Switching Rich Text Editors, Part 1: Picking Tiptap

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on news.ycombinator.com

Our great sponsors
  • SurveyJS - Open-Source JSON Form Builder to Create Dynamic Forms Right in Your App
  • InfluxDB - Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale
  • WorkOS - The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS
  • gitlab

    This analysis that GitLab did was really valuable for helping me do my research on an editor architecture for my app. It almost reads like a blog post, it's an incredibly well-written issue. https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/273238

  • notabase

    A second brain for your knowledge, thoughts, and ideas.

    Great article and fantastic choice!

    This is a topic I have been very interested lately. I had been lucky to start using since Slate 0.61.x, but I cannot say anything good about it. It has a major problem with managing large documents [0]. I tried to introduce multiple improvements of performance, but it is very ungrateful project – change in one place affects many things at the same time. I am shocked, how many projects are still using it. For example, open-sourced Notabase [1]. My 4+ weeks with Slate.js completely killed motivation, and I was only thinking to put a whole project to litter.

    In the result of being unhappy, I switched to Draft.js. It was 2020, and I was eager to try it out, so I did. Sadly, in 2020 there was also the last release [2]. Initially, I didn't like how it works. I preferred the Slate data model. Also, the draft.js project felt not maintained at that time (by looking at commits activity, issues and pull-requests). It is written in the Flow which I detest. I spent few weeks to try "merge" the draft.js and sentry with doing a "rewrite" to TypeScript. Obviously, quickly I realized myself it is stupid idea.

    Then, I took a look at ReMirror. Yet another problem that was struggling with maintenance and active contributors. It is based on ProseMirror, so I thought it is better choice than previous. ReMirror is overly complex for simple things. It was hard to find any help - neither by googling examples nor via ReMirror's Discord (it was dead silence there).

    After that, I have found information about the TipTap. Back then, there was only provided support for Vue.js. Fortunately, it was that time, when they have promised the v2 with React support. I skipped it to wait for the new version.

    Maybe, a raw ProseMirror with React? Yep, tried it, but I wasn't very happy of the result. I knew the TipTap v2 will be released and there were already existing projects that were using ProseMirror behind the scene, for example: Outline's rich-markdown-editor[3]. It has tons of built-in components that I had with Slate. I was extremely happy about it, because "everything what I needed" was there – typical bold, italic, code, code block, quote, multi-level list and even table editing. Really awesome piece of code! However, authors decided they are opting for TipTap and they have archived repository on GitHub, which means officially the project is dead.

    I had no time to test Quill.js. It looked interesting, but it has noticeable poor development pace, and it looks a dead project with many bugs.

    Currently, I am using the TipTap v2 and I can't say how happy I am now. I guess I will stick with it for longer. However, I know the journey to find the best Rich Text Editor has not ended. There are more alternatives, for example Stylo [4] that I've found in this week.

    [0] Try to copy the contents of https://www.slatejs.org/examples/huge-document and paste it back. In a result, my Firefox on Macbook M1 hangs.

    [1]: https://notabase.io/

    [2]: https://github.com/facebook/draft-js/releases/tag/v0.11.7

    [3]: https://github.com/outline/rich-markdown-editor

    [4]: https://stylojs.com/

  • SurveyJS

    Open-Source JSON Form Builder to Create Dynamic Forms Right in Your App. With SurveyJS form UI libraries, you can build and style forms in a fully-integrated drag & drop form builder, render them in your JS app, and store form submission data in any backend, inc. PHP, ASP.NET Core, and Node.js.

  • spectrum

    Discontinued Simple, powerful online communities.

    We were using Slate at Spectrum[0] back in 2017/2018, eventually switched to DraftJS due to cross-browser issues but that was honestly equally frustrating to use and support across many browsers.

    In hindsight, we should've just had a GitHub-style markdown editor: https://mxstbr.com/thoughts/tech-choice-regrets-at-spectrum

    It sounds like the situation has improved since then! I'll definitely try Tiptap if I ever need to build another RTE.

    [0]: https://github.com/withspectrum/spectrum

  • TOAST UI Editor

    🍞📝 Markdown WYSIWYG Editor. GFM Standard + Chart & UML Extensible.

    ToastUI (https://ui.toast.com/tui-editor), which builds on ProseMirror, was really easy to set up and has been very stable for us. It's a WYSIWYG editor that just renders markdown, which is what we wanted to have as the base representation for written content so we have some portability later depending on how our product evolves.

  • react-page

    Next-gen, highly customizable content editor for the browser - based on React and written in TypeScript. WYSIWYG on steroids.

    I came across react-page[1] the other day, it seemed like a reasonably powerful block editor but was too much for our purpose so I haven't actually used it.

    [1]: https://github.com/react-page/react-page

  • slate

    A completely customizable framework for building rich text editors. (Currently in beta.) (by ianstormtaylor)

    Thanks for submission! Very timely. Been searching for a stable and flexible editor (or rather a tool to build such an editor) and Tiptap looks like a good candidate.

    I was also considering Slate, but have found this rather annoying bug https://github.com/ianstormtaylor/slate/issues/4833, which is surprising as it doesn't look like some rare edge case, and breaks something that seems to be like basic functionality for an editor. Had to re-consider.

  • quill

    Quill is a modern WYSIWYG editor built for compatibility and extensibility.

    I'm glad OP didn't end up recommending Quill, though their representation of that library seems way off. To help others avoid the state we're currently in, a PSA:

    https://github.com/quilljs/quill/issues/3359 ("Is quill dead?")

  • InfluxDB

    Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.

  • stylo

    Another kind of rich text editor

    Great article and fantastic choice!

    This is a topic I have been very interested lately. I had been lucky to start using since Slate 0.61.x, but I cannot say anything good about it. It has a major problem with managing large documents [0]. I tried to introduce multiple improvements of performance, but it is very ungrateful project – change in one place affects many things at the same time. I am shocked, how many projects are still using it. For example, open-sourced Notabase [1]. My 4+ weeks with Slate.js completely killed motivation, and I was only thinking to put a whole project to litter.

    In the result of being unhappy, I switched to Draft.js. It was 2020, and I was eager to try it out, so I did. Sadly, in 2020 there was also the last release [2]. Initially, I didn't like how it works. I preferred the Slate data model. Also, the draft.js project felt not maintained at that time (by looking at commits activity, issues and pull-requests). It is written in the Flow which I detest. I spent few weeks to try "merge" the draft.js and sentry with doing a "rewrite" to TypeScript. Obviously, quickly I realized myself it is stupid idea.

    Then, I took a look at ReMirror. Yet another problem that was struggling with maintenance and active contributors. It is based on ProseMirror, so I thought it is better choice than previous. ReMirror is overly complex for simple things. It was hard to find any help - neither by googling examples nor via ReMirror's Discord (it was dead silence there).

    After that, I have found information about the TipTap. Back then, there was only provided support for Vue.js. Fortunately, it was that time, when they have promised the v2 with React support. I skipped it to wait for the new version.

    Maybe, a raw ProseMirror with React? Yep, tried it, but I wasn't very happy of the result. I knew the TipTap v2 will be released and there were already existing projects that were using ProseMirror behind the scene, for example: Outline's rich-markdown-editor[3]. It has tons of built-in components that I had with Slate. I was extremely happy about it, because "everything what I needed" was there – typical bold, italic, code, code block, quote, multi-level list and even table editing. Really awesome piece of code! However, authors decided they are opting for TipTap and they have archived repository on GitHub, which means officially the project is dead.

    I had no time to test Quill.js. It looked interesting, but it has noticeable poor development pace, and it looks a dead project with many bugs.

    Currently, I am using the TipTap v2 and I can't say how happy I am now. I guess I will stick with it for longer. However, I know the journey to find the best Rich Text Editor has not ended. There are more alternatives, for example Stylo [4] that I've found in this week.

    [0] Try to copy the contents of https://www.slatejs.org/examples/huge-document and paste it back. In a result, my Firefox on Macbook M1 hangs.

    [1]: https://notabase.io/

    [2]: https://github.com/facebook/draft-js/releases/tag/v0.11.7

    [3]: https://github.com/outline/rich-markdown-editor

    [4]: https://stylojs.com/

  • Draft.js

    Discontinued A React framework for building text editors.

    Great article and fantastic choice!

    This is a topic I have been very interested lately. I had been lucky to start using since Slate 0.61.x, but I cannot say anything good about it. It has a major problem with managing large documents [0]. I tried to introduce multiple improvements of performance, but it is very ungrateful project – change in one place affects many things at the same time. I am shocked, how many projects are still using it. For example, open-sourced Notabase [1]. My 4+ weeks with Slate.js completely killed motivation, and I was only thinking to put a whole project to litter.

    In the result of being unhappy, I switched to Draft.js. It was 2020, and I was eager to try it out, so I did. Sadly, in 2020 there was also the last release [2]. Initially, I didn't like how it works. I preferred the Slate data model. Also, the draft.js project felt not maintained at that time (by looking at commits activity, issues and pull-requests). It is written in the Flow which I detest. I spent few weeks to try "merge" the draft.js and sentry with doing a "rewrite" to TypeScript. Obviously, quickly I realized myself it is stupid idea.

    Then, I took a look at ReMirror. Yet another problem that was struggling with maintenance and active contributors. It is based on ProseMirror, so I thought it is better choice than previous. ReMirror is overly complex for simple things. It was hard to find any help - neither by googling examples nor via ReMirror's Discord (it was dead silence there).

    After that, I have found information about the TipTap. Back then, there was only provided support for Vue.js. Fortunately, it was that time, when they have promised the v2 with React support. I skipped it to wait for the new version.

    Maybe, a raw ProseMirror with React? Yep, tried it, but I wasn't very happy of the result. I knew the TipTap v2 will be released and there were already existing projects that were using ProseMirror behind the scene, for example: Outline's rich-markdown-editor[3]. It has tons of built-in components that I had with Slate. I was extremely happy about it, because "everything what I needed" was there – typical bold, italic, code, code block, quote, multi-level list and even table editing. Really awesome piece of code! However, authors decided they are opting for TipTap and they have archived repository on GitHub, which means officially the project is dead.

    I had no time to test Quill.js. It looked interesting, but it has noticeable poor development pace, and it looks a dead project with many bugs.

    Currently, I am using the TipTap v2 and I can't say how happy I am now. I guess I will stick with it for longer. However, I know the journey to find the best Rich Text Editor has not ended. There are more alternatives, for example Stylo [4] that I've found in this week.

    [0] Try to copy the contents of https://www.slatejs.org/examples/huge-document and paste it back. In a result, my Firefox on Macbook M1 hangs.

    [1]: https://notabase.io/

    [2]: https://github.com/facebook/draft-js/releases/tag/v0.11.7

    [3]: https://github.com/outline/rich-markdown-editor

    [4]: https://stylojs.com/

  • rich-markdown-editor

    Discontinued The open source React and Prosemirror based markdown editor that powers Outline. Want to try it out? Create an account:

    Great article and fantastic choice!

    This is a topic I have been very interested lately. I had been lucky to start using since Slate 0.61.x, but I cannot say anything good about it. It has a major problem with managing large documents [0]. I tried to introduce multiple improvements of performance, but it is very ungrateful project – change in one place affects many things at the same time. I am shocked, how many projects are still using it. For example, open-sourced Notabase [1]. My 4+ weeks with Slate.js completely killed motivation, and I was only thinking to put a whole project to litter.

    In the result of being unhappy, I switched to Draft.js. It was 2020, and I was eager to try it out, so I did. Sadly, in 2020 there was also the last release [2]. Initially, I didn't like how it works. I preferred the Slate data model. Also, the draft.js project felt not maintained at that time (by looking at commits activity, issues and pull-requests). It is written in the Flow which I detest. I spent few weeks to try "merge" the draft.js and sentry with doing a "rewrite" to TypeScript. Obviously, quickly I realized myself it is stupid idea.

    Then, I took a look at ReMirror. Yet another problem that was struggling with maintenance and active contributors. It is based on ProseMirror, so I thought it is better choice than previous. ReMirror is overly complex for simple things. It was hard to find any help - neither by googling examples nor via ReMirror's Discord (it was dead silence there).

    After that, I have found information about the TipTap. Back then, there was only provided support for Vue.js. Fortunately, it was that time, when they have promised the v2 with React support. I skipped it to wait for the new version.

    Maybe, a raw ProseMirror with React? Yep, tried it, but I wasn't very happy of the result. I knew the TipTap v2 will be released and there were already existing projects that were using ProseMirror behind the scene, for example: Outline's rich-markdown-editor[3]. It has tons of built-in components that I had with Slate. I was extremely happy about it, because "everything what I needed" was there – typical bold, italic, code, code block, quote, multi-level list and even table editing. Really awesome piece of code! However, authors decided they are opting for TipTap and they have archived repository on GitHub, which means officially the project is dead.

    I had no time to test Quill.js. It looked interesting, but it has noticeable poor development pace, and it looks a dead project with many bugs.

    Currently, I am using the TipTap v2 and I can't say how happy I am now. I guess I will stick with it for longer. However, I know the journey to find the best Rich Text Editor has not ended. There are more alternatives, for example Stylo [4] that I've found in this week.

    [0] Try to copy the contents of https://www.slatejs.org/examples/huge-document and paste it back. In a result, my Firefox on Macbook M1 hangs.

    [1]: https://notabase.io/

    [2]: https://github.com/facebook/draft-js/releases/tag/v0.11.7

    [3]: https://github.com/outline/rich-markdown-editor

    [4]: https://stylojs.com/

  • tiptap

    The headless rich text editor framework for web artisans.

    When evaluating rich text editors for the note-taking app I started about a year ago (https://notabase.io), I ended up going with Slate because of its flexible schema and customizable plugin architecture.

    I sort of regret that choice now. I ran into a lot of bugs when integrating it which I had to manually work around; issues go months without being addressed; and there still isn't good cross-platform support, especially for Android. With a more active contributor base, Slate could be a fantastic library, but I get the feeling that it's in maintenance mode now, with not many major changes in the past year and a v1.0 still far in the future.

    Tiptap looks like it might be a good choice now, but I find it off-putting that I can't insert links in the demo editor on Tiptap's website (https://tiptap.dev), especially for my use case (a note-taking app whose core concept revolves around links).

NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

Suggest a related project

Related posts