Is it appropriate to put a really long answer on SO (and I mean really long)?
There are many questions asking how to implement a Rich Text or WYSIWYG editor using javascript. Examples include:
How to create a rich text editor
Risk of using contentEditable in IE
None of these questions have a good answer, most of them just advise against implementing it yourself, or suggest using TinyMCE or similar. There is a good reason that all of the answers are like this, and that is that the answer is of necessity very long. My implementation tops out at just over 2000 LoC, and that is after stripping it to the minimal acceptable functionality.
As far as I know there is no tutorial for a WYSIWYG editor that goes beyond the basic execCommand commands anywhere on the web. However, after taking a considerable amount of time to figure it out myself, I feel like others could benefit a lot from a start to finish answer. My intention would be to create a new master question to house a complete introduction to contenteditable and the various browser quirks.
Unfortunately, with the code itself at 60000 characters+, an answer isn't going to fit in the 40k limit. I don't really think it can be split, as the resulting code would then not be functional. So what should I do?