Rich text editing is still unsolved after two decades

Wordgard launched as a new in-browser rich-text editor from the creator of ProseMirror, and the HN thread immediately split into two camps: people excited to see what comes after ProseMirror, and people exhausted that this problem is still being solved from scratch in 2025. One commenter said plainly: 'I can't believe that we are still trying to solve this. One would think that after so many years we would end up with some solutions baked in browsers.'

ProseMirror is widely respected but notoriously hard to integrate, especially with React. The NYT had to rewrite its renderer entirely. Wordgard seems to be a fresh attempt at a cleaner abstraction, though the thread noted that the 'why' behind building a new editor rather than improving ProseMirror isn't fully explained on the landing page.

The pattern: rich text editing is a genuinely hard problem that keeps attracting serious engineers, and the market for a good solution remains open because no existing tool is both easy to integrate and production-grade.