hilaryh

Hi Jane,

I don’t do a lot of “formatting” as I go, I construct my communicatings as much as I write them. For larger pieces, for example, I generally start with the illustrations, as I am very visual. I move from illustrations to rich captions (a la Scientific American) to scaffolding together quotes and thoughts to topic sentences to pulling the whole thing together and rewrite. I have worn through so many versions of Williams on Style I wish I could buy stock in the man ??

I take it as a compliment that folks have a hard time hearing me these days when I say disability, because I do mean it in the formal ADA sense. Formal, diagnosed, paper trail that could choke a horse. I would be willing to explore that further with you but not on this forum.

This interaction really brings into relief the issues surrounding universal design. On the one hand, it can be a powerful positive force in that it helps designers avoid getting drawn (or even pushed) into a model of that is overly focused on delivering a canonical set of accomodations rather than on ways to facilitate users with disabilities. On the other hand, many members of the temporarily able bodied world do seem to have an extremely strong desire to believe in a single common solution for all users (vi! no, emacs! perl! python! php!) Flexibility is the key.

I found the offline editors unsatisfactory. Writing close to the media, as it were, is very important to me. I ended up back in emacs briefly (the one true editor!) composing the post that will go out later tonight about this experience, along with several other pieces I have written in the past few days that are impatiently waiting to their turn as well. That was when I hit upon the solution you have suggested (great minds think alike?), although it did not work for me quite as you describe. I had to click on one column in the screen options to get full width editing.

I appreciate the responsiveness of the WP team to my concerns. I should say that the post that is going out about this experience is quite pro Gershwin (my developer and designer sides are delighted! I am something of a testing freak, you see…) and very pro WP. I do recognize that thinking of the disability community in terms of true diversity is not the dominant model and that the entire area is quite treacherous.

Thanks for the link. It provided desperately needed context. The Artsy Editor Plugin looks great, too bad that what ended up in WP 3.2 left out key design elements ?? I guess I’ll limp along with ScribeFire in the interim. I find that I am not comfortable paying for Artsy under the current circumstances.

I appreciate the quick response, Ipstenu. And thanks for your question.

The fading in and out makes it so impossible to use that I am not entirely sure what else is wrong. I have attempted to determine whether I can get a full set of buttons so as to be able to drop into true flow and it appears not. Much, though not all, of my writing is rich media, and not the commercial glow and rotate type. I specialize in visualization, creating original illustrations and graphics to explain complex ideas. I most certainly do not write linearly, but rather move around within a piece constructing it. I am in flow state while doing so. Different minds work differently. One size does not fit all.

In the new editor, the post is framed in an odd way on the screen that bears no resemblance to how it will look on my blog, which is very, well, distracting. (As is the fade in and out each time I aim for the menu. It is highly reminiscent of math teachers insisting that there is only one way to solve math problems and look where that got us.)

Writing the previous post helped clarify the situation in my head and I installed ScribeFire as a stop-gap. I will be exploring the range of offline blog editors at this point, and will not return to WP’s native composing environment until I am confident that a far more profound understanding of diversity is woven through the fabric of the WP decision-making culture.

I put something out many times a day and had been making steady progress in my current project: integrating all of that onto my new WP site. Fundamentally altering the look-and-feel of tool that is fundamental to a substantial portion of someone’s communicatings is a huge cognitive insult. “I write, therefore I think.” “Writing the previous post helped clarify the situation ….” It would have been one thing had WP offered the two editors as alternatives, but to nonconsensually radically change a tool I use to think?

I continue to believe in WordPress, continue to be very impressed by the platform and the community. This setback was a real shock, but no one is perfect and alternatives such as ScribeFire exist by design.

The biggest problem by far is not allowing both editors when making such a fundamental shift. All others pale by comparison.