It’s new to all of us. Have fun experimenting with the various “blocks”. I suspect that most of the things you need will be available if you click the “plus” sign in the upper left of the editing screen. Most of the time, all you’ll need is a “paragraph” block, and perhaps a “quote” block for block quotes — see below. I added a “drop cap” to this paragraph, which looks cool. I’m concerned that I haven’t found a “There’s More” tag, which obviously we use frequently here. If you go to the upper right, find the button with three vertical dots and at the very least you can add HTML tags like <!–more–> .
Here’s what a quote block looks like, same as ever, as far as I can tell. From a NY Review of Books survey of the the prescient René Girard:
Some of Girard’s most acute ideas come from his psychology of accusation. He championed legal systems that protect the rights of the accused because he believed that impassioned accusation, especially when it gains momentum by wrapping itself in the mantle of indignation, has a potential for mimetic diffusion that disregards any considered distinction between guilt and innocence. The word “Satan” in Hebrew means “adversary” or “accuser,” and Girard insisted in his later work that there is a distinctly satanic element at work in the zeal for accusation and prosecution.
Girard’s most valuable insight is that rivalry and violence arise from sameness rather than difference. Where conflicts erupt between neighbors or ethnic groups, or even among nations, more often than not it’s because of what they have in common rather than what distinguishes them. In Girard’s words: “The error is always to reason within categories of ‘difference’ when the root of all conflicts is rather ‘competition,’ mimetic rivalry between persons, countries, cultures.” Often we fight or go to war to prove our difference from an enemy who in fact resembles us in ways we are all too eager to deny.
“The Prophet of Envy”, Robert Pogue Harrison, New York Review of Books
So let’s take a deep breath, be creative — and patient. This could be fun.
Trickle up says
Gutenberg is pretty controversial in the WordPress community. After taking a peek, I can see why!
Charlie, there is a plug-in that will let users decide whether to use Gutenberg or stick with what they know (when the admin configures the plug-in that way).
I manage a WordPress site with many contributors. We are holding back on Gutenberg for the foreseeable future.
Thanks for being an early adopter!
SomervilleTom says
I made a new sample diary (which I didn’t publish). At first blush, it seems ok. The new tool seems to have the usual penchant for gratuitously introducing new user interface metaphors with no apparent purpose and with no apparent benefit to the user, but that’s become par for the course in 2018.
The most visible thing I notice is that, like so many other terrible user interface decisions being made these days, the first page of the new tool is a case study of what not to do.
I use a full-page 2560 x 1440 monitor with the new tool opened in a Chrome window taking most of the screen. What I get in the new editor is an expanse of empty fields that no user cares about.
There is a single text entry box at the very top with a prompt that says “Add title”.
As it turns out, this is the ENTIRE text of the new page, not just the title (I think!).
Meanwhile, the prominent fields below with field descriptors like “Document Title”, “Meta Description”, “Meta Keywords”, “Canonical URL”, etc. are all probably best left empty.
So the portion of the editor that I most care about is the smallest design element of the startup screen, and misleadingly labeled as well.
Welcome to the user interface world of 2019.
As a software developer who spent two decades (1982-2002) developing technology like this, it pains me to see such pessimization of user interface design. The original free MacWrite user interface was far better than this.
If we can keep the old approach, I’m all for it. If we must use the new approach, I’ll learn to live with it.
SomervilleTom says
I’m confused.
I just attempted to add a new diary. I have what appears to be the results of a success, but the new diary is not appearing on the main site.
Is editor/moderator approval now needed to publish a new diary?
SomervilleTom says
Heh. It seems two clicks of the “Publish” button are now needed to actually accomplish the feat.
Also, adding images and links is harder than before. The way I skinned that cat was to click the “edit as HTML” button on the given block, undo the Gutenberg magic, and enter the desired HTML.