Text editors

The atto page has some dead links https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Atto, I have been unable to find any real documentation.  

Ryan has responded here: https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-58084 saying "As Mark mentioned above, if you're using the WYSIWYG view on the atto editor the code behind the scenes will attempt to sanitise a few things in the content that you're pasting in an attempt to keep consistent styling (depending on where you are copying the content from, it can come along with a lot more information than what you see in the page)"  There seems to be a clear indication that Atto is 'not supposed' to do all the things we might like.  The 'sanitising' seems to have unexpected consequences.

Other comments from the tracker: 

• https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-59998 Multiple span tags injected"
  
• https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-59533 "Class names strippe dout on paste"
  
• https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-57954 "Spurious tags"
  
• https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-57374 Says 'fixed' but there are some cases where I think it is not.
  

I'm not quite up to the level of coding to even clearly identify the problems and the source of the problems.  I just know Atto is not up to what I need at the moment.

if (!empty($options['legacy']) or !empty($options['noclean']) or !empty($options['trusted'])) {
            // now deal somehow with non-standard tags, people scream when we do not make moodle code xtml strict,
            // but they scream even more when we strip all tags that are not strict :-(
            $params['valid_elements'] = 'script[src|type],*[*]'; // for some reason the *[*] does not inlcude javascript src attribute MDL-25836
            $params['invalid_elements'] = '';
        }

The issue of how to deal with WYSIWYG is old.  I'd really like to see some more robust workflow possible in Atto, biut at present I think there are other priorities in the minds of the coders.

-Derek

For anyone who is interested in contributing to the user documentation, here is the Atto editor documentation page and here is the TinyMCE editor page.

Hi Damyon,

as a first step in that direction, could we bring https://apidocs.moodle.org/js/master/classes/M.editor_atto.Editor.html and https://apidocs.moodle.org/js/master/classes/M.editor_atto.EditorPlugin.html et al back?

As far as I know, they now only exist in Google Cache / Internet Archive.

Saludos.

Iñaki.

Damyon, thanks for your post.

You might recall that I had my reservations about Atto for a while.  However, I switched to making Atto my default around 8 months ago and have been very happy.  I am one who likes that it seems to work better than TinyMCE on smartphones.  Yep, still a few improvements needed and bugs fixed, but I would have to agree with your opinion.

Just so that you know, I think the only place where I am struggling with Atto is when I want to apply a "class" to an embedded picture and make it be "responsive."  I find myself having to switch to TinyMCE to do this.  Maybe I am missing a technique or something with Atto.

This discussion popped up in my searches for TinyMCE.

I am the CEO at Ephox, the makers of TinyMCE and just wanted to offer up help. We could discuss how we could bring the integration up to date? TinyMCE is getting a lot of development and updating and I think it could be of benefit to the Moodle community to keep it as an option.

Damien, I kind of guessed there were other HQ priorities when it came to the Atto Tracker items, but I was still hopeful other developers may be able to attend to some of the little quirks that were popping up.  But fundamentally you are right, it is an HQ matter.  I did not know about the restructured teams, but maybe this will lead to some progress.

Maybe an Atto EPIC issue in the tracker may help with a little more visibility of the progress, help stop duplicate entries and save time in figuring out if the thing that is happening has happened to someone else?  It is true that a lot of people are fine with Atto, but for me it is still a fact: I can't find a workflow for course design, deployment etc that is both easy to use and robust.  In other words, working with many grass roots tutors is a little fraught.

I didn't know I had created a 'skewed view' of the state of editors in Moodle.  As for your other comment "I don't have the time or patience to repeatedly discuss the same things over and over" the first place I always check is the docs.  eg the page https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Atto that Mary referred to is pretty minimal, with some dead links, and even with a lot of reading I am not sure enough of the message to edit this myself.  I probably have missed or misunderstood a post you have made somewhere to do with Atto; a clear message somewhere in Moodle.org or docs on some of the priorities of Moodle could help, but I know this is hard.  I will not post again; maybe in time things will get unskewed.

My glass half full vs half empty thoughts still remain.  You may be happy with Atto, but some folk I work with find some things difficult.

---

John: it seems like you have a really clear message from Damien: TinyMCE/Moodle support is no more.

Your comment: "The amount of class, id, span, and style tags that Atto injects is ridiculous. I'm using Moodle 3.1.6 and can't edit a single page in HTML mode without having to delete all the extra code, which just re-introduces itself anyway the next time I save." . . . .  I di wonder if anyone else would respond to this.  I just live with this, but I also have problems with Atto stipping out the same things.  :-|

Robert: thank-you for the post.  I use a few sites where the editor is  probably Tiny MCE and you have done well with the new version.  Atto vs TinyMCE: I'm not sure if this ship has sailed or not!!  Some of the discussion in docs.moodle on the reasons for the transition several years ago has gone.  Damien's notes from one small meeting are here: https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Developer_meeting_January_2014#Editor_replacement_.28Damyon_Wiese.29 and another link: https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Editor_2.7

Damien is clear in the post above: "Atto is a great HTML editor that supports many advanced Moodle features that TinyMCE can't hope to replicate properly because it is not written with knowledge about the platform it is embedded into (proper auto-save support etc)"

But as Mary said there is this: https://docs.moodle.org/34/en/TinyMCE_editor where you could start.

Visvanath: Not sure about your question about "Loading issue in moodle for our site" https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=363075&parent=1464658 it may be an unavoidable feature. 

Good luck.

-Derek

Edit: Gee, this is a much longer post than I realised!!

Merry Christmas everybody, and may things go well in the new year for you all.