Thank you for your helpful response, Will. You do at least understand the issue I’m trying to get at here.
This all came about because I just bought Poster to try and improve the blogging system - because to my absolute horror, I find I’m still using the same little editor. A blogging system is about writing, for heaven’s sake! All the other aspects - social media buttons, pretty pictures, tagging, etc etc - are just shiny add-ons for the words!
So why would you make it so difficult to write the words??
So now I realise that regardless of what Stacks I buy to deliver content, I’m still going to be using that damn editor to WRITE it. Do I really have to use separate individual stacks to deliver content like headings, tables, horizontal rules?? REALLY??
Or write my content in a “proper” word processor and then transfer it across to RW for delivery?? (I mean, you do this to a certain extent anyway, yes; but not to the extent that people seem to be suggesting is required in RW).
If so, this is not a happy realisation … and maybe I’m not using the right program for me, after all. And that’s a costly realisation.
begin slight rant
The current editor feels like an afterthought, it really does. It opens in a tiny little box, it has limited functionality, the layout is bizarre and the interface isn’t like any other content editor on the planet. You get three different displays depending on whether you’re just looking at the text, editing it, or previewing the page in a browser. That’s just wrong.
It basically breaks all the rules that we, as Apple users, have internalised and seen spread to every other computer system out there.
I’d like to note that halfway sophisticated editors well pre-date Wordpress and other blogging tools, of course. I’m not a web designer, but I AM a content specialist, which means I get to play in dozens of flat-file and CMS-type web systems. Since the mid-90s, I’ve used everything from plaintext editors where I create and markup content in pure HTML, through to a recent slightly hideous contract where I got to learn Drupal in a hurry. It drove me insane with its apparent focus on extension while leaving behind core functionality, but I learnt to use AND manage the blasted thing (and the useless business supposedly delivering its functionality).
But even Drupal, for all its manifold faults, understands that the heart of a web designing program is a content editor. Its core editor is solid enough, and you can easily plug in something else if you so desire.
RW is like a nice combination of Dreamweaver (still my favourite web editor of all time, but too expensive these days) and a good CMS-based system.
But, like Drupal, it seems to forget that many web content/designer people deal in basic words and text, and are persnickity control freaks who need to drop into HTML to ensure everything is delivered JUST so. (And before you ask yes, I still say WordPerfect was a better writing tool than Word, because you could adjust the SGML precisely the way you wanted it, rather than the tool taking control of your writing the way Word does).
I don’t want to use blogging software like Wordpress for my website. Tried that, hated the result. It all looked the same. I mean, it was pretty, and easy to use, but the lack of imagination in the template creators was mind-blowing and, at heart, it’s STILL a blogging system, not a content one. I want a blog, but that’s not the core part of my site.
However, I wouldn’t mind some of the design principles that WP, Wix, etc embrace to come into the “hard” web systems like RW and Drupal. Even hard-core coders and geeks like things to look nice and be easy to use, otherwise we’d still be using Blackberries instead of iPhones.
I also don’t want to have to buy/source umpteen little Stacks to deliver independent parts of the written word. Why should I need a separate Stack just for headings, another for a horizontal rule, a third for tables?? That’s nuts.
So I want a nice, easy, manageable text/content editor that, yes, gives me both the functionality of a stripped-back word processor (more TextEdit or Page than MS Word) AND the ability to edit the markup to deliver precisely what I want. And I want that text editor to behave the same way regardless of where I’m using it - on a page, as a blog, etc etc.
It’s coming close to being a deal-breaker for me. Despite the time and money I’ve poured into RW, I am seriously contemplating moving to another program, because I have to keep buying things to try and improve how I handle the words. (What this program might be, I don’t know. It took me 3 months of research to settle on RW as it was. I might just have to grit my teeth and somehow justify the cost of Dreamweaver, after all - or control my gag reflex and go to Typepad, Wordpress, or Wix).
end slight rant
