Visual editor versus Text editor and Preview button

Honestly, who wants to hand code a table at all?

The truth of the matter is that most people don’t flip back and forth. The Visual editor is not meant for people who know HTML. Quite the opposite, in fact.

If you know HTML, and want to hand code your HTML code, then the text editor is there for you to do exactly that.

But if not, the Visual editor is there for people who don’t know HTML and don’t need to know it. Themes can, and should, style it to look more like what the text on the actual site will look like.

There’s no real plan to make the Visual editor not change your oh-so-carefully made HTML code, because the entire purpose of it is to enable you to not need to know HTML code in the first place. It is always going to change your HTML code because it’s there to write that HTML code for you.

If you absolutely need it to behave differently, then that’s really plugin territory. There’s plenty of plugins to modify how the editor system works. Try those.

No-one wants to hand code a table. It was an illustration of why the visual editor is good for some things and the text editor for others.

Just because the visual editor is ‘meant’ for people who don’t know html it’s perverse not to integrate it with the text editor. Just as the text editor doesn’t implement html properly, the visual editor introduces errors. You need the one to correct the other.

It is always going to change your HTML code because it’s there to write that HTML code for you.

That is simply poor implementation. It should write html compliant code and not interfere with properly written html from the text editor.

As to using plugins – every plugin you install is another point of weakness in the whole system. WP needs to be as strong as possible and logical within itself.

There is no good reason not to make the visual & text editors work properly together.

It should write html compliant code and not interfere with properly written html from the text editor.

It does write HTML compliant code. But yes, it will interfere with your HTML in the text editor, because that is its purpose: To write HTML. Not to leave the HTML alone.

It has a set way of doing things, and it will force its content to conform to that set way.

For example, you’ll find that it strips P tags. Why? Because WordPress adds the P tags back automatically, so that the text part doesn’t need to include or show them. Normal people don’t know what a P tag is or why they’re needed, so they’re not shown to them.

As to using plugins – every plugin you install is another point of weakness in the whole system. WP needs to be as strong as possible and logical within itself.

Not everybody needs the same set of features, and plugins offer a way for people to pick and choose what they need easily.

As far as the code goes, I guess you don’t know about hooks. WordPress is not some single set of code. Something like 50% or more of the internal WordPress systems is implementing using hooks, which are the exact same ones plugins use to add their functionality. Most of WordPress itself is implemented exactly the same as a “plugin” would implement it. Ultimately, WordPress is a series of plugins operating on a central core.

Yes but WordPress has a very large number of compilers, and most plugins probably have a single committed author. This builds in a serious weakness as plugins can and do go out of use, or become incompatible with WP. Then what do you do about all the content that now doesn’t work?

WordPress itself may ultimately fold, but that is far less likely, and it’s functionality is at least pretty much guaranteed as it upgrades.

Not everybody needs the same set of features as you say. But a lot of plugins address WP’s failings rather than adding functionality.

As to the text editor versus visual. Yes, you are telling me how they work. I still fundamentally disagree that this is HOW they should work.
But I know I’m onto a loser here. Good coders don’t seem to operate in the real world. You only have to observe how the excellent techs behind google make an a**e of the functionality when they ‘improve’ things!
And come to that, a lot of plugins seem to suffer from the same gulf between between being able to write a plugin and common sense functionality, generally in terms of the interface.