Free (and Open Source?) WYSIWYG Text Editors?

[clownvomitz]

I'm working on a little side project on my website and I currently use TinyCME for a blog script I got from another website, and now that I'm making my own script in a similar vein in an attempt to make things easier to update for myself, I'm curious if anyone knows any free (and possibly open source) alternatives for a WYSIWYG editor? Frankly, I just hate signing up for things that expect me to pay at some point, and whenever I try to find other options I only just see people talking about how TinyCME is industry standard and the best option...  Which I'm sure there's truth to that, but I'm stubborn LOL.

I'm not looking for anything too crazy, just something that would translate my plaintext into HTML easily, if that makes sense? Thanks in advance! 

[IndigoGolem]

I heard that SeaMonkey's Composer was good, so i set that up and found it's ok. It doesn't give me the same degree of control i'm used to in a code editor (sometimes adding tags is hard), and my main use case was one giant table on my site (56x24 cells) that's hard to edit in a normal text editor. SeaMonkey does work for that, but it also inserts some nonfunctional (but harmless) junk code, and changes how my code is indented in a way that i just found too messy for when i did edit the page in my usual code editor (Bluefish).

I think SeaMonkey is just ok, but i have not tried any WYSIWYG HTML editor, so maybe every other one is worse and i just have impossible standards. It is free, so it's worth a try. Just bear in mind that it has not been updated in a while (i think), so outdated security could be a concern if you use it for any online stuff. But just editing local files works offline.

[KeyJayHD]

Not sure how helpful in this case since I don't really use WYSIWYG editors at all anymore, but the last one I ran into that had a sort of Webflow like approach going for it was Grapes.js. Seems they've changed their business model recently but it does look like you can still self-host it if you want to:
GrapesJs
https://github.com/GrapesJS/grapesjs/discussions/6431

The only other WYSIWYG editor that I've used after Dreamweaver is Pinegrow, but that one isn't free, but you can pay for a lifetime license if you want.
Pinegrow

Honestly though if you stick with it, you'll get to a point where your workflow changes that you wont even need it. The browser inspect tool is extremely valuable for fine edits, and couple that with VSCode, you wont miss it (shocking now I know, but give it time). Depending on your process, I'd look at your workflow where you can use non coding or editor tools first.

[stephan_e_perez]

Asatte uses TinyMCE too. However, earlier in development it was using Quill. I abandoned it after trying really hard to get it to handle image & embed resizing. I kept having to try different plugins for it and there was always something wrong with it... but it is open source!

Even TinyMCE was a pain to get to behave as I wanted, though I am happy with it now. You know, reading your post had me check their site again and I thought "Oh! If Asatte blows up I'll have to worry about that 1000 editor-loadsper-month-limit (this would be a nice problem to have), but then I checked and that only applies if you don't host the files yourself. I have it installed with npm, so I don't have to worry about pricing. And it seems TinyMCE actually *is* open source and you can find the source code here.

[futurearcana]

Not sure if this fits your bill precisely, but I find that writing markdown is as easy as using a rich text editor, and there's plenty of free and open source tools that convert markdown to html.