I just found back this post by David Gerard from 2010 and was struck by how dead-on the discussion and analysis was and how far we have actually come with VE 5 years later, even though we still did not pass the finish line just yet.
Also interesting is some of the follow up to it, which points out that the usability of Templates is also a real problem in itself, not easily solvable with WYSIWYG, but probably just as important.
I think VE is really close now to being usable in production, but I think that we are FAR from done on this front. Like was stated, templates are a real problem. A UI problem, and one that VE doesn't really solve. Citoid sort of does, but just for one small subset of templates.
I think it is important to remember that VE is a framework. The piece that will open up other possibilities, but that we will need to still do a lot of work to find what those possibilities are, how they can make page and article authoring more usable etc...
The post starts with a quote of Fred Bauder: "There has to be a vision though"
So I'm asking: What is the vision for this next step ?
- What ideas do people have with regard to usability and templates.
- What examples of good editors can we find that also deal with templates/objects etc.
- What are our unique challenges ?
- What kind of research and development would be needed to deliver this ?
I would love it if we could end up with a discussion and summary as we had back then. A guide for us towards solving this next problem within another 5 years. We and the WMF can probably not start on this tomorrow, but we can start thinking about it.
DJ