Why would you want to write your own WYSIWYG editor?

I recently had an email exchange with someone asking me about how to approach writing their own WYSIWYG editor control for web applications.

Perhaps an interesting academic exorcize, or maybe he has some very specific application  but it got me thinking about how many implementations there are out there already !

While searching I found this great list which is lifted entirely from Mike Pope [ Click HERE to Read at Mike's Blog ] - THANKS MIKE !

Rich Editor Controls that you can use with ASP.NET

HTML Editors
As near as I can tell, all of these work in-browser and produce HTML or XHTML.

• RadEditor (Telerik). AJAX-enabled.
• WebHtmlEditor (Infragistics). Part of the NetAdvantage for ASP.NET suite (I think).
• Cute Editor (CuteSoft)
• FreeTextBox (FreeTextBox.com). Free for basic edition. Source code available (for a price).
• Peter's Textboxes (Peter Blum). Suite of enhanced text box controls.
• UltimateEditor (Karamasoft)
• Asbru Web Content Editor (Asbru)
• ASP.Net XHTML WYSIWYG Editor (MoreNet)
• AspLib Component library (Astron Digital). Includes a WYSIWYG editor, among other things.
• ASPxHtmlEditor Suite (DevExpress)
• ComponentArt Editor for ASP.NET AJAX. (ComponentArt)
• EditLive! (Ephox)
• eWebEditor (eWebEditor)
• eWebEditPro (Ektron)
• InnovaStudio WYSIWYG Editor (InnovaStudio)
• FCKeditor (FredCK.com)
• Html TextBox (ActiveUp). Part of the ActiveUp.WebControls suite.
• Obout Editor for ASP.NET (Obout)
• pinEdit (Pintexx)
• PowerWEB TextBox for ASP.NET (Dart).
• RichTextBox (aspControls)
• RichTextEditor (Syncfusion)
• RTE ASP.NET Control. Released under an MS-PL license on CodePlex. Includes source.
• SmartText (Z-SoftNet)
• soEditor (SiteObjects).
• SPAW Editor v.2 (Solmetra)
• TinyMCE (Moxiecode). JavaScript based; open source under LGPL.
• Ueditor (Yardi). Free; source and restribution for a price.
• WebHtmlEdit Control (JitBit Software)

Word Processing, RTF, PDF, and more
These variously support other formats, notably non-HTML (e.g. RTF) and sometimes PDF.

• ASP.NET Rich Text Box (TX Text Control). Supports DOC, DOCX, RTF, TXT, HTML.
• Aspose.Editor (Aspose). Many formats, including HTML.
• TE Edit Control (Sub Systems). RTF editing.
• TextDynamic Server / wRTF2PDF (WPCubed).

Other/Not Sure
I'm not sure how exactly these fit into the picture; they're listed at least in one location as being ASP.NET editors.

• Community Editor (BigByte). Desktop editing, it says; possibly not in-page HTML editing? Appears to be free.
• DevEdit NX (Interspire). Not 100% clear that it supports ASP.NET.

More Information

• A similar list is available at 123aspx.com.
• Daniel Walzenbach published a list as well in December 2007. With pictures! :-)
• Scott Mitchell has an article on using FreeTextBox.
• "Building a WYSIWYG HTML Editor" A two-part article by Mitchell Harper. I'm pretty certain that this is for Internet Explorer only, tho.