By drupalshrek on

Like many people I have downloaded the latest "Drupal" (which basically means Drupal core, which at the time of writing is 7.16), only to discover later, to my immense frustration and hassle, that it doesn't even include a WYSIWYG editor. Like many people, I have then had to struggle to understand the complexities of the warring WYSIWYG solutions: CKEditor proposes you uninstall the WYSIWYG module, and the WYSIWYG module warns you strongly not to download "CKEditor for Drupal - The ultimate editing solution for Drupal Open Source CMS". I am still fighting with that, but as a techie I will, eventually, I guess, solve it.

But surely there is a better way for Drupal to be user-friendly without losing the technical advantages of keeping core light-weight?

I understand that there is a complex, technical and heated battle between keeping Drupal core light-weight and packing Drupal core with as much as possible. I do not pretend to understand all the complex arguments therein.

What I do understand is that the current situation where the standard Drupal 7 download does not even include, for example, a working WYSIWYG editor is a tragedy, making huge amounts of very difficult work, especially for all those non-technical users, and really harming the adoption of Drupal.

My proposed solution is not the inclusion of a WYSIWYG editor in core. There are perhaps a whole bunch of other things which in some ways would be good to have in core, but are also kept outside for good technical reasons.

My proposed solution is to have the default download of Drupal be a distribution which contains lots of extra goodies (e.g. WYSIWYG editor), which I will call Drupal-super.

In technical terms this would be basically a distribution. But note, I am not simply proposing a default "distribution" in the http://drupal.org/project/distributions part of the Drupal website; if it were so, then things would not be any better than today. I am proposing that the default download, when someone selects "Download Drupal 8.16" (or whatever the latest version is), is this Drupal- super distribution. The download which we currently know as core would still be available, but less up-front.

I am not imagining that this would happen before Drupal 8.

Thus, the start page, http://drupal.org/start would display:

  • Download Drupal 8.0 [gives the Drupal-super distribution]
  • Find a Distribution [unchanged]
  • Download just the core [gives what is currently the core]

This would have the advantages:

  • the 95% of folk who just want a bunch of stuff that works will get it by default
  • the purist concept of "core" being some particularly tightly defined core with certain restrictions is preserved
  • the level of support/quality etc. required of "Drupal-super" as a distribution and Drupal core can be clearly defined and kept (e.g. Drupal core is guaranteed to be forward upgradeable, Drupal-super contains a forward upgradeable core with a less-supported bunch of modules whose support depends on the included extra modules)

This is really about packaging rather than any new development. Everything (i.e. distributions) already technically exists. This is really rather a battle for what the button "Drupal 8.0" points to, the technically pure core or the usable-out-of-the-box Drupal-super.

Discuss.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 7.x, Drupal 8.x

Comments

drupalshrek’s picture

drupalshrek commented

See Why are the simplest things in Drupal so damn difficult? for a similar tale of Drupal making life unnecessarily hard.

drupalshrek

bojanz’s picture

bojanz commented

It is called a "distribution". Distributions are featured prominently on both the front page, and on subpages such as http://drupal.org/start

drupalshrek’s picture

drupalshrek commented

Please reread my original where I say:

But note, I am not simply proposing a default "distribution"...

I understand that technically a distribution is the way to package what I am talking about. However, the radical part of my proposal is that one particular distribution becomes the default download on the "Drupal 8.x" button, and only if people really really want only the raw core will they be able to get that somewhere less obvious than on the main page. The key thing is that when people download "Drupal" (the default version), they do get a feature-packed version, including things as basic as a fully-working WYSIWYG editor.

Just having great distributions in the distribution section of the Drupal site is not good enough; the default download for everyone should be the best distribution which Drupal has available.

It is about packaging Drupal differently, rather than creating new code, but this repackaging would do more to help the adoption of Drupal (by making the default delivery of Drupal be all-singing-and-dancing and therefore very easy for the new user) by the public than many many hundreds of hours of development work.

drupalshrek