Slate lets you build rich, intuitive editors like those in [Medium](https://medium.com/), [Dropbox Paper](https://www.dropbox.com/paper) or [Canvas](https://usecanvas.com/)—which are becoming table stakes for applications on the web—without your codebase getting mired in complexity.
It can do this because all of its logic is implemented with a series of plugins, so you aren't ever constrained by what _is_ or _isn't_ in "core". You can think of it like a pluggable implementation of `contenteditable` built on top of [React](https://facebook.github.io/react/) and [Immutable](https://facebook.github.io/immutable-js/). It was inspired by libraries like [Draft.js](https://facebook.github.io/draft-js/), [Prosemirror](http://prosemirror.net/) and [Quill](http://quilljs.com/).
Before creating Slate, I tried a lot of the other rich text libraries out there. What I found was that while getting simple examples to work might be possible, once you start trying to build something like [Medium](https://medium.com/), [Dropbox Paper](https://www.dropbox.com/paper) or [Canvas](https://usecanvas.com/), you have to resort to very hacky things to get the user experience you want. And some experiences are just impossible. On the way, your codebase becomes harder and harder to maintain.
- [**Draft.js**](https://facebook.github.io/draft-js/) — Slate borrowed a few concepts from Draft.js, namely its event system, its use of Immutable.js and React, and its goal of being a "framework" for creating editors. It also borrowed its plugin-centric design from the [Draft.js Plugins](https://github.com/draft-js-plugins/draft-js-plugins) project. But the issues I ran into while using Draft.js were: that lots of the logic around the schema is hardcoded in "core" and difficult to customize, that the transform API is complex to use and not suited to collaborative editing in the future, that serialization isn't considered by the core library in a nice way, that the flat document model made certain behaviors impossible, and that lots of the API feels very heavy to work with.
- [**Prosemirror**](http://prosemirror.net/) — Slate borrowed a few concepts from Prosemirror, namely its nested document tree, its use of "schemas", and its transform model for collaboration. And since then, Prosemirror has become slightly more like Slate by adopting a barebones "core" and plugin system. But some of the issues I ran into while using it were: that the API can be hard to understand, that it implements its own custom view layer, that the documentation isn't simple to use, and that the source is often very complex and hard to read for insights when you get stuck. (It's still in beta though and many of these things might change!)
- [**Quill**](http://quilljs.com/) — I never used Quill directly, so my hesitations about it are solely from considering it in early stages—and it has changed since then! The issues I saw with it were: that the concept of "toolbars" is too coupled with the editor itself, that the configuration is too coupled to HTML classes and DOM nodes, that the idea of "formats" and "toolbars" being linked is limiting, and generally that too much "core" logic is given special privileges and is hard to customize.
Of course those are my own opinions, and if those libraries solve your needs, use them! But if you've tried using any of those libraries you might have run into similar problems. If so, you might like Slate. Which brings me to how Slate solves all of that...
1.**First-class plugins.** The most important part of Slate is that plugins are first-class entities—the core editor logic is even implemented as its own plugin. That means you can _completely_ customize the editing experience, to build complex editors like Medium's or Canvas's, without having to fight against the library's assumptions.
2.**Schema-less core.** Slate's core logic doesn't assume anything about the schema of the data you'll be editing, which means that there are no assumptions baked into the library that'll trip you up when you need to go beyond basic usage.
3.**Nested document model.** The document model used for Slate is a nested, recursive tree, just like the DOM itself. This means that creating complex components like tables or nested block quotes are possible for advanced use cases. But it's also easy to keep it simple by only using a single level of hierarchy.
4.**Stateless views and immutable data.** By using React and Immutable.js, the Slate editor is built in a stateless fashion using immutable data structures, which leads to much easier to reason about code, and a much easier time writing plugins.
5.**Intuitive changes.** Slate's content is edited using "changes", that are designed to be high level and extremely intuitive to write and read, so that building custom functionality is as simple as possible.
6.**Collaboration-ready data model.** The data model Slate uses—specifically how changes are applied to the document—has been designed to allow for collaborative editing to be layered on top, so you won't need to rethink everything if you decide to make your editor collaborative.
7.**Clear "core" boundaries.** With a plugin-first architecture, and a schema-less core, it becomes a lot clearer where the boundary is between "core" and "custom", which means that the core experience doesn't get bogged down in edge cases.
- [`slate-paste-linkify`](https://github.com/ianstormtaylor/slate-paste-linkify) wraps the selected text in a link when a URL is pasted from the clipboard.
If you're using Slate for the first time, check out the [Getting Started](http://docs.slatejs.org/walkthroughs/installing-slate.html) walkthroughs to familiarize yourself with Slate's architecture and mental models. Once you've gotten familiar with those, you'll probably want to check out the full [API Reference](http://docs.slatejs.org/reference/components/editor.html).
If even that's not enough, you can always [read the source itself](./src), which is explained along with a handful of readme's and is heavily commented.
