Block Editor Paper Cuts 📄🩸

[ellatrix]

Continuation of #63255. All items ticked here are for the 7.2 cycle.

Big tasks

• Appenders & Inserters
  • Rethink how container blocks express emptiness: template, appender, placeholder #81239 🚧
  • Standardize the block appender #65643
  • Explore moving the [+] Inserter Into the Block Toolbar #73646
    • Gallery Block: Difficult to "Add image" when existing image is selected #47200
• Mobile/iOS
  • Can’t select multiple blocks at a time on iOS #16206 🚧
  • iOS Safari: keyboard doesn't start capitalised (uppercase) #63261
• Writing flow: merge partial text selections across nesting boundaries instead of deleting the whole block #80489
• Drag and drop: continuation of Block editor: try direct drag (outside text editable) #67305
  • Drag and Drop: allow dragging image/full text/multi selection directly #63267 🚧
  • Drag & Drop using long press. #25237
  • Expose before/after in drag and drop experience #54952
  • click-and-hold highlighted text to reposition it #3339
• Multiple blocks: Keep all text formatting icons #27221
• Unifying drag n drop, "move to" and clipboard (copy/cut/paste) #29931

Features and enhancements

Not fixable in a beta cycle; needs to land before the freeze.

• Multi-Selection
  • Number of blocks selected (when using container blocks) is inaccurate or misleading #56068
  • Multi-selected blocks + contentOnly representations: always show text styles if range includes text #65645
  • Cannot Tab to indent for multi-selected list items
• Writing flow: select next block on Enter key #63484
• Backspace at start should transform block to paragraph first #16435
• Input Rules
  • Rich text: show em dash in editor/convert two dashes into em dash #73022
  • Smart quotes / wptexturize alternative #21992
• Drag & Drop
  • Cannot drag and scroll with the touchpad/scrollwheel #23491
  • Automatic scrolling while dragging is not intuitive #24770
  • Show a modal when dropping a file outside the dropzone #44292
  • While moving a block: Show border and block name of hovered blocks #24750
• Quote
  • Quote: reduce steps to take to add citation #61209
  • Consider showing quote as single block if it has only one paragraph (can this be generalised)? 🚧
• Block editor: placeholders: try admin shadow #33494
• In-between Inserter
  • Disable it between two text blocks; it gets in the way of editing prose (see the discussion in Writing and Editing Flow / Block Editor Core Polish #63255)
  • It only triggers between blocks with margin; tightly spaced blocks never show it
  • Scroll gets stuck when cursor is over the in-between block inserter (possible regression of #63260) #80712
  • Inline inserter: Can't insert into top position #27540
• Audit block transforms #63635
  • Columns: Transform to Group does not transform, but group #52857

Bugs

Selection and caret

• Writing flow: arrow keys no longer select ancestors #76568
• Safari: shift+click from one list item to another does not extend the selection #80661 🚧
• Writing Flow: Shift + down-arrow key to select across spacer block selects one too many blocks #53674 🚧
• Partial multi selection: undo should restore selection in correct place #39456
• Forward delete from empty block selects previous block #64235
• Firefox: Pressing Up arrow takes you two lines up, if cursor is at beginning of second line of paragraph #34215 🚧
• Some Mac keyboard shortcuts work unexpectedly across blocks #9880

Merge and split

• Writing flow: Pressing delete in an empty heading block should delete the heading block #78767 🚧
• Writing Flow: Pressing Delete from post title should delete from first block #73315
• Backspace key moves default block into Group block instead of deleting the default block #65850
• Details block is not reliably deleted via Backspace/Delete when selected as a block (works via toolbar "Remove" and multi-select delete) #79869
• List: deleting sub items requires deleting twice #40979
• List block with anchor re-appears when deleted with backspace #76965 (empty container with an anchor survives deletion; the attribute variant of List: deleting sub items requires deleting twice #40979)

Paste, transforms and conversions

• Raw Handling: Paste from MS Excel no longer creates a table block #42570 🚧
• List block: preserve original markup when copy/paste for nested UL/LI structures #26713 🚧
• Demo content: paste not working properly after selecting all blocks #22339 🚧 (copy side only; legacy markup paste remains)
• Raw Handling: unexpected results when pasting table with list from Google Docs #45774
• Raw handling: Pasting from Google Doc doesn't recognize Markdown formatted code #32917
• Pasting an image onto the Media + Text block is broken #56062
• Copy/paste images, wrong order #73092

Drag and drop

• No drop indicator appears when dragging a file into an empty post or block list #44064

Mobile web

• Mobile Web: keyboard covers text when working with 1+ paragraphs in post/page editor  #63844 (PR iOS: remove jumping hack, add typewriter #74596 merged, needs retest)

UI

• Can't use arrow down to move to end of link input.
• Popover may go offscreen on small screens.