Editor chat summary: 2 February, 2022

This post summarizes the weekly editor chat meeting (agenda here) held on 2022-02-02 14:00 UTC in Slack. Moderated by @zieladam.

The meeting followed a new format with shorter formal updates and more space for open floor discussion. Everyone is encouraged to share their thoughts on this new format as a comment under the proposal post as that discussion will steer future #core-editor meeting agendas.

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 12.5.0 RC1 was published earlier this week.

@fabiankaegy is preparing a stable release for later today.

WordPress

• WordPress 5.9 has been released last week .
• The next minor releaseMinor Release A set of releases or versions having the same minor version number may be collectively referred to as .x , for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, 5.2.3, and all other versions in the 5.2 (five dot two) branch of that software. Minor Releases often make improvements to existing features and functionality. is WP 5.9.1 and the next major releasemajor release A release, identified by the first two numbers (3.6), which is the focus of a full release cycle and feature development. WordPress uses decimaling count for major release versions, so 2.8, 2.9, 3.0, and 3.1 are sequential and comparable in scope. is WP 6.0 🛠.
• The preliminary plan for WP 6.0 was published last week by @matias.
• Last week’s update covers 16 commits and 126 tickets from 30 contributors. Kudos to everyone involved!

Async key project updates

We used to exchange key project updates synchronously during the chat. However, many of the key Gutenberg projects sustain a regular cadence of updates on their tracking issues on 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/.

This week we tried async updates. The attendees are encouraged to read the latest updates directly from the following tracking issues at everyone’s leisure:

• Navigation block
• Comments loop block
• Site editor, Patterns, and Styling
• Mobile Team
• Components Team

Task Coordination

@get_dave

• A PR to automatically append a list of New contributors to the Gutenberg release changelog.
• Continued wrangling Nav 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. related Issues and tasks into the new Tracking Issue.

@zieladam

• Preparing a Create your First App with Gutenberg Data tutorial.
• Wrote a larger data layer overview document that I will likely be split into a few smaller ones.
• Exploring friendlier APIs for the Gutenberg data layer: useQuerySelect, useEntityRecord.

@paaljoachim

• Highlighting: On Locking and TemplateLocking as this would be very beneficial for Reusable blocks.

@amustaque97

• Working on enhancement of tag-cloud block.
• I would like to discuss indentation/outdentation of code block here!

@ntsekouras

• Highlighting: There is a PR for allowing pattern registration from the directory with theme.jsonJSON JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML.. Needs review though.

Open Floor

Ensure proper attribution for contributors to WordPress on GitHub

• @jeffpaul wanted to highlight and discuss a better way to capture props.
• @desrosj noted the proposal can be considered “withdrawn” for now and will be revisited later. The discussion and feedback is still encouraged.

Enabling indentation inside of the code block

• @amusaque97 asked if we should implement an indent feature for the code block.
• @get_dave noted he’d like such a feature, however using a tab key may be tricky accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility)-wise.
• @get_dave encouraged exploring a solution via a pull request.

Improving the keyboard navigation

• @tellthemachines requested feedback in the discussion on how to improve keyboard navigation.
• @get_dave surfaced the suggestion to focus more on making the List View more accessible. 
• @mamaduka noted it would be great to surface more such discussions during the meetings.

A way to detect block themes

• @andraganescu highlighted a trac ticket about ways to auto magically detect block themes, and proposed a way forward by requiring the theme to explicitly declare itself as a block theme.
• The feedback was favorable, further discussion will happen inside of the ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker..

Styling hover/focus/active states for blocks

• @get_dave asked whether there are any designers currently looking into the need to be able to style hover/focus/active states for blocks.
• @bph noted this is a major pain point from many theme developers.
• @paaljoachim shared an idea about how there could for instance be a panel where one can add the various states of a button.

Big thanks to @paaljoachim, @get_dave, @bph, @andraganescu for their help with preparing the meeting and this summary!

#core-editor-summary, #gutenberg, #meeting-notes, #summary