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Update on Try Gutenberg blockers

“Try Gutenberg” is an initiative, currently scheduled for WordPress 4.9.8, to drive more usage of the Gutenberg editor plugin. A while back, I left an offhand comment listing issues I saw as blockers (those that caused data transformation that would be hard to recover from at scale). This comment apparently received more attention than I expected it to, so now we’re partially focused on making sure those blockers are resolved.

And have we been fixing blockers! A non-exhaustive list includes:

The two remaining problems that cause me the most hesitation are:

  1. Unexpected content changes toggling Classic editor from Text to Visual to Text – When post content includes blocks (i.e. you’re opening a Gutenberg post in the Classic Editor), TinyMCE can mangle the blocks within the post. The solution is TBD; needs additional research.
  2. Gutenberg breaks “classic” posts w/ shortcodes by carelessly wrapping shortcodes into paragraph tags – This was partially fixed by correctly handling multi-line shortcodes in a block conversion. However, these multi-line shortcodes still end up with paragraph tags around them. The current suggestion to explore is running wpautop() and shortcode_unautop() on the server instead of TinyMCE.

If you’d like to save a point of reference, I have a working GitHub issue documenting these two and some other issues around block conversion, tables, and galleries. Help appreciated!

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Help with the Gutenberg Migration Guide at WCEU

This was originally posted on make.wordpress.org/hosting.

Looking for something to do at Contributor Day? We could use your help!

The Gutenberg Migration Guide is a crowdsourcing project to document WordPress Classic Editor customization points and their Gutenberg equivalents (if such exist). media_buttons is the quintessential example; whereas you might’ve used this action previously in the Classic Editor to register a button, it no longer exists in Gutenberg and the block inserter is its direct equivalent.

We want the migration guide to be as comprehensive as it can be. This is defined as:

  1. Identifying as many integration points as we can find. For instance, there are already 14 actions / filters listed. Some are commonly used, while others are not. As long as we have a good example for how the integration point is used, it makes sense to include in the guide.
  2. Whenever possible, documenting how feature parity can be achieved with Gutenberg. Some integration points do already have Gutenberg equivalents. Others don’t yet, and that’s alright.

You can help make the migration guide more comprehensive. If you don’t have any examples of your own to include, here are a couple of places you can start looking:

Everyone can contribute to the migration guide, regardless of skill set. All you need to do is open a new GitHub issue and report the incompatibility you’ve found. Screenshots and GIFs are tremendously helpful. If you know the underlying problem, then please include that too. If all you know is that a given plugin’s feature doesn’t work in Gutenberg, no worries; simply open an issue and we can help track down the cause. Identifying examples of breakage are what we need help with most.

Feel free to join #hosting-community in the WordPress.org Slack if you have any questions, etc. Thanks for your help!

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High value Gutenberg issues

Want to have a huge impact on Gutenberg’s rollout to a larger number of users? Here are some high value issues that would benefit from a pull request over the next week:

Read through the contributing guide for details on how to get started. Feel free to ask questions on the specific issue, or join us in the #core-editor channel with any questions you might have.

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First Arduino project: distance alarm

Amazingly, our refrigerator doesn’t have an alarm for when you accidentally leave the door open.

In the last six months, we’ve left the refrigerator door open overnight three times. Because the light stays on when the door is open, another horrible design decision, the refrigerator thermometer hits 107°F by the time I notice it in the morning.

At yesterday’s inaugural PDX Raspberry Pi and Arduino meetup, I prototyped my solution to the problem: an alarm for accidentally leaving the refrigerator door open.

Using a Parallax Ping Ultrasonic distance sensor, the Arduino board detects its distance to the nearest object in front of it. If there’s nothing within 2 inches for greater than 5 seconds, then the Arduino board uses a piezo buzzer to make some noise. The system resets when an object is placed within 2 inches again.

On a whole, I was surprised how quickly I got up to speed on Arduino. My “Hello World” project, blinking a LED diode, took about 10 minutes to complete. This distance alarm only took 20 minutes beyond that, with a little bit of guidance on what hardware to use and access to tutorials on how to use it.

Up next: figuring out how to miniaturize the entire setup so I can put it in a small housing and deploy to production (aka use it in my home).

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Gutenbergen

Thanks to the generosity of WP Engine and DreamHost, I now have a good amount of time to dedicate to Gutenberg over the next few months.

Of particular interest: using automated systems to ensure an exceptional day one (and two and three) user experience.

Lots of problems to solve between now and then — looking forward to diving in!

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Nothing is sacred

What’s wrong with voting?

Although voting seems like an intuitive concept, there are a few major flaws that seem to be getting worse over time.

Voting is never truly representative

We assume voting is fair because it vaguely reflects some total population that we are trying to represent. It’s impossible to exactly pin down what “representative” means. (Similar demographics, interests, incomes, ideologies? All of the above?)

[…]

Voting is a competitive game

Voting is a zero-sum game, meaning that whomever wins does so at the expense of someone else. As a result, voting promotes competition, not cooperation. Players might coordinate as a means of gaining an edge (“if you vote for X this time, I’ll give you Y next time”), but ultimately, “winning” the vote means beating someone else.

[…]

So. We have our current system, and we’ve identified some emerging problems that we need to solve for. What does that look like?

Designing for cooperation, not competition

If you’re an avid board gamer, you’ve probably come across a cooperative game or two, like Pandemic or Forbidden Island. In a cooperative game, you work with, rather than compete against, your fellow players to achieve a shared outcome…

Nadia Eghbal – The problem with voting
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Good first Gutenberg issues

Want to submit your first pull request to Gutenberg? Here are a few good first issues to get your feet wet:

Read through the contributing guide for details on how to get started. Feel free to ask questions on the specific issue, or join us in the #core-editor channel with any questions you might have.