Wordgard: The new in-browser rich-text editor from the creator of ProseMirror

> why wordgard is worth the switching cost?

It may not be. If you're happy with ProseMirror, continue to use ProseMirror. I have your back.

But as the blog posts describes, I had a whole pile of new design insights that avoid some of the issues I've ran into with ProseMirror, so I had the itch to build a new iteration.

I'll add a link to the blog post to the docs section of the website.

(It's marijn, not merijn.)

"Why is it worth the switching cost?" is the genuine question I have too. Or more importantly, why not just make it ProseMirror v2? The landing page needs more information about the "why" rather than the "what".

From the blog:

> I'm not all that fond of the ProseMirror pun anymore either (it's CodeMirror but for prose, get it?)

So... It's time for someone to create Codegard, i guess?

The graphics are amazing, feels Ghibli-esque, which is crazy to say in the context of a rich text editor.

>The thought that Prosemirror is no more in active development is scary.

From their blog: "I'm still proud of ProseMirror, and ProseMirror isn't going anywhere—it will continue to be maintained."

> The thought that Prosemirror is no more in active development is scary.

Which is a thing that I never said. In fact I went out of my way in all the announcements to stress that ProseMirror maintenance is continuing as it has been.

The only scary thought is that all these important operations don't have a plan B if prosemirror, a software they don't write, don't own and presumably don't pay, goes away.

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2347/

but as @john_strinlai as I have said it doesn't seem like Prosemirror is going unmaintained. It will continue to be maintained

but I think its worth thinking about the structure of the whole thing being so similar to the xkcd which is what might be the scary part of it.

There is contenteditable, which is what all these (Wordgard, ProseMirror) are fundamentally built on. The rest is just the UI, and interop with systems that don't desire arbitrary HTML as input.

@ mention style built in would be fabulous, just provide an API.

As would first class mobile support.

See https://code.haverbeke.berlin/wordgard/wordgard/commit/9c9b2...

I've seen this solved in some platforms with localstorage, so that it automatically saves your "draft" as you type and seamlessly restores it if you re-open the page. It was a really nice surprise the first time I experienced it (after closing a tab by mistake).

It depends for me. For my blog I have a web based editor, but one, that is just plain markdown with a preview. Similar to your described workflow. For a note taking app I decided to use WYSIWYG because I don't have the space for a split view and didn't want to just look at the markdown as is.

My main gripe with WYSIWYG is that they can get in your way. When I create a verbatim block and can't leave that block anymore (looking at you Teams). I guess thats also why I enjoyed LaTeX as much as I did.

Any sites that have forms or editors that don't save your progress with localstorage need to leave the web and not come back.

With AI slop everywhere it is extremely refreshing to see hand-drawn beautiful illustration.

For people who have dealt with react, this part might give some insight into that topic (https://wordgard.net/docs/prosemirror/#h-transactions-and-ch...)? Nevertheless, it would be good if this could be addressed in the docs.

I am not sure if this makes things easier for react interop, but this piece might be of interest too:

  > One of the biggest mistake blunders in ProseMirror is that the editor view does not get access to the transaction objects when updating, just the state. Wordgard does not repeat this mistake, and makes updates take transactions, not just a new state.

  > This means that things like the DOM update logic and UI plugins can precisely observe what happened, and handle changes in a efficient and more effective way. The weird unexpected DOM redraws that are still a thing in ProseMirror should not occur. Only the precise DOM structure affected by the new transactions will be updated.

Anyways, it is great to see Merijn still going strong with his free work. Anyone needing interactive rich text on the web won't find anything better than his brain childs.

The people developing that left NYT and spun it out into a separate (really great!) project https://github.com/handlewithcarecollective/react-prosemirro...

They are also working on a collaborative editing suite for ProseMirror as an alternative to TipTap https://pitter-patter.dev/

That's due to the React constraints, though

My exact comment, Lexical is very powerful and needs little dependencies.

Works for me:

    $ git clone https://code.haverbeke.berlin/wordgard/wordgard.git
    Cloning into 'wordgard'...
    remote: Enumerating objects: 8274, done.
    remote: Counting objects: 100% (8274/8274), done.
    remote: Compressing objects: 100% (4747/4747), done.
    remote: Total 8274 (delta 6049), reused 5002 (delta 3464), pack-reused 0 (from 0)
    Receiving objects: 100% (8274/8274), 1.61 MiB | 2.93 MiB/s, done.
    Resolving deltas: 100% (6049/6049), done.

Were you meaning it was unavailable temporarily?

Maybe something changed in the meantime, but I'm seeing what appears to be the code for it here: https://code.haverbeke.berlin/wordgard/wordgard/src/branch/m...

I think the issue is not the "solving", rather that people have different opinions and they want different things, and there isn't common agreement what is needed or how. Most editors work just fine for the basic needs. But well, that is my opinion.

Something like showcontrols for contenteditable with flags for features

The menu can be replaced, either entirely or by item, but the default buttons use icons, not text labels.

Tried to reproduce this, also on Chrome Android, but undo removes the typed character as expected.