To copy-paste onto release note:

20 days since our past release. Is Lexical dead? ☠️

Not quite, we've been busy working on this meaty 0.5 release that we hope you'll enjoy. (Side note: Lexical nightly versions coming soon, more info below).

Draggable blocks

One of the most beloved features of Notion is the ability to seamlessly move blocks within the same document. @LuciNyan has ported this behavior to Lexical under the DraggableBlockPlugin name. You can check it out in our playground!

LexicalTablePlugin makes its way to Meta production

We started our tables (@lexical/react/LexicalTablePlugin) development at the start of the year, one of the most ambitious and complex plugins we have built for rich text. We have blocked a good amount of time during this past month to work with multiple internal teams to identify and squash most of these (10+) high-pri bugs that make the experience unideal and we believe they are now in a good shape to meet their first internal users.

Shadow Root

We have introduced a new advanced concept for Lexical ElementNodes: [Shadow Root](https://lexical.dev/docs/api/classes/lexical.ElementNode#isshadowroot). A Shadow Root is a Node that behaves like a root (we stole the name from Shadow DOM). This method enables you to have complex deep rich text hierarchies where children node shouldn't see beyond the parent. For example, the cell node content.

$insertNodes with NodeSelection and GridSelection support

We introduced a seamless way to handle node insertion. We bundled {rangeSelection/nodeSelection/gridSelection}.insertNode into just one method: $insertNodes. We also added insertNodes support for NodeSelection and GridSelection that was previously not supported.

Various API changes

1. PlainTextPlugin and RichTextPlugin will no longer take an initialEditorState. We found that this is unintuitive to handle nested editors and harder to control SSR-enabled pages. Instead, MLCComposer will take and apply the initialEditorState on editor creation
2. We killed INERT nodes. We found them cumbersome to use, not accessible and they didn't meet the requirements for our one and only use case (AutocompletePlugin) where private node data is required. Instead, the recommended approach for now is to use a DecoratorNode.
3. We deprecated the Grid API. The future of the Grid API is uncertain but if there's something we know is that it isn't a good fit in the lexical package, it serves a very specific use case and it's redundant for plain text.
4. Killed isTopElement in favor for isInline on ElementNodes to reflect what they do better.
5. And some more (see [0.5] prefixed in the list below)..

Lots of bugfixes

• Formatting, composition, MD, etc. (see list below for a complete list

Release automation: nightly releases

We listened to your (mostly Discord) feedback, you want to have the latest, more frequently, especially when some of you are heavily involved into the development and growth of the Lexical framework.

The reality is, we didn't choose to postpone releases for 2 weeks. It has mostly been a lack of automation and making sure we bundle breaking API changes to avoid developer churn.

We know that there's no one-size-fits-all when it comes to developers, and that's why we want to offer different ways to play with the library, what we have now, a slow-ish but less time-consuming (for you) release cycle but also offer nightly releases that would happen automatically once per day and would include the very latest of the development.

The work is still under development but we plan to start this soon, stay tuned!

Changelog

• feat(lexical-playground): draggable block (feat(lexical-playground): draggable block #2860) 子瞻 Luci
• Dispatch CAN_{REDO,UNDO}_COMMAND after clearing history (Dispatch CAN_{REDO,UNDO}_COMMAND after clearing history #3056) Wilberto Morales
• Fix Table Deletion (Fix Table Deletion #3053) Tyler Bainbridge
• Remove previousText check (Refine Typeahead isOpen logic. #3052) Tyler Bainbridge
• Improve table selection handling when there are no siblings (Improve table selection handling when there are no siblings #3051) Tyler Bainbridge
• Fix initialEditorState flow (Fix initialEditorState flow #3048) Gerard Rovira
• Add Selection View in DevTools (Add Selection View in DevTools #2955) Will
• Fix (Known) Table Bugs (Fix (Known) Table Bugs #3000) Tyler Bainbridge
• Revise Vite compression (Revise Vite compression #3036) Gerard Rovira
• Fix composition text boundary for canInsertTextAfter (Fix composition text boundary for canInsertTextAfter #3045) Gerard Rovira
• Fix nested mark creation when wrapping forward selection (Fix nested mark creation when wrapping forward selection #3027) Ken Powers
• Add position property to menus & disable floating link toolbar for autolink nodes (Add position property to menus & disable floating link toolbar for autolink nodes #3035) Tyler Bainbridge
• Update collab docs (Update collab docs #3033) Maksim Horbachevsky
• feat(lexical-react): add initialEditorState for LexicalCollaborationPlugin (feat(lexical-react): add initialEditorState for LexicalCollaborationPlugin #3011) Dragoș Străinu
• [0.5] Remove deprecated initialEditorState from OnChangePlugin ([0.5] Remove deprecated initialEditorState from OnChangePlugin #3031) Gerard Rovira
• [0.5] Remove initialEditorState from Plain/RichTextPlugin ([0.5] Remove initialEditorState from Plain/RichTextPlugin #3032) Gerard Rovira
• Make -> isEditable mandatory ([0.5] Make $canShowPlaceholder isEditable mandatory #3030) Gerard Rovira
• Add optional cursors container prop for a better positioning in scrollable layouts (Add optional cursors container prop for a better positioning in scrollable layouts #3025) Maksim Horbachevsky
• [0.5] Treat undefined selection the same as null in ([0.5] Treat undefined selection the same as null in $generateNodesFromHtml #2948) Acy Watson
• [0.5] -> ([0.5] $wrapLeafNodesInElements -> $wrapNodes #3020) Gerard Rovira
• getStyleObjectFromCSS to compute when cache miss (getStyleObjectFromCSS to compute when cache miss #3024) Gerard Rovira
• [0.5] Revise usage of root node vs shadow ([0.5] Revise usage of root node vs shadow #3022) Gerard Rovira
• Fix code highlighter race condition on transform (Fix code highlighter race condition on transform #3014) Gerard Rovira
• : Selection-agnostic node insertion with Grid/Node selection support ($insertNodes: Selection-agnostic node insertion with Grid/Node selection support #2638) Gerard Rovira
• add docs (Add FAQ re: clearing editor #3019) Acy Watson
• [0.5] Remove INERT mode ([0.5] Remove INERT mode #2421) Gerard Rovira
• [0.5] Correct definition of isTopLevel; introduce DecoratorNode->isInline, ElementNode->isShadowRoot ([0.5] Correct definition of isTopLevel; introduce DecoratorNode->isInline, ElementNode->isShadowRoot #3009) Gerard Rovira
• Revert md changes from ElementNode -> isTopLevel() #3001 (Revert md changes from #3001 #3015) Maksim Horbachevsky
• add install step (add install step to release workflow #3008) Acy Watson
• Revise RnageSelection dirty toggle (Strengthen RangeSelection dirty toggle #3007) Dominic Gannaway
• Trim content for newlines only (Trim content for newlines only #3006) Maksim Horbachevsky
• Fix flow type (Fix $insertTableColumn flow type #3005) Gerard Rovira
• Fix bad TypeaheadMenuPlugin prod build (Fix bad TypeaheadMenuPlugin prod build #3003) Gerard Rovira
• Capture pendingDecorators after garbage collecting detached decorators (Capture pendingDecorators after garbage collecting detached decorators #2999) Adrien Wald
• ElementNode -> isTopLevel() (ElementNode -> isTopLevel() #3001) Gerard Rovira
• Rm unused helpers from older markdown code (Rm unused helpers from older markdown code #2998) Maksim Horbachevsky
• Add DEPRECATED prefix to Grid APIs ([0.5] Add DEPRECATED prefix to Grid APIs #2966) Dominic Gannaway
• [Automated Releases] Add logging and dry run to release script ([Automated Releases] Add logging and dry run to release script #2986) Acy Watson
• Fix www exports (Fix www exports #2994) Maksim Horbachevsky
• Fix WWW import rewrite for React (Fix WWW import rewrite for React #2996) Gerard Rovira
• Fix insert column header bug (Fix Insert Column Header Bug #2995) Tyler Bainbridge
• docs: loadContent clarification (docs: loadContent clarification #2989) ly3xqhl8g9
• docs: Fix URL of rich-text and plain-text (docs: Fix URL of rich-text and plain-text #2985) kimulaco
• Fixed exportDOM for paragraph node (Fixed exportDOM for paragraph node #2981) Hafiz
• remove ff merge from release (Remove ff merge from release #2984) Acy Watson
• fix versioning for ff merge (Fix versioning for ff merge #2983) Acy Watson
• merge from main Acy Watson
• merge from main Acy Watson
• add back config Acy Watson
• add ssh key Acy Watson
• push config (Push config #2979) Acy Watson
• Clean up redundant newlines during pasting (Clean up redundant newlines during pasting #2969) Maksim Horbachevsky
• config (Set up Git config #2977) Acy Watson
• Improve docs around the React plugins page (Improve docs around the React plugins page #2976) Dominic Gannaway
• install (Add npm install step #2972) Acy Watson
• Update collab errors, related cleanup (Update collab errors, related cleanup #2971) Maksim Horbachevsky
• Automated releases (Automated releases #2949) Acy Watson
• Add empty comment in front of 'export' in a bundled file (Add empty comment in front of 'export' in a bundled file #2970) Maksim Horbachevsky
• Fix bugs with isEditable (Fix bugs with isEditable #2967) Dominic Gannaway
• allow escaped markdown within TextFormatTransformer (feat: allow escaped markdown within TextFormatTransformer #2964) Christian Ratz
• Fix link breaking when formatting on (Fix link breaking when formatting on #2954) Patrick McCullough
• fix typo on read-mode / edit-mode page (fix typo on read-mode / edit-mode page #2962) Christian Ratz
• fix (Fix Flow Type #2957) Acy Watson
• Add table cell menu back (Add table cell menu back #2958) Tyler Bainbridge
• fix (Fix Changelog #2956) Acy Watson