uiwjs / uiwjs/react-md-editor

UX issue: "Headings" are called "Titles"

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Dominant language
TypeScript
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Forks
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Description

For some reason this package and its UI consistently and erroneously refers to headings as titles.

I would like to make the case that this is a significant UX issue that should be fixed both in user-facing interfaces and in code.

Motivation (why is this an issue?)

The unfortunate naming choice is likely to cause confusion for users and developers alike.

The rest of the world uses the term "heading". If users want to learn markdown they will go to resources such as:

These resources consistently use the term heading.

Users are extremely likely to be familiar with modern word processors which also generally use the term heading for this concept.

In the context of HTML elements and attributes there is a also distinction between "heading" and "title" and this extends to tools & resources related to accessibility, search optimization, etc.

End users and developers alike may not be experts in the English language and therefore they may rely on keyword and pattern recognition to understand interfaces and make connections between what they read in documentation, markdown tutorials, etc. and what they see in @uiw/react-md-editor.

The toolbar's naming and icons are potentially confusing as well (as much as I appreciate the commitment required to produce a set of non-standard unfamiliar icons to reinforce use of the term "title" vs. using an existing open-source icon set with "heading" icons).

In the code, commands such as commands.title, commands.title3, etc. are potentially confusing to developers.

As a developer my automatic "there's a mistake!" "there's a bug!" neurons fire when I look at the code.

Thanks

I just tried this package for the first time and I appreciate the thought and work you've put in. It is refreshing to see a lighter weight option for markdown!

I also appreciate when it comes to the code this would be a breaking change to address.

One idea is you could always treat the old names as an alias to minimize impact and mark them in tsdoc comments with @deprecated.

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

No file path or test is named. Search the TypeScript source and toolbar entry points for commands.title, commands.title3, and user-facing “Titles”, then trace their usages before confirming the compatibility policy with maintainers. Done should mean the UI and code consistently use “headings”, with any legacy aliases handled as agreed.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
markdown, react, typescript
Domain
developer-experience, frontend
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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