fix: Correct text direction in Course Overview field

[Lunyachek]

Description

In Course Overview field we can see incorrect text typing direction

Screen.Recording.2025-09-08.at.16.30.55.mov

Fix was found in tinymce-react issues section - tinymce/tinymce-react#267

[openedx-webhooks]

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[jacobo-dominguez-wgu]

I tested on my local and the typing direction issue was fixed, but it adds a different issue: the editor does not show the initial value even the passed data on the value param is set.
The docs indicate that the initualValue should not be modified by the onChange so by doing the next we can fix the issue and keep the initialValue:

const [initialOverview] = React.useState(overview);

<WysiwygEditor
    initialValue={initialOverview}
    value={overview}
    onChange={(value) => onChange(value, 'overview')}
/>

[Lunyachek]

Thanks for the feedback! You were right, I fixed initialValue with useState and added separate variables for both overview and aboutSidebarHtml, so the editors now correctly display their initial values.

[jacobo-dominguez-wgu]

Thanks for addressing it!

[jacobo-dominguez-wgu]

The same applies here.

[jacobo-dominguez-wgu]

The check is failing because the last commit is not following the commit convention, can you please edit it?

[Lunyachek]

The check is failing because the last commit is not following the commit convention, can you please edit it?

Fixed

[jacobo-dominguez-wgu]

LGTM 👍🏻

[bradenmacdonald]

Thanks for tackling this bug! It seems like a serious issue. Unfortunately, this fix is causing a different bug for me: The Course Overview field is now usable, but it's blank - the initial contents are missing completely.

I believe what's happening is this:

• The <IntroducingSection> component is rendered while the course data is still loading. It stores "" into the initialOverview state.
• The course data loads and the overview prop of <IntroducingSection> is updated.
• The WYSIWYG editor is not updated, because its initialValue has not changed. It stays empty.

I'm not sure why that seems to be only happening on my machine though.

I think that to fix this, we need to have some information about whether or not overview has been fully loaded yet.

[Lunyachek]

@bradenmacdonald Hello! I've created a new course and I can see the initial value for the Course Overview field. Or did I misunderstand what you meant?

2025-09-22.10.56.57.mov

[bradenmacdonald]

@Lunyachek Yep, that's it. It seems to be working for you, but not for me. I put an explanation of what I think the bug is above, and it could result in a flaky bug that sometimes happens and sometimes doesn't. Or otherwise there is something wrong with my environment. Maybe you can rebase the PR and we can both try again? If you also log the value of initialOverview at different points in the rendering I could compare it to mine and figure out why it's happening.

[Lunyachek]

@bradenmacdonald Here are my logs from running the component locally:

[IntroducingSection] initialOverview (init): 
[IntroducingSection] initialOverview on mount: 
[IntroducingSection] overview changed: <section class="about">...</section>
[IntroducingSection] initialOverview vs overview equal?: false

On init/mount, initialOverview is indeed empty (''), since it takes the snapshot before the async overview data arrives.

When overview is later passed down with the real HTML, initialOverview !== overview (as expected, because useState keeps the first snapshot).

The WysiwygEditor still receives the correct value prop with the loaded HTML.

So on my side the behavior is stable — the editor initializes and then updates correctly once overview is populated.

I rebased and temporarily pushed my logs to this PR (I'll delete them later)

[bradenmacdonald]

Thanks for pushing those logs @Lunyachek. Here's what I see:

[IntroducingSection] initialOverview (init): 
hook.js:377 [IntroducingSection] initialOverview (init): 
[IntroducingSection] initialOverview on mount: 
index.jsx:82 [IntroducingSection] overview changed: 
index.jsx:83 [IntroducingSection] initialOverview vs overview equal?: true
index.jsx:78 [IntroducingSection] initialOverview on mount: 
index.jsx:82 [IntroducingSection] overview changed: 
index.jsx:83 [IntroducingSection] initialOverview vs overview equal?: true
index.jsx:73 [IntroducingSection] initialOverview (init): 
hook.js:377 [IntroducingSection] initialOverview (init): 
[IntroducingSection] overview changed: <section class="about"><h2>About This Course</h2>...</section>
index.jsx:83 [IntroducingSection] initialOverview vs overview equal?: false
index.jsx:73 [IntroducingSection] initialOverview (init): 
hook.js:377 [IntroducingSection] initialOverview (init): 
index.jsx:73 [IntroducingSection] initialOverview (init): 
hook.js:377 [IntroducingSection] initialOverview (init): 
index.jsx:73 [IntroducingSection] initialOverview (init): 
hook.js:377 [IntroducingSection] initialOverview (init): 

Whereas here's what it looked like before this PR (the text direction is wrong, but the content does appear):

[bradenmacdonald]

This seems wrong - as far as I can tell (and TypeScript can tell), WysiwygEditor does not accept a value prop.

[bradenmacdonald]

I still think the problem is initialOverview - the current value of initialOverview needs to be captured/saved when the courseDetails data is loaded, not when the IntroducingSection component happens to first render.

If IntroducingSection renders before courseDetails is loaded: you get the bug.
If the courseDetails is loaded before IntroducingSection renders: no bug.

Notice that on your system we see these logs:

[IntroducingSection] initialOverview on mount: 
[IntroducingSection] overview changed: <section class="about">...</section>

So the value of initialOverview gets frozen (in the state) correctly.

But on mine we see:

[IntroducingSection] initialOverview on mount: 
[IntroducingSection] overview changed: 
[IntroducingSection] overview changed: <section class="about"><h2>About This Course</h2>...</section>

So the value of initialOverview gets frozen (in the state) wrong to be an empty string.

Sometimes the bug is gone, for example if I hot-reload just the IntroducingSection component (so that courseDetails is already loaded), I don't see the bug. But if I refresh the page, I do see the bug.

[jacobo-dominguez-wgu]

I could not reproduce @bradenmacdonald's problem neither but I think something like this may solve it, give it a try on your env @Lunyachek.
File: src/schedule-and-details/index.jsx line 280

<IntroducingSection
    overview={loadingDetailsStatus !== RequestStatus.LOADING ? courseDetails.overview ?? '' : null}