Vast progress on Inline/Wysiwyg API:
After digging through TinyMCE module's issue queue and finding some RTBC patches containing major improvements to the module, languishing in the queue for more than one year (!), I decided to fork TinyMCE module into Wysiwyg Editor module. Most importantly, I've implemented Nedjo's patch to use jQuery to initialize the editor. This was an important step in the right direction, because Wysiwyg's goal is to support not only TinyMCE in the future.
However, for now the most exciting new feature is: I've re-rolled my hook_wysiwyg_plugin() patch, which allows any module in contrib to add its editor plugins to the editor configuration. So the time of installation steps like the following in Image Assist's README.txt is finally over now:
-- TINYMCE PLUGIN INSTALLATION --
If you use the TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor, you need to install a plugin for Image
Assist.
* Move or copy the folder 'drupalimage' in the img_assist directory to
[sites/all/]modules/tinymce/tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce/plugins/
Edit the file plugin_reg.php in the tinymce directory. It's located in:
[sites/all/]modules/tinymce/plugin_reg.php
Add the following lines anywhere above the 'return' statement (without the
<code> tags):
<code>
$plugins['drupalimage'] = array();
$plugins['drupalimage']['theme_advanced_buttons1'] = array('drupalimage');
$plugins['drupalimage']['extended_valid_elements'] = array('img[class|src|border=0|alt|title|width|height|align|name]');
</code>Besides the example snippet for Paging module (requires former drupalbreak plugin as a subfolder of Paging module), there's already a patch for Image Assist, too.