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FCK Editor in MySource Matrix?
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Off and on I keep thinking about how nice it would be to be able to use FCK Editor in MySource Matrix instead of the current WYSIWYG editor. So, today I went ahead and worked on building FCK Editor as a new content type. It really was not that hard, I used version 2.6.4 which is the newest version. I started out by putting the fckeditor folder in the Matrix lib directory so that it would be served by Apache. Then, I built the content_type, included the fckeditor.php file and change some additional files.
After running step_03.php and compile_locals.php I created a new standard page, and set the content type to FCK Editor. Everything loads like you would expect from the FCK Demos, but integrating this with some of the Matrix plug ins is going to be a bigger job. Things like the Matrix Insert Link and Insert Image will be more work to integrate, but I have already started work on building custom plug ins for FCK Editor to use the Matrix dialogs for images and links. There have been a few hangs up with getting the pop-ups to work correctly, but it should be working soon.
Another piece to this puzzle will be seeing how hard it would be to replace the Matrix WYSIWYG editor that is used in News Assets, Calendar, etc. It should not be hard, but right now I am focusing on the content_type.
How interested is everyone as seeing something like this developed, working and available?
As an added bonus this blog post was written with FCK Editor. 
Comments on this article
6 comments
Nic Hubbard wrote on Jun 23, 2009 at 9:04 am:
@ Tom Barrett - I would be more than happy to share my code. I have it working as both a content_type and an attribute. The place where I have gotten stuck is integrating the Matrix plugins. So, for now, I have not worked on it much as I have been distracted by another project. I will try to contact you on the forums.
Tom Barrett wrote on Jun 23, 2009 at 3:10 am:
Hey Nic I'm keen to see this reach fruition, and I used to be a matrix developer so I might be able to help. Are you willing to post the code somewhere?
Nic Hubbard wrote on May 14, 2009 at 3:42 pm:
@ ndrw - I don't think it will be too hard to get the plugins working, as I can still use the pop-up just how they work in the current editor. But, we will see, just working now to get it as an attribute type, so that it can replace the WYSIWYG editor in News Items, Calendar, etc.
ndrw wrote on May 14, 2009 at 3:35 pm:
very cool nic, It's good to see you go this far already. I like FCk myself, it's nicer than default matrix editor, and it would be very interesting to see how you go getting all the plugins to work, from some of our users experiences though, they will never like any wysiwyg editor ;)
Nic Hubbard wrote on May 12, 2009 at 10:06 pm:
@ Rachel - It is just another WYSIWYG editor that produces XHTML. There has just been such strong opposition to the current Matrix WYSIWYG editor that I thought it would be good to have an alternative. FCK editor also has some great features, very clean API, a great ability to add new plugins and so much more.
Rachel wrote on May 12, 2009 at 9:51 pm:
How does FCK Editor compare to HTML Tidy? I used to be happy with HTML Tidy but now that I have moved to 3.18.11 it just seems to be putting break codes everywhere that I have to switch to code view to remove. :p