Dear WordPress –
We interrupt this blog for a quick piece of hate mail for you and this platform I’ve been blogging on for several years now. Not that I think WordPress knows or cares who I am, but I’m pissed off enough to say it anyway. Perhaps it’ll help other WP users who feel the same way realize that they are not alone. Re-inventing the WP editor in favor of this idiot ‘Gutenberg’ tool makes as much sense as re-inventing the hammer for a carpenter. You don’t need to tell me how to hammer.
Since the 80s, people have been tinkering with the UI of a WYSIWYG text editor. I can remember learning to type on AppleWriter years ago, and the commonalities of interface stretched through Wordstar, Wordperfect, Staroffice, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Write, Microsoft Works, Framemaker, Wordpad, and Google Docs. We know you aren’t perfect, and we were prepared to love you anyway, but this is too much.
Re-organizing the entire interface to support ‘media rich pages and posts’ ignores your entire raison d’être: WORDS. That’s your name, isn’t it? WORDpress? Not MEDIARICHPAGESpress. How are we supposed to write words when every single paragraph is in its own little box and all the tools for formatting said paragraphs are buried under an avalanche of non-intuitive clickthroughs that only make sense to people who aren’t actually trying to write?
Fixing this is really easy: give us the option to turn off Gutenberg and go back to the original editor, so we don’t have to run a plug-in to write like we usually do. If you’re so serious about making WP work for media-rich experiences, fork the code and give those black turtleneck-wearing dorks what they want. Give us our word processor back, you evil swine!
I just wanted to get this off my chest. This is why George R R Martin continues to write with Wordstar. Any more nonsense out of you fools, and I’m gonna port this whole site over to Mambo.