A cross-platform Markdown editor focused on speed and usability

by feross • 5 years ago

53 54 5 years ago

orangea• 5 years ago

Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be actively being worked on and isn't complete enough for me to use personally (custom themes aren't implemented, for example).

These are the WYSIWYG Markdown editors that I am aware of:

- Typora (great but somewhat buggy).

- Obsidian is working on a WYSIWYG mode.

- Nota (nota.md) is promising but very beta.

- Zettlr

- Bear is working on a WYSIWYG mode.

brycewray• 5 years ago

That was pretty much my evaluation of Mark Text, as well:

https://www.brycewray.com/posts/2021/05/trying-mark-text-for...

bobbylarrybobby• 5 years ago

Does Notion not count?

dschuessler• 5 years ago

I never considered Notion to be a Markdown editor. Is there an easy way to open, edit and save Markdown files with Notion?

i_am_proteus• 5 years ago

https://github.com/iamcco/markdown-preview.nvim works for me.

chubot• 5 years ago

I wish I could consolidate a lot of the apps I use for Markdown:

Blog: I used Vim for a long time, now I use the online editor https://stackedit.io. I found that composing blog posts involves cutting and pasting big blocks of text a lot more than coding, which is better done with a mouse. Stackedit has a side-by-side view and WYSIWYG.

Github wiki: Good for sketching ideas for blog posts, and documentation. Editable by others. (wish list: I kinda want the Roam Research bidirectional link thing, I often have that problem)

Github issues: similar to a TODO list for many people.

Zulip: Good for chatting with others, and for brainstorming ideas. So it overlaps with the Github wiki for that. Not good for a TODO list.

So there are all these apps that use Markdown but they are a bit disconnected.

Is that what Notion is supposed to be? A bunch of apps that interoperate and are unified? I haven't tried it since I mainly stick to open source stuff (with the exception of Github, though it is built on git)

kspacewalk2• 5 years ago

Joplin has its quirks but overall is a great, mature WYSIWYG markdown editor with syncing/backups and an Android app.

kcartlidge• 5 years ago

I know it's quite heavy but for performance, consistency, and attractive rendering (surprisingly important) having tried many options, including my personal runner-up Byword which hasn't been mentioned, I settled on the usual suspect of VS Code. Usually with the Github Markdown extension switched on due to liking their theme, but obviously that isn't a requirement.

Open a Markdown file and use your platform's Markdown Preview hotkey (eg Cmd+K,V). Simple.

NylaTheWolf2• 5 years ago

There is a plugin for Obsidian that helps with WYSIWYG!

Also isn't Bear WYSIWYG?

bestouff• 5 years ago

Nowadays when I hear "crossplatform" I think bloated electron app. That's sad.

pjerem2• 5 years ago

I’m in the same boat but, tbf, as a developer, what are the alternatives ?

Multiplatform GUI toolkits are abandoned or still heavily tied to C++ or Java

tylerscott• 5 years ago

It is still very new but Flutter desktop support looks promising. I've been toying with it in my free time and it is very easy to get up and running.

bachmeier2• 5 years ago

Is there something wrong with running a local web server and opening the app in a browser tab? Not my area of expertise, so maybe it would have its own set of issues.

tagrun2• 5 years ago

Gtk isn't tied to C++ or Java in any way. While Qt and wxWidgets are written in C++, they aren't heavily tied to C++ either. For all these toolkits, bindings for many languages exist.

tempodox• 5 years ago

The saddest thing is that you're right — it is a bloated Electron app, almost 300 MiB uncompressed.

Compare that to the < 6 MiB for LightPaper, the app that I use on macOS.

Not to mention the security holes from the thousands (millions?) of Node modules an app like this probably contains.

NmAmDa• 5 years ago

Thank you for referring to lightpaper. It really fit my need and this was my first time to hear about that app.

dspillett2• 5 years ago

That isn't really comparing like for like though is it, given LightPaper is _only_ available for the Mac, is a paid app (inexpensive, yes, but not free, and the site says nothing obvious about future update policies), and not open source.

If I want to make chips, fries, wedges and jackets, the fact that a cucumber has far fewer calories and goes really well in a tuna sandwich is, while true, hardly relevant!

quambene2• 5 years ago

In this case, the bloatware is macOS itself with 50GB Xcode.

sacul• 5 years ago

Lightpaper looks like a fantastic markdown editor! But the landing page makes me feel like it isn't getting much love from the developers. The copyright notice at the bottom, for instance, says 2019.

Any idea whether it is still getting updates?

maximus-decimus• 5 years ago

It's not Electon's fault that all other solutions are not cross-platform.

Nicksil2• 5 years ago

all other solutions are not cross-platform.

What makes you think this?

yingbo• 5 years ago

We definitely need a better crossplatform GUI framework to replace electron. Any promising one?

quambene2• 5 years ago

Tauri looks interesting

account-5• 5 years ago

ghostwriter is a cross platform markdown editor I use that's written in c++.

linsomniac• 5 years ago

I saw "Typora 1.0" yesterday in the HN firehose, but it didn't make it to the main page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29349690

I've been playing around with it this morning, and ended up spending $14 on the license. Used it to go through some of my README.md files that I had some mistakes on. https://typora.io/

mfer• 5 years ago

In one sense this is cross platform and in another it isn’t.

Many of the features are for extensions. Extensions that are not widely adopted where you might put the markdown

stephc_int13• 5 years ago

I just tried it.

Slow, unresponsive, probably Electron based or something similar.

When the app is so unresponsive, no matter how nice it looks or how polished the UX is, it is ruined from the first 10 seconds of using it.

slantyyz3• 5 years ago

What I'd love to see is an extension for VSCode that can do wysiwym/wysiwyg Markdown editing while keeping the same keyboard shortcuts of VSC.

There is a "Typora" knockoff extension for vsc that does some of what I want, but it has its own keyboard shortcuts, so multiline editing, etc. don't work.

adamrezich• 5 years ago

you can split your window and open a Markdown Preview for your current file on the other side of the split, what else do you want beyond that?

slantyyz3• 5 years ago

wysiwym/wysiwyg Markdown editing

I use a folder of markdown files as my Note taking system. For that I don't want a split screen setup.

Findecanor• 5 years ago

Isn't the point of Markdown that it is supposed to be regular text, formalising conventions that have been used for traditional ASCII text files for decades?

cmckn• 5 years ago

Sure, but the point is also to render said ASCII into something a bit more slick and dynamic. These editors let you work with the underlying markup, while showing you the final product. In fact, this is the way I wished all word processors worked—the worst thing about MS Word in my opinion is the invisible hand of the phantom formatting characters.

Syonyk• 5 years ago

...the worst thing about MS Word in my opinion is the invisible hand of the phantom formatting characters.

WordPerfect says "Reveal Codes!" from the grave...

Formatting is being nonsensical? Jump into Reveal Codes, delete all the weird formatting stuff by tag, and solve your problem.

slantyyz3• 5 years ago

Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers.

The point of Markdown is to write plaintext in Markdown and convert to Markup (as in Hypertext Markup Language)

Source: https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/

andrewshadura• 5 years ago

It might be great if it weren't extremely buggy.

nielsbot2• 5 years ago

Edit: A commenter below says this is no longer free

Since we're here: I highly recommend Typora for macOS. Truly minimal and well-done macOS-native Markdown editor. Previews final output inline as you edit without separate markdown/preview panes. Beta is free. (Not my project)

https://typora.io

[edit: actually finish the comment]

MikusR• 5 years ago

It's no longer free. It's also an electron app.

nielsbot2• 5 years ago

It looks webview-based, but otherwise it's a native app.

mastermaq• 5 years ago

Visual Studio Code is a fantastic cross-platform Markdown editor, especially with a few extensions: markdownlint, Spell Right, Word Count, Markdown All in One, and docs-markdown.

smartmic• 5 years ago

Leaving aside the well-known and commented "features" of Electron, out of interest, I looked into the most prominent Markdown file in the repository, README.md. Huh? Where is the markdown? Scroll, baby, scroll… This is disturbing for a Markdown editor and does not leave a good impression, again, feels like more emphasis is put on appearance than substance. Which brings us back to my entry sentence, Electron and its reputation...

app4soft• 5 years ago

"features" of Electron

Thank You for TL;DR:

So, nothing new, but just another one Electron-based editor XD

cjk• 5 years ago

“Focused on speed” and written in Electron.

Sigh.

wingmanjd• 5 years ago

For those who are in the PortableApps ecosystem, I maintain a build of Marktext here:

https://github.com/jgonyea/Mark-Text-Portable

NylaTheWolf2• 5 years ago

Personally Obsidian has my heart. Not only does it support HTML and CSS snippets but the community behind it is insane. They're lovely people and the shit they do with Obsidian is absolutely incredible. The plugins are absolutely amazing as well. They basically make Obsidian what it is.

I don't mean to derail the thread, it's just that when I see "Markdown" I think "hhhhh obsidian my beloved"

A cross-platform Markdown editor focused on speed and usability

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