PW 3.0.136 — Core updates

[ryan]

ProcessWire 3.0.136 upgrades the version of CKEditor from 4.10.1 to 4.12.1. While that might look like a minor version bump, it’s actually 5 versions ahead and includes quite a lot of new features, changes and fixes. See the CKEditor release notes for more details on all that's been added and changed in the last 5 versions. 

It was a year or two ago where it seemed like CKEditor was going to be phasing out CKE 4 in favor of CKE 5. But interestingly it now seems like there is a new focus in CKE 4 from the CKEditor folks, so I’m going to have to start watching the version updates more often. Of course, I remain interested in CKE 5 too, but it’s nice to see CKE 4 (my favorite editor for a long time) going so strong and getting new features and attention, which is also a nice benefit for all of us PW users. I’m looking forward to working with some of the new stuff they’ve added in recent versions as well. For instance, the autocomplete feature sounds like it has nice potential for inserting Hanna codes or links to other PW pages, among other things. 

Also new in 3.0.136 is a new Debug::backtrace() static method in the core. I often use PHP’s debug_backtrace() method when debugging (and it appears in PW’s fatal exceptions), but the reality is it gives me a lot of stuff I just don’t want… all the hook method calls and such that aren’t usually relevant to what I’m trying to find. So the new built in Debug::backtrace() method returns a much simpler array than PHP does, and it also excludes all of the [likely] irrelevant internal hook method calls, and is just generally more focused on what you are likely to need from a backtrace in ProcessWire. It’s very convenient to plug into a ProcessWire $wire->message(Debug::backtrace()), or a Tracy Debugger bd(Debug::backtrace()); or even an echo '<pre>' . print_r(Debug::backtrace(), true); call. Though please consider this new method a work in progress, as it’s just a start at the moment and is likely to get additional updates. At some point, PW’s fatal exceptions will likely use the output from this method as well. 

Since this is kind of a short post, I’m just posting in the forums rather than creating a new blog post. More core updates on the way next week. Hope you all have a great weekend!
 

[Beluga]

In the hot topic of "View source", the CKEditor folks recently commented that they will support version 4 until 2023.

[teppo]

1 hour ago, Beluga said:

In the hot topic of "View source", the CKEditor folks recently commented that they will support version 4 until 2023.

That's great news right there. Not sure how things have progressed since then, but the last I checked it seemed there were a lot of perceived problems with version 5, and the answer was always "this will be really difficult because we use this new data model". I'm sure that 5 will become a great editor, but whether it will become a great editor for HTML still remains to be seen ?

I'm tempted to draw lines from the CKE5 to another work-in-progress content editor that has been in the headlines lately: Gutenberg. In both cases it appears that the team is pushing an idea they wholeheartedly believe in, while a notable percentage of their existing users are telling them that it's a massive mistake. Interesting times ?

[horst]

@ryan in regard of debug_backtrace(), I ask myself, if something like this, PHP String Hidden Characters: Hide strings to avoid appearing in stack traces, may be useful for us in some parts too?
Thinking on names, emails, document_roots, serialnumbers (Promodules), etc., - as people tend to copy&paste their stack traces into (public) forum posts when asking for help.