In a case management Reactive web app I'm working on, an RTF editor has been requested as a feature. From what I can tell, my organization will probably not accept using a "3rd-party" forge component like CKEditor, TinyMCE, etc., since they're not maintained by ourselves and are prone to unexpected/undesirable changes (e.g., CKEditor4 becoming EOL and the new CKEditor5 being a paid model). However, I was able to confirm that since Meta/FB itself maintains Lexical, they would be open to using an open-source RTF editor such as that. Googling around, I also found a few examples of people writing RTF editors in pure JS from scratch.
In my case, what would be the easiest/best approach to implement an RTF editor? Any advice would be appreciated.
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In this related forum post, https://www.outsystems.com/ideas/7407/instructions-on-how-to-include-existing-reactjs-ui-components-as-custom-component/, it sounds like it would be difficult/non-trivial to go for the Lexical conversion, esp. since the requireJS usage has issues with ES6. Has anyone encountered similar challenges for React components that they were able to overcome?
Hi Fred,
First, any asset from the Forge that works, will keep working as long as it's compatible with the (new) versions of OutSystems you install. CKEditor4 may become end-of-life, but the Forge asset will keep working just fine - it's not like it's deinstalled, or suddenly refuse to work. Also, you could just clone them and maintain them yourself, there's nothing stopping you from doing so.
As for implementing your own RTF editor - well, that's way out of scope for this forum, as it won't be OS skills you need for that. But honestly, if you need an RTF editor, but your company refuses to implement a third party one, they're just a bunch of dumb f*cks. No arguing with such stupidity. Modern software ecosystems are build around both open source and closed source third party products, and a ban on using them is daft (what's next, write your own database? write your own low code tooling?).
I don't disagree - if it was up to me, I'd more than happily use any forge asset.
Unfortunately, it's less the 3rd party aspect that is causing concern (else why would my company even be using OutSystems) for my company, but more of the issue regarding forge assets seemingly being able to require a fee (e.g., CKEditor 5) - they asked me what's to stop an asset from changing to retroactively requiring pay? Hence me looking at that Lexical React component since it's unlikely Meta/FB would ever require payment for use of their React work.
TBH, I don't fully know the TOS for forge assets, but I had thought all of it was BSD licensed, and thus would've been "free" for commercial use, which is why I was surprised when I saw that the CKEditor 5 forge asset's description mention it not being free.