can we disable some of the wysiwyg functionalities?
Wysiwyg
Go to System Config > Global Preferences and untick the buttons you don't want. You can also customise them per user group.
Where abouts is the option to customise the wysiwyg per user group? (under the area you described?) Is it also possible to set it for each asset type? At the moment I have a full wysiwyg (as expected) for a normal page, but with a news item the wysiwyg is cut down to just a few options, where I'd like it to be the same as the normal page wysiwyg.
User Group -> Preferences
[quote]Is it also possible to set it for each asset type?[/quote]
I don't think you can, unfortunately.
[quote]At the moment I have a full wysiwyg (as expected) for a normal page, but with a news item the wysiwyg is cut down to just a few options, where I'd like it to be the same as the normal page wysiwyg.[/quote]
I believe that is default operation for New Items, as it's wysiwyg implementation is different than normal Pages.
On a side note, did any of the squiz developers here know that custom wysiwyg plugins don't work/load in the News items wysiwyg? headbutt
Any WYSIWYG that hard-codes the plugins it wants will not have custom plugins in its list, so they wont show and there is no way you can change this without changing the code.
So, I assume that the News Item wysiwyg editor's plugin list is hardcoded. Correct?
I guess so… I had assumed they all at least read from a master list, there is nothing really to indicate otherwise on the preferences screen. Where does it load the wysiwyg for the News Items?
The news items inherit the 'page' edit functions. But, having a quick look at the code doesn't show me anything about wysiwyg plugin list being hard coded.
The News Item uses a WYSIWYG attribute, as opposed to a proper Bodycopy Container/WYSIWYG Content Type. I suspect you'll find the offending code in the attribute stuff in the core.
100% correct. The attribute type has a fixed number of plugins and fixed their positions.