Too bad for FCKeditor... or for me?

Dear all,

Here is a copy of a mail I sent to Fred, the lead developer of the project.

He kindly replied to me that all my listed suggestions were already available in the product.

As I can't see his point, I take my arguments to the public place, the open to all forum.

You guys will see if I'm wrong with my comments on the editor or if Fred needs to take action (nothing personnal Fred .

Here comes the text of the email:

Dear Frederico,

I have been using your editor for a few days now.

It took me some time to find out how to set it up.

But I can now use it and even upload images.

It works fine as it is.

It really is a nice piece of software you have done here.

But I saw some shortcomings that render the editor hard to setup and difficult to configure.

So I feel like sharing with you my suggestions on what minor modifications to do in order to get an easy to use editor.

We do agree that to make the editor easy to install and setup, all configuration settings should reside in files sitting outside of the editor source tree.

This is to ensure that future updates of the editor will not overwrite existing installation settings.

Looking at the editor source code, one can see that the file fckeditor/editor/js/fck_startup.js includes the file fckeditor/fckconfig.js

This design imposes the use of the configuration file fckeditor/fckconfig.js

This makes it impossible to have the configuration file sitting outside of the source tree and prevents the use of another configuration file.

You may at this stage point me to the configuration directive FCKConfig.CustomConfigurationsPath = '' found in the the file fckeditor/fckconfig.js

As I understand it, this directive purpose is precisely to offer the use of another configuration file.

But there are two problems with this directive.

One is that is should not reside in the default configuration file.

Because the default configuration file is holding default values and should not be modified.

This directive should therefore be located outside of this file.

It would be very handy to be able to use it in the file where the editor is defined and created, namely like:

var oFCKeditor = new FCKeditor('content');
oFCKeditor.BasePath = '$gFCKBasePath';
oFCKeditor.Value = '$content';
oFCKeditor.CustomConfigurationsPath = '/path/to/my/custom/config.js'
oFCKeditor.Create();

The second problem with this directive is that if it holds a value other than the empty '' then the editor will not load up and will not appear on the page. This may be a bug.

I backup my statement by saying that even the custom settings of the live on line demo example you are showing on your website makes such a thing as including a user specific configuration file from the default configuration file.

Your default configuration file http://www.fckeditor.net/fckeditor/fckconfig.js contains the following lines:

// Custom Configurations (leave blank to ignore)
FCKConfig.CustomConfigurationsPath = '/fckeditor.config.js' ;

I reckon this should be done differently.

The default configuration file should be left untouched, always.

And the directive

FCKConfig.CustomConfigurationsPath = '/fckeditor.config.js' ;

should sit outside of the source tree and could be located where you create the editor.


I hope that you are still with me

I must insist on the fact that I'm just trying here to feed you back with some positive and sensible input.

I'm not at all downgrading the great work you have done.


So if I may pursue my comments...


The default configuration file contains many configuration directives.

A website making use of your editor typically would use it at different places within the website.

There would be some settings that would be website specific and other settings that would be even more specific, differing from one website module to another, within the same website.

So the need to specifiy some website wise custom configuration directives and some other website module wise ones becomes clear.


To sum things up, it would really be helpfull to:

1- Not to have to touch the default configuration file at all

Get rid of the directive

FCKConfig.CustomConfigurationsPath = '/fckeditor.config.js' ;

from the file

fckeditor/fckconfig.js
(http://www.fckeditor.net/fckeditor/fckconfig.js)

2- Be able to specify a custom configuration file sitting outside of the source tree from where the editor is created

var oFCKeditor = new FCKeditor('content');
oFCKeditor.CustomConfigurationsPath = '/path/to/my/custom/config.js'
oFCKeditor.Create();

3- Be able to use configuration directives from where the editor is created, with these directives OVERWRITING their sibblings found in the default configuration file.

var oFCKeditor = new FCKeditor('content');
FCKConfig.ToolbarCanCollapse = true ;
oFCKeditor.Create();

This today is not working as the directive value found in the default configuration file is NOT overwritten as it should.

The same is true for the other directives.

4- Not use a custom configuration file at all. The directives could all be located where the editor is created, like:

<script type="text/javascript">
<!--

var oFCKeditor = new FCKeditor('content');
oFCKeditor.BasePath = '$gFCKBasePath';
oFCKeditor.Value = '$content';
oFCKeditor.Config['AutoDetectLanguage'] = false;
oFCKeditor.Config['DefaultLanguage'] = 'fr';
oFCKeditor.Config['SkinPath'] = '$gFCKBasePath' + 'editor/skins/silver/';
oFCKeditor.ToolbarSet = 'Default';
oFCKeditor.ToolbarCanCollapse = false;
oFCKeditor.UseBROnCarriageReturn = true;
oFCKeditor.Width = '100%';
oFCKeditor.Height = '600';

oFCKeditor.Create();

//-->
</script>


I hope all of this does not sound to much to do.

I suppose it may be quite easy for a skilled developper like you to move a few includes and function calls to offer these configuration features.

Do not hesitate to get back to me if you need some more explanation on my comments.

In the meantime please do receive my appreciation for your passed and comming work.


Kind Regards

Stephane Eybert