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Facebook open sources Lexical, an extensible text editor library

lexical.dev

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Re: Facebook open sources Lexical, an extensible text editor library

#81

Post by graycat »

stareatgoats wrote: post #69
graycat wrote: post #67

> Lexical is comprised of editor instances that each attach to a single content editable element. Now if I only knew what was meant by attach , content editable , and element . Then I suspect I don't know what is meant even by comprised or editor . To me: A bit is a 0 or a 1. A byte is 8 bits in a sequence where by sequence we mean the order of the bits matters. Or in terms of pure math, a byte is not a set but is an…

I think the answer to your woes is to accept that the computing domain (while labelled by a single word "computing"), in reality is so vast that no one can expect to be a master of it all. Most of us are content to carve out our own little niche; I for one have no idea what a video adapter card is, nor how Tex works, but I have good grasp of what a content editable element is, and so on. The computing domain is perha…

My view is that the bottleneck is documentation or technical writing. As far as I can tell, so far nearly all of practical computing is conceptually easy. Digging into the work on the question of P versus NP does get tricky quickly, but so far that question is not very practical, e.g., with the question and the work so far, in practice can't do much with them.

For progress on documentation, as I hinted in my post, a first step is to define terms and acronyms. A second step for a term, concept, feature, etc. is some examples.

With reasonably good technical writing, I understand quickly.

E.g., for M.2, nothing I found from Google, Bing, Amazon, Western Digital, etc. made much sense. Then I downloaded from Asus a PDF of the basic technical information on a current, high end Asus motherboard and just looked at the board "layout" -- there it was easy to see what M.2 was all about, and the information was darned explicit, sockets on a motherboard, and highly credible, an actual Asus product.

To me, in short, for the computer industry and the rest of the economy depending on it, the issue is technical writing and, there, defining and explaining terms.

E.g., React. Okay, I gave the one line Google description. React has to do with writing JavaScript code. Okay. Even though I wrote the software for a Web site, I never wrote any JavaScript at all. Microsoft's ASP.NET wrote a little for me, but for how my site's Web pages work that JavaScript seems optional. So, first cut, for now, I can f'get about React and tools for working with JavaScript. In particular, if Lexical is mostly about working with JavaScript, then, again, first cut, for now I can f'get about Lexical -- but on this point I wanted to be sure, and so far I'm not.

Re: Facebook open sources Lexical, an extensible text editor library

#82

Post by alephnan »

motoxpro wrote: post #78
alephnan wrote: post #42

This feels half baked and confusing. More than half docs page are blank: - https://lexical.dev/docs/concepts/commands - https://lexical.dev/docs/getting-started/quick-start - https://lexical.dev/docs/concepts/extending-nodes - https://lexical.dev/docs/concepts/editor-state - https://lexical.dev/docs/api/lexical - https://lexical.dev/docs/api/lexical-selection - https://lexical.dev/docs/api/lexical-text - https://lexi…

Always trips me out how even though a HN users know about software, they judge releases as though they are not software and that they are moment in time and wont get any better. I'm all for criticism. It is great for everyone, but a library gets open sourced and you're complaining about empty docs? Seriously? Just hold off until it's more mature or open up a PR to add some stuff to the docs.

> and you're complaining about empty docs?

Then don't link to it if it's broken. You're wasting people's time.

> Just hold off until it's more mature

Sure, but indicate that it's an alpha product for public consumption instead of suggesting that it's ready for production use by other teams, just because Facebook uses it internally. You're wasting people's time.

> but a library gets open sourced and you're complaining about empty docs?

Should we not criticize the NPM ecosystem for half implementations that gets abandoned? It seems the team working on Lexical is derivative of Draft.js, which was open sourced by Facebook, and then abandoned. They don't even have the decency to label it is such. In a way, this seems to be a core re-write as Draft.js faced limits with ImmutableJS. Here, they are still leaning into functional programming concepts which may be an expensive abstraction that they will have to do another core re-write / abandon in the future. Seems like the marketing of these projects are for career self-serving purposes. Again, wasting people's time.

Re: Facebook open sources Lexical, an extensible text editor library

#84

Post by eyelidlessness »

Here I was ready to be crabby about yet another web based rich text editor, but after reading so many comments about how it’s not a good code editor—which it’s not, it’s not one at all atm—I’m kind of just crabby about the discussion being completely about something other than the topic. Y’all, I know it’s a thing in software to curmudgeon everything but can we at least curmudgeon the actual thing it actually is? Or maybe just suspend curmudgeon-ness and see if the thing is deserving of that in the first place?

Re: Facebook open sources Lexical, an extensible text editor library

#85

Post by acywatson »

alephnan wrote: post #82
motoxpro wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always trips me out how even though a HN users know about software, they judge releases as though they are not software and that they are moment in time and wont get any better. I'm all for criticism. It is great for everyone, but a library gets open sourced and you're complaining about empty docs? Seriously? Just hold off until it's more mature or open up a PR to add some stuff to the docs.

> and you're complaining about empty docs? Then don't link to it if it's broken. You're wasting people's time. > Just hold off until it's more mature Sure, but indicate that it's an alpha product for public consumption instead of suggesting that it's ready for production use by other teams, just because Facebook uses it internally. You're wasting people's time. > but a library gets open sourced and you're complaining…

>Sure, but indicate that it's an alpha product

Do you mean something like the banner on the README?

https://github.com/facebook/lexical

>They don't even have the decency to label it is such

Do you mean something like the big banner on the README?

https://github.com/facebook/draft-js

Re: Facebook open sources Lexical, an extensible text editor library

#86

Post by zelphirkalt »

motoxpro wrote: post #78
alephnan wrote: post #42

This feels half baked and confusing. More than half docs page are blank: - https://lexical.dev/docs/concepts/commands - https://lexical.dev/docs/getting-started/quick-start - https://lexical.dev/docs/concepts/extending-nodes - https://lexical.dev/docs/concepts/editor-state - https://lexical.dev/docs/api/lexical - https://lexical.dev/docs/api/lexical-selection - https://lexical.dev/docs/api/lexical-text - https://lexi…

Always trips me out how even though a HN users know about software, they judge releases as though they are not software and that they are moment in time and wont get any better. I'm all for criticism. It is great for everyone, but a library gets open sourced and you're complaining about empty docs? Seriously? Just hold off until it's more mature or open up a PR to add some stuff to the docs.

The criticism to me reads more like "do not reinvent the wheel" type of criticism, which sometimes we need more of.

Re: Facebook open sources Lexical, an extensible text editor library

#87

Post by alephnan »

acywatson wrote: post #85
alephnan wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and you're complaining about empty docs? Then don't link to it if it's broken. You're wasting people's time. > Just hold off until it's more mature Sure, but indicate that it's an alpha product for public consumption instead of suggesting that it's ready for production use by other teams, just because Facebook uses it internally. You're wasting people's time. > but a library gets open sourced and you're complaining…

>Sure, but indicate that it's an alpha product Do you mean something like the banner on the README? https://github.com/facebook/lexical >They don't even have the decency to label it is such Do you mean something like the big banner on the README? https://github.com/facebook/draft-js

> Note: Lexical is currently in early development and APIs and packages are likely to change quite often

Why not mention it in the landing page or docs then?

From my understanding, Facebook lawyers require you peg such commentary in Github packages that are published. Google does this too but Google's definition of "early development" is usually closer to Beta, and their Beta is effectively GA.

Draft.js website doesn't give the impression that it's abandoned. True, people should inspect the source code of projects they consume, but many don't.

Re: Facebook open sources Lexical, an extensible text editor library

#88

Post by zurfyx »

asxd wrote: post #83

It crashed after I created a code block, converted it to a quote block, and the hit ctrl+z to undo (something about a history node not being found, I think. Sorry, should have saved the output).

Thanks for trying it out! Mind drafting a quick issue here so that we can have a look? https://github.com/facebook/lexical/issues

Re: Facebook open sources Lexical, an extensible text editor library

#90

Post by stareatgoats »

petepete wrote: post #75

From a company that intentionally broke text editing on mobile to force people to install the Messenger app, I wouldn't use it even if it was great.

> a company that intentionally broke text editing

Of course inclined to believe you, but do you have a source to back this up?

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