Move TinyMCE to a plugin

[Viper007Bond]

Make TinyMCE a plugin so that WordPress can run without it properly. It's a pain in the ass to have to upload all the files for it each time I setup WordPress somewhere.

I envision if you disable it, the option to enable it disappears and the write screen acts as if you have it off. If you enable the plugin, it acts exactly like it does now.

I'll make a patch tomorrow if I get a chance unless I hear any objections.

[andy]

TinyMCE is too valuable to the target audience at large.

​discussion on wp-hackers

[Viper007Bond]

I didn't say don't include it with WordPress or not have it enabled/activated in a fresh install (it's great for the less technically inclined), but I think it'd be best to have is a plugin rather than in the wp-includes folder. This makes it easier to get rid of and more importantly, easier to replace with something else.

I'll take the idea to wp-hackers though.

[masquerade]

​http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-hackers/2006-September/008463.html
This thread tried, in a million ways, to convince anyone that the RTE should be a plugin activated by default. As you can see already, it failed.

[markjaquith]

It's not going to be moved to a plugin, but if you want to make it easier to remove it, I'm reasonably sure that no one would object to that.

Right now, you can do rm -rf wp-includes/js/tinymce/ and that works reasonably well, but it still tries to load the JS. One solution might be to make a tinymce_exists() function that checks for the tinymce JS file using file_exists() that result should be cached in a global variable, so that it is only checked once per Post screen load.

Go ahead and open a new ticket if you want to do that. I'd definitely be in favor of that.

[markjaquith]

And actually, that solution would be very much like a plugin that was activated by default... the deactivation is the act of deleting it.

[filosofo]

I wish TinyMCE were a plugin, just because it would be a lot easier to keep it up-to-date. Presumably as a plugin, like Akismet, it could be updated at more frequent intervals than stable WordPress is, allowing us to take advantage of the latest TinyMCE developments.

As it is now, you have to 1) wait for someone to port TinyMCE changes into WP trunk, then 2) wait for the next stable WP.

[Viper007Bond]

See also: #3272