General developer forum

Yeah, the information on http://docs.moodle.org/dev/TinyMCE_plugins is sparse.  Even worse, the example is how to convert a non-moodle tinymce plugin by HACKING the core lib.php.  (FYI, that hack works fine for my plugin, but i'd rather not do that.)

My geshi plugin works fine by hacking moodle 2.51's core file, but I want to avoid this.

I can't find documentation anywhere. You can try looking at the three tinymce plugins on the site, but it's so confusing as to the directory structure. 

https://moodle.org/plugins/browse.php?list=category&id=45

The docs tell you where to put the files, but not very much about the content of the files you need to put there.

Note, wherever I write 'nameofplugin', please replace it with the actual name of your plugin.

The '/tinymce' subfolder for within your Moodle TinyMCE plugin contains a standard TinyMCE plugin - you can find lots of details about how to make these at http://www.tinymce.com/wiki.php 

Another important file is '/lang/nameofplugin/en/tinymce_nameofplugin.php' which needs the line:

$string['pluginname'] = 'The name of my plugin';

(Where 'pluginname' is literally that text, but 'The name of my plugin' should be replaced with the human-readable name of your plugin).

It should also contain any other translatable text from your plugin.

The final file you need is /lib.php, which should contain:

class tinymce_nameofplugin extends editor_tinymce_plugin {

protected function update_init_params(array &$params, context $context, array $options = null) {

$rowtoappearon = 3;

$this->add_button_after($params, $rowtoappearon, 'nameofplugin', 'name_of_button_to_appear_after');

}

Look at the included examples in lib/editor/tinymce/plugins to see how this works.

I have to add, that I find writing a TinyMCE plugin to be one of the hardest places to start in Moodle (because you have to understand a bit about how Moodle works and a lot about how TinyMCE works), but if that's what you've been asked to do ...

I have written a few plugins for TinyMCE on Moodle now, and the best thing by far to check out the existing plugins to see how they achieve things. I would look at this one, because it is quite simple:
https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=tinymce_skim

I wrote a template, more for myself than anything. If you would like to use it as part of your tutorial, or as an add on thats fine.  It certainly isn't perfect but it will get you up and running.

To use it,  do a search and replace on the following upper case strings in each file to turn the template into your plugin. (You should do TEMPLATE_READABLE_NAME before TEMPLATE obviously. Sorry it really was just for me.) And make sure the folder is named correctly also.

Hi everyone,

I finally managed to create a documentation page about Moodle specific TinyMCE plugins. ( http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Creating_a_Moodle_specific_TinyMCE_plugin )

I'm a noob developper so if you want to edit, remove, modify or add content in this page about this subject it would be helpful!

Thanks

Josep