No TinyMCE at all

It's not showing up anywhere at all... at least not where I'd expect it, in the admin section. See the attached screen cap, showing us editing an HTML block. Shouldn't it at least be there?

For the html block there will be no tiny editor in D7. Use html to set your layout in this block.

Seriously - manually code HTML in this block? I wonder why that was removed for D7. It was in place with 6.1.6... how odd.

What's odd about it?  It makes perfect sense to me.  TinyMCE is a text editor...not an html editor.  Most people that want to create an html block want to do a little more than edit text. TinyMCE would just get in the way.

TinyMCE is not just a text editor... it edits HTML (the same interface which appears above these forum posts as you compose responses). Not sure what you are thinking of.

Yea, you can enter html with the tinyMCE, but when you save it the editor rewrites it as it sees fit. This does not.

I think if you want to be a webmaster, that you need to know at least some basic html. 

RE:

I'm just going by what the developers call it on their own home page.

Oh feh, it's not a matter of not knowing HTML :) I can write that stuff in my sleep... but if there's a button to click on instead, that's just a timesaver. I mean, why have TinyMCE available here for forum posts but not on a HTML block in a Pages Builder? Seems like THAT would be a more appropriate place to have it than somewhere which is largely just text replies.

At any rate, it was there in 6.1.6 but not in 7, which to me is odd.

Where, exactly, is it used in D7 sites? Clearly it is at least INTENDED to be used, or else it wouldn't have been part of the installation. I've seen other threads where folks reference their TinyMCE randomly not being available, so...

You are missing the point completely. Please, allow me to sound it out for you.

HTML Block: A block item that is for the displaying of HTML content. That's the reason why it only accepts raw HTML code. Well, the official reason, anyways. The unofficial reason is because the TinyMCE display would sometimes not appear correctly, even appearing behind certain elements, such as the popup window. Besides, TinyMCE is known to format anything put into it, even from the HTML window, so having direct control over what is displayed is a bonus, in my opinion.

Forum Post: A post on a forum should feature a proper text editor for formatting the post with different font, font sizes, styles, etc. This, to be honest and frank, make perfect sense.

TinyMCE is used on the user-side of the web site, where a text editor is needed. It is also used for such areas in the administration panel, such as for writing news. The issue where TinyMCE randomly doesn't display is an issue that occurs with the forum. It's annoying, and like many things with this script, I have no explanation for it.

TinyMCE is used in D7 to edit text areas, to allow end users to add BASIC formatting without having to know any html.

The majority of people that want to create their own html blocks in ADMIN have bigger ambitions than adding a few text formatting tags.  For anything beyond the really, really basic stuff, TinyMCE is more of a nuisance than something helpful.  If you can write html code in your sleep, you should know that.

TinyMCE is a piece of crap. It's designed for people who haven't taken the time to learn some rudimentary html coding. I prefer it this way, like Houston said, it just gets in the way.

OK so official word then is that it was removed in D7 because it's a nuisance?

You completely missed what we said: it's available in in areas where text editing is needed, such as blogs, forums, news, articles, etc. It's still there, but just isn't in the places where it doesn't need to be.

I thought it was removed because it didn't go with the new color scheme of D7's Admin Panel.

No, I haven't missed that. I guess we just part ways with where text editing is "needed" is all.  I'm not the content admin for our site, just the tech support person, and wanted to first figure out if TinyMCE was *supposed* to be displaying but just wasn't (ie: something wasn't set up or working correctly) before digging through the code. Now all I need to do is get back to the site admin to let him know that it's not there on the Pages Builder *by design* in D7. Considering it was there for D6, it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to expect it to still be there in D7. That's all.

Oh and by the way, thanks y'all for clarifying that it is indeed not there for the Pages Builder because it's not supposed to be there, according to the developers :) That's all I was trying to get at.