To better utilize this app a powerful WYSIWYG editor is needed. CKEditor provides a feature-rich WYSIWYG editor which you can check on the following link. It is open-source and fully configurable.
I would like community members to weigh in their thoughts on this.
Website Links - `https://ckeditor.com/
Note: It supports out-of-the-box export to markdown format along with others.
It's not open-source and may not even be free for Joplin.
EDIT
Or maybe it is open source after all.
Ok, it is but licensed under GPL.
They do have a caveat for that:
If you are running an Open Source project with an OSS license incompatible with GPL please contact us and we will be happy to support your project with a CKEditor 5 license.
But that seems messy to me when TinyMCE or even something like Prosemirror are MIT which makes life a lot easier.
Hi there! Wiktor Walc from CKSource here (President & CPO). You will be qualified to the "Free for Open Source" program without any problems - you do not have to worry about it. It would be great if you decided to use CKEditor 5.
As for the markdown itself - we use markdown support in GitHub - ckeditor/github-writer: GitHub Writer - WYSIWYG Rich-Text Editor for GitHub, powered by CKEditor. for example.
Regarding licenses - it's a broad topic. We decided to go into the GPL direction being tired of big enterprises using the software and not giving anything back to the project/community, sometimes even just demanding fixes or free support instead. We still love Open Source though, that's why we want to cover it by providing free licenses to GPL-incompatible projects.
I'd use Joplin if it had such editor. I tried to copy past some notes into it but it breaks the table by converting to Markdown. I'm not interested in Markdown and thus in Joplin, that's a shame.
Having an editor like CKEditor would really be a + for Joplin. Markdown is too limited. The moment Joplin adds CKEditor I will leave trillium and migrate to Joplin.
Hi All,
Sorry to bring back an "old" thread to the top of the list, but...
I'm using OneNote for knowledge management, and the one big feature that Jopplin currently does not have is a usable wysiwyg editor for common people (i.e. people who don't have the energy to learn markdown).
I tried several times to use Joplin, but to me the editor is not reliable enough: vanishing blank lines, rich text copy / paste not really working, limited table-management features...
Is the CKEditor integration considered ? Or any other solution to upgrade the wysiwyg editor ?
Thanks for you work !
I think Joplin would lose its independence, if it use a third party app like cke editor. Joplin was made by devlopper for developper first.
I assume the cke editor integration would need a lot of extra work, then a lot of extra work to maintain. Looking the git repository Laurent Cozic is the almost the only person who maintains everything.
Implementing a WYSIWYG editor is just huge amount of work ...
Joplin already uses a bunch of different editor projects. The markdown editor uses CodeMirror (and before that used Ace). TinyMCE is the current RichText editor.
The main reason I use Joplin is because is allows me to NOT use a WYSIWYG editor. I hate those things. You never know what the result will be when you paste something in. The contents of the paste operation may wipe out a bunch of already formatted stuff. I prefer knowing exactly what I will get, nothing but plain text, when I paste into the editor and learning the two or three formatting things I use (bold, itallic and the tough one that took almost ten minutes to learn, tables) wasn't a big problem. It takes longer to fix the WYSIWYG than to apply the markdown formatting.
Oh. I'm in your camp. Such an editor is far more limiting than markdown, and in some ways makes everything more complex because a WYSIWYG editor is always going to be messier. I even hid the "switch to WYSIWYG" button in the UI so that I don't accidentally switch to it.
That being said…
Though markdown is almost trivial to learn most of the functionality, that separation of the visual from the text is challenging for many people. They don't want to see the "source" for their document.
Joplin has a ton of functionality though. Can it work in this environment? Maybe? Might be worth a test.
The license…
GPL can be used just fine with Joplin if the editor is used in a certain way (like you would any "external" editor). LGPL is better for embedded use cases (like with libraries). It's more flexible, but as the CKSource states, it opens them up to exploitation by commercial software companies. Their homegrown commercial license is not something I can comment on. I suspect that if CKEditor is executed as a contained application with Joplin framing and UI around it, there would be no conflict. (The program remains it's own application, but I am not an attorney.) If CKEditor's code is more intertwined, there may be conflict. I would seek the advice of an attorney. CKSource's attorney (assuming they have one) may be a good resource for identifying what can and can't be done with their software. I.e., where is the line.
TLDR: There probably isn't a conflict.
Strongly support this proposal.
Joplin is undoubtedly an excellent application, but for ordinary users, the rich text editor is more user-friendly.
For me, I really hope that the rich text editor can support the following points:
Just to be clear, we won't integrate this CKEditor since Joplin already has a rich text editor (and if it didn't we probably wouldn't choose CKeditor anyway).
The editor we have may not be perfect, but Ckeeditor isn't either, it would bring new bugs, new issues to deal with. Instead we prefer to improve what we have, so our efforts will be on improving the existing Rich Text editor and of course the Markdown editor.
I am also voting for a better RT editor since I do not like Markdown editor. It would be nice to add full support for WYSIWYG backend and give users option at install which backend the want to use.
Multiple blank would be nice too in the new backend.
Markdown is one of the reason I do not use Joplin. I currently use Yana notes, once Joplin adds full support for a WYSIWYG editor I will install and start using it.
If you use Markdown, fine ! If you use the WYS editor fine. Joplin has both - and I think for good reasons.
Instead of saying "I like / hate this" or "I like / hate that" it would be much more helpful if proponents of one editor or the other would say where exactly the current implementation lets them down, and what features are missing. Then it's up to the devs to find the way to implement it.
I can only share my experience with the WYS editor in the past two years. It has never let me down, never caused "paste" problems, and never have I come across any important feature missing. So I wonder, is this all about taste(s) or can somebody say where the current WYS editor comes short ?