Add formatting buttons to new Markdown editor

[kdmccormick]

Description

The old editor had these buttons to help with "markdown" formatting (note, it's not really markdown, but anyway):

We'd like these added to the new editor, too.

Status

There is PR which got most of the way to implementing this, but the author abandoned it: #2456

Any contributor could start with that PR's branch, factor in Brian's review feedback, and I think it'd be good to merge.

[kdmccormick]

@Anas12091101 , I've created this ticket to capture the follow-up item you mentioned in the Markdown editor PR.

@jmakowski1123 @pdpinch , do you know if these buttons are something we'd want to add to the new Markdown editor for Ulmo?

[jmakowski1123]

The formatting buttons are a nice addition for speeding the process up, and for folks who may want the flexibility of markdown with some extra tooling/support. Are these on the MIT backlog as a possible contribution?

[bradenmacdonald]

@Anas12091101 @pdpinch Is it just me, or does the Markdown editor not actually support Markdown???

e.g. in the editor, I make "vegetable" bold and "apple" italic - the most basic Markdown formatting there is.

But then in the preview, the formatting is not used:

[Anas12091101]

Yes, the behavior remains consistent with the legacy editor.
We haven’t introduced any new logic; this was a direct conversion of the legacy implementation into React.

[bradenmacdonald]

Right, but I guess I'm asking if we should add formatting like bold/italics etc. and if so, would it fit in the context of this ticket or should we open another ticket about it. I guess that may need a broader product discussion.

I'm also curious why we historically called this a "markdown" editor when it doesn't support basic markdown formatting and most of the supported syntax I've seen {{ ... }}, >> ... || ...<<, ( ) , = ... is not markdown at all.

[kdmccormick]

@bradenmacdonald Wow, that's wacky. We have called this the "markdown" editor in the code for a long time; has that always been a mistake? I think it's only recently that we've started calling it "Markdown" to the end user; before, it was just the "problem editor".

Anyway, let's consider it separate from the formatting buttons issue. I think we should either:

1. Call this editor something else. Maybe the "Text-based editor"? This would be easy to do. We could consider this a bugfix (i.e., fixing something that is mis-named), make a PR now, get Product WG's thumbs up on it, and backport to Teak.2.
2. Add support for common Markdown syntax like bold, italic, and links. This would require a product proposal and some nontrivial engineering time to implement. We'd want to think carefully about backwards compatibility, too. If you're not able to take that on yourself, maybe you could make it the first feature request?

[bradenmacdonald]

@kdmccormick I think (1) is definitely a good idea for now, and I'd also like to propose (2) for a future release and see what the product folks think. Should we post on Slack first and then maybe evolve to a feature request?

[kdmccormick]

Go for it!

[kdmccormick]

Let's come back to the original point of this issue, the formatting buttons. @pdpinch @Anas12091101 is this issue in MIT ODL's backlog as a possible contribution, or would it be best if I ask around to see if others would be able to implement it?

[bradenmacdonald]

Posted on Slack: https://openedx.slack.com/archives/C057J2D1WU9/p1755635709713719

[kdmccormick]

@awais786 FYI