WALTER

an in-browser WYSIWYG HTML editor written in JavaScript

Walter will intercept your keystrokes and insert text to the webpage you are viewing in your broswer. The idea is to turn your browser into a WYSIWYG HTML editor.

If you are bored of reading already, just go ahead an try a live version of walter now! (Or, go to the SourceForge project page or download page.)

Main uses for Walter might be as a replacement for a <textarea> in

chats and bulletinboards
content management systems
...given that Linux IMHO currently has no WYSIWYG HTML-editors, I could see Walter becoming one. But let's not get carried away.

MAIN PHILOSOPHY

Main philosophy of Walter is:

the wysiwyg part is handled by the fact, that we are doing this in a browser
The W3C DOM allows any kind of manipulation of the HTML in a page
We just have to intercept keystrokes and commands from the user (this is a little tricky) and actually implementing the DOM manipulation (first release of walter already had 790 lines of JavaScript)

CURRENT FEATURES

Walter currently knows how to write and erase (backspace) text. Enter makes a new paragraph, shift+enter a br. Any inline tags can work (b, i, img, a) but only the most common are exposed as buttons.

p and heading elements are supported, but not tables, lists or other "large" block elements.

There is no support for mouse movements and also no other way of marking text. Thus bold and other effects can only be used while writing, you cannot format text afterwards. You can move with left and right arrows (only Opera on windows) up and down are not implemented.

The current GUI is a simple auto-generated set of buttons that purposefully exposes the inner logic of walter. When more things work a real GUI needs to be built.

MAIN CHALLENGES

Altough the DOM is a great API, listening to keyboard and especially mouse events is not very standardised. Early experiences suggest that keystrokes will not be a problem, mouse-events might need some imagination (not tried yet). Non-characters (arrows, delete...) have different keycodes in different browsers, which will be a major challence.

BROWSERS

Walter works on the following browsers:

IE4, NS4: Will not work, we use DOM.
IE5 and above: As for JavaScript support, this will work on IE5 and above, but at least IE6 will crash after a few keystrokes. It simply can't take the pounding
Mozilla and derivatives: Works great
Opera: Works great Arrows and some other keys have different keycodes in Opera than in Moz and IE
Konqueror 3.1.0: Doesn't seem to do anything. Have not checked why this is.
Safari & Konqueror 3.2: I now have a report that Walter works swell on the Safari browser on a Mac. Hence it should also work with Konqueror 3.2, but I have not verified this yet.

FOR USERS AND OR DEVELOPERS

Try a live version of walter now!

SourceForge project page

download page

Ask questions or have suggestions: hingo@users.sourceforge.net

There is currently nothing in CVS. Walter is basically one large JavaScript file. Download the most current release and play with that. I will gladly accept any contributions as patches by email (hingo@users.sourceforge.net ) or the SourceForge patch tracking system.

LICENSE

Walter is Open Source (http://www.opensource.org/) You can freely use, copy and develop it in any way you see fit, according to the following license (the MIT License):

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.