Attempts to develop a solution have all floundered.
    3. Replacement editors have been suggested but not pursued.
  4. FYI, some want the other extreme which is a plain text editor

1. The stated position is that Discourse will not be developing a WYSIWYG editor.

1.1 This position has been unchanged since the first request for a WYSIWYG editor.

1.2 There is not widespread support for changing this position.

Many users, probably the vast majority, have no requirement or need for this to change.

2. The current editor.

The current editor affects this topic in two ways.

2.1 The Discourse editor is relatively complex

There are a lot of reasons for this complexity.

One reason is that the current editor provides three methods to format text. It would be much simpler if only markdown had to be considered:

  1. CommonMark markdown e.g. **bold** gives bold
  2. BBCodes e.g.[b]bold[/b] gives bold
  3. HTML e.g. <b>bold</b> gives bold

2.2 The Discourse editor is completely owned within Discourse.

There is no external dependency for the software. This is not the case when proposing alternative editors even when they are open source.

3. The primary issue is that WYSIWYG solutions will be extremely difficult to implement.

It will not be an easy or simple task to modify the existing editor, integrate a WYSIWYG editor or replace the current editor entirely.

3.1 No reliable solution currently exists.

This is a particular sticking point. There is no reliable solution for translating between the current editor and any WYSIWYG option.

3.2 Attempts to develop a solution have all floundered.

A number of people have started working on solving these issues and have not progressed to a solution.
e.g. WYSIWYG Editor Plugin

Here’s an early blue-sky estimate for markdown to wysiwyg:

3.3 Replacement editors have been suggested but not pursued.

Replacement editors essentially have to meet the same requirements because they will otherwise permanently fork Discourse with no migration path.

In other words, replacing the Discourse editor would break existing instances so we have the same requirement for reliable translation of existing posts.
e.g. Who would prefer a standard wysiwyg to markdown? - #47 by Talin

4. FYI, some want the other extreme which is a plain text editor.

Some sites would prefer plain text stripped of any formatting, preview and WYSIWYG.

One option is to disable the composer toolbar to give the appearance of text-only input.

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