How to edit the contents of a RichText field in Xpages using only a basic textarea - xpages

Question

How do you disable the CkEditor for Rich Text fields so you only render a basic <texarea> tag with no editor whatsoever?
I'm sure I must be missing something obvious but I don't see to be able to create a document using an XPage with a field stored as RT without using the CkEditor. I want to be able to prompt the user to enter 'a lot' of text but only via a simple multiline input and have that stored as RT.
If I have a..
form with a RT field
an XPage with a xp:inputTextarea control bound to said field
a save button
a documentdatasource linked to that form
on save the document is created with the field value but it's stored as text rather than RT. Adding in computeWithForm to the dds properties doesn't help.
Is the only way to have some kind of querysave or custom converter to manually turn it into RT?
If I use the xp:inputRichText control it saves fine as RT but I don't want the CkEditor in the UI, just a basic . Is there a someway to do a editor=plain to the xp:inputRichText control?
I've been looking at trying to override the dojoType or renderType with no luck
Thanks!

Answer 1

You can use <xp:customConverter> in <xp:inputTextarea> to convert the text to rich text item.
For getAsObject you would write this code (document1 is your data source):
var rtitem:NotesRichTextItem = document1.getDocument().createRichTextItem("rtfield");
rtitem.appendText(value);
return null; // Return null as field has already been created
And for getAsString you would simply fetch the contents of rich text field and textual value.
value.getContentAsText()
The variable value is a standard variable which contains the actual value of the field. So you code for <xp:inputTextarea> would look something like this:
<xp:inputTextarea id="inputTextarea1" value="#{document1.rtfield}">
<xp:this.converter>
<xp:customConverter getAsString="#{javascript:value.getContentAsText()}">
<xp:this.getAsObject><![CDATA[#{javascript:var rtitem:NotesRichTextItem = document1.getDocument().createRichTextItem("rtfield");
rtitem.appendText(value);
return null;}]]></xp:this.getAsObject>
</xp:customConverter>
</xp:this.converter>
</xp:inputTextarea>
NOTE: If you wish to update the rich text field using the text area then you need to write additional code in getAsObject

Answer 2

I am not sure how to manipulate the field type. I assume that Domino know what is going on with the control in much the same way that the custom controls are formatted to match the content type. You might be able to force the content type.
I can present this as an alternative. You can do a custom toolbar in the ckeditor to remove the toolbar and make it appear like a normal text field. There may be UI complications with doing so though. You would also have a status bar to contend with to make it appear as a plain white box. There should be another dojo attribute type for this.
This code will give you a rich text box with no toolbar
<xp:inputRichText id="inputRichText1"
value="#{document1.content}">
<xp:this.dojoAttributes>
<xp:dojoAttribute name="toolbar">
<xp:this.value><![CDATA[#{javascript:var myToolbar = "[['']]";
return myToolbar}]]>
</xp:this.value>
</xp:dojoAttribute>
</xp:this.dojoAttributes>
</xp:inputRichText>