Editor Chat Summary: 24th November 2021

This post summarises the weekly editor chat meeting (agenda here) held on 2021-11-24 14:00 UTC in Slack. Moderated by @get_dave.

GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ PluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party releases

• Gutenberg 12.0.0 was released (after the meeting) – thanks to @welcher for leading this one.
• Highlights post will be released on Make blogblog (versus network, site) soon.

WordPress 5.9 status updates

•  The release schedule for WordPress 5.9 has been revised. It will now land on 25th January 2022.
• This is primarily due to features relating to FSE needing additional work in order to land a complete experience and the inability to ship these in isolation from one another (if you’d like details you should read @hellofromtonya’s post which does a great job of explaining things).
• According to @noisysocks (Editor Tech Lead) we now have until the 26th November (that date as now passed) to land any Gutenberg PRs that we want in WordPress 5.9 Beta 1.
• Here are the list of WP 5.9 pending issues and blockers.
• Please remember to add the Backport to WP Beta/RC GithubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ label on any PRs that need to land in WP 5.9.
• @mkaz reminded us about documentation needs. Please take the list of the larger project board and this dev note tracking issue.

Updates based on the scope for Site Editing projects

Updates were requested for the key projects:

Native Mobile Team

@antonisme provided the update:

Shipped

• Added Clipboard Link Suggestion to Image blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. and Buttons block
• Added auto opening of media upload options to new Gallery block

Fixes:

• Only set font sizes for block based themes
• Reverted erroneous native editor package version bumps

In Progress:

• Upgrade to ReactReact React is a JavaScript library that makes it easy to reason about, construct, and maintain stateless and stateful user interfaces. https://reactjs.org/. Native v0.66.
• Finalizing GSS Font size, line height and selected text colors.

Navigation Block

@get_dave provided the update:

• A list of “Must Haves” for the Navigation block for WP 5.9 were published.
• We’re tracking these items on the main 5.9 overview issue.
• Navigation Areas (including the block itself) are not going to be in 5.9. In fact they are now deprecated due to concerns and lack of community consensus around the UXUX User experience.
• Reusable Navigations (via the wp_navigation Custom Post) will be shipping in 5.9.
• The final experience we are targeting for the Nav block for 5.9 is outlined here.
• We recognise this is not perfect and we fully intend to iterate and improve upon this process in WordPress 6.0. However, our priority is to land a stable experience in 5.9.
• We’re seeking folks to help review the final PRs prior to the 26th deadline.

Components Packages

@mciampini provided an update:

Shipped

• ToolsPanel has an improved README and Storybook stories illustrating its usage. This component is used to group related sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. controls, grouping them and providing a standard UIUI User interface for showing and hiding them. 
• We’ve added an example for adding a chevron icon in the Item component for certain types of navigation used in Styles. 

Fixes:

• The ZStack component’s offset prop now supports RTL languages properly.

In Progress:

• We’re working on improved and more consistent support for larger variations of several input components used in the typography panel. These variations are mostly implemented with custom style overrides currently, and we’d like to provide a more declarative and consistent APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. for them.
• We’re improving support for the vertical orientation and RTL languages in the Divider component.

Templates

@annezazu stepped in to provide an update based on her recent knowledge:

• Work has been done to merge the initial template list page for the site editor.
• This creates a scaled down browsing experience that allows you to see your full list of templates and template parts along with the ability to edit your homepage.
• Work remains though to refine the experience with blockers and more shared in this overview issue.

Task Coordination

The following items were shared by folks to update us on what work is in progress or where help is needed:

@annezazu:

• Update on my end — lots of testing/triaging for 5.9 in GitHub, helped ship the recent /News post highlighting a 5.9 video a crew of us worked on.
• Continued amplifying & responding to the latest FSE outreach call for testing.
• Shared some personal thoughts on why I voted to delay 5.9, and nearly done with draft of Styles user doc (needed for the welcome guide).
• After this next week, I’ll have far more time to focus on documentation and testing efforts so plan to continue to shift attention there (have a presentation due this week about 5.9).

@get_dave:

• Been focused on the “Must Haves” for 5.9.  Particularly the Navigation block.
• I would really appreciate reviews and testing on this PR which is trying to implement a sensible default fallback for the Nav block when it’s rendered on the front end of the site.

@zieladam:

• I’m helping with making the navigation block ready.
• Right now working on giving new menus a name in https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/36760.
• I just noticed a few bugs stemming from the complexity, so I want to follow-up with a 2-in-1 PR: simplification and bugfixes.

Open Floor

Get involved in the latest call for testing

• @annezazu – I just want to deeply encourage folks to get involved in the latest call for testing: https://make.wordpress.org/test/2021/11/08/fse-program-testing-call-11-site-editing-safari/.
• It goes over some of the newest features coming to 5.9 and it goes a long way to have folks running through these flows!  
• You’ll also get a lovely Test contributor badge on your profile for participating as a thank you and recognition of your efforts.

Contributions to fix Date related bugs in Gutenberg

• Alan Smodic asked for some insight or guidance on some issues that he and his team have flagged and added comments to. Wondering if these have ever been talked about before or how best we can help to potentially solve.
• Publish datepicker time zone is server time instead of user time: #29306.
• DateTimePicker Time Zone Selection: #31522.
• Timepicker time resets when using AM/PM toggle: #29720.
• @get_dave suggested getting @talldanwp to triagetriage The act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors. in the bi-weekly triage meetings.
• @talldanwp suggested following up post 5.9.
• @mciampini said he will flag it to the rest of the components folks,

Normalize Github labels to a single “[Type] Documentation” label

• @mkaz informed us that there is a label in GitHub for “developer docs”, which is intended for issues specific to the developer documentation site.
• He’s not sure the distinction is necessary and the additional label is confusing, as many docs are being labeled with one of the two labels.
• Marcus proposed we remove the “developer docs” label and make sure any issues and PRs that have that label also have the “[Type] Documentation” label.
• Folks in the meeting agreed with this proposal.

Call for input: can we run DB upgrade scripts as part of Gutenberg upgrade process?

• @get_dave raised this Issue whereby meta tags were added to the post content on “Paste”.
• The coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. issue has now been fixed but contributors are asking whether Gutenberg can add a one time operation on upgrade which runs a DB cleanup operation on all posts to remove this erroneous tagtag A directory in Subversion. WordPress uses tags to store a single snapshot of a version (3.6, 3.6.1, etc.), the common convention of tags in version control systems. (Not to be confused with post tags.).
• I’d like to understand whether there is any prior art for achieving such a thing in Gutenberg – any input from @youknowriad or other Core folks would be appreciated.

Wrap up

Thanks to everyone who attended the meeting!

#core-editor, #core-editor-summary, #summary