Not Even Close to Ready

It’s been in development for nearly 2 years.

Here’s the thing: I didn’t like it much about a year ago. I’m kinda okay with it now.

Yeah, it’s missing some minor pieces, sure. But I can write in this, whereas I have never liked writing in the existing TinyMCE editor. As in, I would write in a text editor, paste it into the WordPress Visual editor, and then do the formatting and editing phase of things.

With this, I can type into it from scratch and create content. That’s kinda new for me. So, yeah. I’m a hard sell, but this is good, IMO. Not perfect, but a decent base.

So, if it has “bugs”, then say what those bugs are specifically. Otherwise, you’re not providing any real constructive feedback. That was the whole purpose of the callout in 4.9.8, to get people to try it and provide feedback. Saying “has more bugs and issues than I have time to document” is basically not providing any such feedback, and thus, not useful.

Give one bug. Just one. Any bug will do. Otherwise, why bother posting about it at all?

Hell, I’ll give you a problem I found. It doesn’t have good block nesting. Sometimes, I might want to have two dissimilar blocks connected by something like a background change. But the Gutenberg editor lacks wrapper blocks, so I can’t nest two blocks inside one and give the wrapper an attribute. That’s a problem. But then I read up and found that the nested block functionality is “in progress” so I’m waiting to see what happens there. This is the kind of thing that is useful and needs to be noticed and talked about.

Hello williamhennessy and Samuel Wood (Otto),

1) For williamhennessy ;

Thank you for your feedback, on your experience of being introduced to the Gutenburg editor, and for volunteering your time to both try it out and report your feedback.
You have reported your experience in a “qualitative” fashion, which conveys your impression or lack of being impressed.

For the benefit of the developers, it would be additionally helpful to be provided with some “quantitative” information, as to what some/all of the problems were.
Ideally, they would be interested a full specific description, that would allow them to replicate the fault/situation, but not all users can do this, and any hint at a problem is better than nothing. So even if you can supply bullet points or a list of some of the problems, then that would help direct attention to where the problems might be, and therefore (from the developers’ angle) what code might be causing it.

2) For Samuel Wood (Otto)
a) As you have pointed out, Gutenburg has been in development for 2 years, and that for the first year you (too) did not like it.
The Gutenburg plugin mentions that the wordpress editor had been the same for about 10 years.
If ‘number of years in existence’ equals ‘proof of suitability/fit for use’,
then the original editor would be considered the best – which is clearly not the opinion of the team (ITO) that thinks a new (Gutenburg) editor needs to be created.

b) Re

Yeah, it’s missing some minor pieces, sure. But I can write in this, whereas I have never liked writing in the existing TinyMCE editor. As in, I would write in a text editor, paste it into the WordPress Visual editor, and then do the formatting and editing phase of things.

With this, I can type into it from scratch and create content. That’s kinda new for me. So, yeah. I’m a hard sell, but this is good, IMO. Not perfect, but a decent base

“minor pieces” – the pieces that you think are missing, are not necessarily the same pieces that williamhennessy thinks is missing (though he is talking about problematic features rather than omitted features. Nor does williamhennessy seem to regard the problems as “minor” as he has indicated he will not be using this editor (at least for 6 months).
The rest of these two paragraphs seems to be saying “in your opinion, you find this editor more suitable for your needs than the previous editor”. It is good that you have experienced an improvement in the usability of wordpress as a result of Gutenburg editor. And it is also good that you find it suitable enough for your use. This is your experience of it and your opinion.
williamhennessy started this topic to convey his experience (in presently low resolution of information content), and express his opinion. The main difference between the two opinions seems to be that williamhennessy sets a higher bar for usability than you do, and that’s ok for him, and that ok for you. You are both more happy with the systems you are using at the moment. You may be keen to express your own opinion of how good Gutenburg is, as ardently as you wish in a topic that you start.

c) Re

I’ll give you a problem I found. It doesn’t have good block nesting.

and the rest of the paragraph.
It would be helpful to supply the link to where you have reported this problem to Gutenburg, so it can serve as a good example on how to more accurately describe problems/issues/bugs/etc.
If you have not yet reported this problem you have experienced, then please do report it in a new topic, to help speed up the development of Gutenburg.

d) I join with you, in encouraging williamhennessy to provide as much information as he is willing to, to help develop Gutenburg. And this probably means encouraging him to be “willing”.

I look forward to hearing more from both of you, and hope to explore what some of the discouraging/dis-incentivizing problems are.

Thank you all

the wordpress editor had been the same for about 10 years. If ‘number of years in existence’ equals ‘proof of suitability/fit for use’,
then the original editor would be considered the best – which is clearly not the opinion of the team (ITO) that thinks a new (Gutenburg) editor needs to be created.

I challenge you to think of all of the old and dated software and sites you have used over your life and when you were happy that they finally changed. Personally, I can think of quite a lot.

Note that I’m not challenging your opinion of Gutenberg. You have feedback and that’s excellent. I’m just suggesting that your supposition of “‘number of years in existence’ equals ‘proof of suitability/fit for use’” is largely inaccurate. ??

If you haven’t been around WordPress long, here’s a tour of how it’s changed: https://93digital.co.uk/wphistory/

I think we can all agree we’re pretty happy it didn’t stay like 1.0. Age is not always the best indicator of quality.

Hello James Huff,

Thank you for your comment.
We are in complete agreement.
My statement was ;

If ‘number of years in existence’ equals ‘proof of suitability/fit for use’,
then the original editor would be considered the best – which is clearly not the opinion of the team (ITO) that thinks a new (Gutenburg) editor needs to be created.

If you look at what I said, it was “if” the ‘condition’, ‘then’ the ‘conclusion’ would be … .

I was not saying that the ‘condition’ was actually an opinion that I hold to.
I was examining that line of thought, in that case .

I am completely with you, that just because something has been around a while, doesn’t mean to say that it is the best it could be (even if it was/is thought to be pretty good).
The point is that 10 years or 2 years, doesn’t mean to say that it is either the best or good enough (for some folks or all folks).

I completely agree with your statements, both ;

I’m just suggesting that your supposition of “‘number of years in existence’ equals ‘proof of suitability/fit for use’” is largely inaccurate.

and

I think we can all agree we’re pretty happy it didn’t stay like 1.0. Age is not always the best indicator of quality.

But I would like to point out that

‘number of years in existence’ equals ‘proof of suitability/fit for use’

was not an opinion that hold, and is very far from a form of thought that I follow – it was a concept that I was talking about.

How you have read my comment, depends on having noticed the “If”.

Oh, and thanks for the comment of my feedback – I don’t often get ‘rated’ on my feedback, and seldom that good a rating, more typically ignored or knocked down (by those of more years experience).