I understand your views, even if your view of blocks seems to be one big long run on paragraph.
But, to address your views, you can write the content externally just fine, and then paste it in. That actually works. The editor will break up your content into blocks all by itself. Whether you write it there or just paste it in. I know, I was surprised too. You don’t have to stop to create new blocks, just, you know, keep typing. It works. Really.
The formatting comes after the fact, and it’s pretty basic for this release. Nothing much complex there. The columns are a bit shaky, and I wish there was a better wrapper type of block, but once you actually try to write something in it and just ignore the block thing, welp, it works great. Mostly. Minor formatting issues only.
Take another look. Really. Just saying. You might be surprised.
I understand your views, even if your view of blocks seems to be one big long run on paragraph.
This is not a helpful attitude.
The editor will break up your content into blocks all by itself.
A collection of blocks is much more difficult and time consuming to edit than a scroll of text.
A collection of blocks is much more difficult and time consuming to edit than a scroll of text.
In what way, exactly? Considering that you can edit it exactly the same as a big wall-of-text, using the same clicks, the same button presses, and everything else being literally exactly the same.
Want to merge two paragraph blocks? You go to the beginning of one of them and hit backspace and it merges in with the one above it. Same as you would do if they were not blocks.
Basically, your idea of the blocks being somehow different than the big scroll of text is a conceptual one only, not an actual difference.
@otto42 Thank you for your comments. I don’t spend a lot of time writing reviews here and certainly do not like writing within this text box, and I won’t spend a lot of time formatting my comments to fit your requirements. I don’t get paid to do this, and I certainly won’t do your job for you.
You, as a WordPress.org Admin, are a great example of exactly what some of the reviewers are complaining about. One reviewer even referenced your comments to my review with a link back to it (thank you, other reviewer). So, thank you for showing users and reviewers exactly what is wrong with WordPress and Gutenberg. Again, I am glad that I have already installed the stop-gap plugin for Classic Editor. Perhaps in several years when Gutenberg actually IS ready for people to use it, I’ll take another look.
In the meantime, as several reviewers are noting all the issues with Gutenberg and all the plugins that don’t work, including Yoast SEO, I’ll leave you to your work sifting through reviews to figure out what to fix. Best wishes for a good debut of Gutenberg. I hope many companies don’t wake up one day to find their sites broken, and a big mountain of work (and time and money) relearning processes to fit what WordPress and Gutenberg have foisted on them.
You’re welcome to use the Classic Editor. I have it installed on my sites too. It has a nice feature where it can actually give you a choice between the two editors.
Heck, we run the Classic Editor plugin here on WordPress.org, along with Gutenberg as well. Don’t think that choosing one or the other is in any way preferred. You do you. That’s why the plugin exists.
And your feedback is appreciated as well. Don’t mistake light humor for disregarding of your remarks.
I would actually like it if you explained in more detail what you meant by “True writers don’t write by block. They write by concept and thought.”, since the process of actually *writing* isn’t changed by Gutenberg in any real way. You type in text, and text appears. The fact that it’s separating things into blocks in the background is kind of irrelevant, it seems to me. What does Gutenberg do, exactly, that takes away from your experience of typing in text?
I would also like to say that no one is perfect and that when people care a great deal about something it’s easy to feel insulted when working through feedback. It’s not good to focus on one example or use it to judge others’ work collectively. Your feedback here as well as other feedback from reviewers, user testing, manual testing, bug reports, and more are all being considered and worked on and I appreciate anyone who takes the time to provide feedback and answer questions on all sides.
Also, it’s an interesting discussion! I’ll step back and let it continue. Please know that there are many people working on the project who care a lot about it and hopefully the discussion will go well with that in mind!
