User specific "Default state" setting is not obeyed

I was experiencing the behavior that while editing a user profile, changing the "Rich text editor settings" > "Default state" between Enabled and Disabled had no effect and behaved as if it was always enabled.

On the edit screen for users (user/%uid/edit), there is a grouping of 5 settings under Rich text editor settings. These settings are stored in the data field of the given user's row in the users table. (SELECT data FROM users WHERE uid = %uid)

• Default state (ckeditor_default)
• Show the disable/enable rich text editor toggle (ckeditor_show_toggle)
• Editor width (ckeditor_width)
• Language (ckeditor_lang)
• Auto-detect language (ckeditor_auto_lang)

I traced all 5 settings through the process and made the following discoveries.

1. Fetching Settings
In includes/ckeditor.lib.inc at line 817, we populate $conf with the user's selected settings. These values match what are defined on user/%uid/edit. No problem here.

  if (user_access('customize ckeditor')) {
    foreach (array('default', 'show_toggle', 'width', 'lang', 'auto_lang') as $setting) {
      $conf[$setting] = ckeditor_user_get_setting($user, $profile, $setting);
    }
  }

2. Persisting Settings
In includes/ckeditor.lib.inc at line 854, we copy the value of $conf['width'] with the user's selected setting for that. In subsequent lines, we also work with $conf['show_toggle'] (863), $conf['lang'] (846), and $conf['auto_lang'] (924). We do not see any occurrence of $conf['default'] being used and, since only $settings is returned, we lose that setting. This is our first problem.

  $settings['width'] = $conf['width'];
  ...
  $settings['show_toggle'] = $conf['show_toggle'];

3. Referencing Settings
In includes/ckeditor.lib.inc at line 1431, we have the following:

  if ($settings = ckeditor_profiles_compile($format)) {
    $ckeditor_on = ($profile->settings['default'] == 't') ? TRUE : FALSE;
  }

At first, I thought $profile->settings would refer to the user profile settings. That is an incorrect assumption. In this context, $profile->settings['default'] calls for the value of the CKEditor Profile as listed on admin/config/content/ckeditor.

In looking for confirmation of this finding, line 1450 shows a fellow setting, show_toggle, getting it's value from $settings:

    if ($settings['show_toggle'] == 't' && $show_toggle) {

It appears that $profile holds the CKEditor Profile settings while $settings holds the default, user and custom (ckeditor.config.js) settings.

So, line 1432's call to $profile->settings['default'] is our second problem.

4. Summary
To fix this issue, we need to:

1. ensure that ckeditor_default user setting is retained
2. use that value as part of the decision making process

I have a patch for this and will upload shortly.