MacDown: Open-source Markdown editor for OS X

http://macdown.uranusjr.com/

by shortformblog • 12 years ago

172 63 12 years ago

macdown.uranusjr.com

flxfxp• 12 years ago

Awesome! Could use a better icon though :)

Any plans to implement the same shortcuts as Mou?

jason_slack4• 12 years ago

The icon isnt bad. It fits.

shortformblog3• 12 years ago

I actually asked the author about this, and at the very least, he plans to add the H1-H6 key commands that made me a fan of Mou:

https://twitter.com/uranusjr/status/481901582104006657

I'm impressed with the early results of this. Considering that Mou hasn't been updated in months, I'm glad to see a successor in active development.

I've tried a lot of Markdown editors, and Mou was the only one in my experience that got the keyboard commands down pat.

bobbles• 12 years ago

PS: On the homepage "This is how it looks like:" can be just "This is how it looks:"

uranusjr• 12 years ago

I’m open to new icons. I put the current one together myself and am certainly not proud of it. I suck at visual things.

jason_slack4• 12 years ago

This is great. I like IA Writer but it lacks some features for me. I tried Atom and it is good too. This app feels like a one stop shop for me.

zyxley2• 12 years ago

I like this, but I'm still waiting for something that has this kind of live preview but also has a folder/file project sidebar like Ulysses 3.

NSCFType• 12 years ago

LightPaper (free, not open source) has a project sidebar: http://cl.ly/WGSv

http://clockworkengine.com/lightpaper-mac/

daturkel• 12 years ago

First I'm ever seeing this. This looks awesome, thank you. I also love Texts: http://texts.io/

zyxley2• 12 years ago

I also like LightPaper, but it using file tabs at the same time as the project pane is kind of weird.

jevyjevjevs• 12 years ago

Two solutions that people might also appreciate checking out: LightPaper Marked

samuelhalle• 12 years ago

Awesome! Just miss a file navigation pane and I can say bye bye to Lightpaper!

kemayo• 12 years ago

I'm conceptually a fan, but then I noticed its effect on my actual CPU fan. Whatever this is doing for rendering the Markdown is not cheap -- a single keystroke in the editor pane on the sample document triggers 5+ seconds of max-CPU usage.

Typing causing loud fan noises from my laptop is not the most restful experience.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qy6szsbjs7cw3uv/Screenshot%202014-...

adamnemecek• 12 years ago

I've had the same experience with like all Markdown editors that have a preview function. It does indeed suck.

copperx• 12 years ago

That's shameful. It's not like they're running LaTeX behind the scenes. I think it boils down to the implementation of the Markdown engine.

m_eiman• 12 years ago

I've been using Erato and haven't had that problem. Might be worth a try...

https://itunes.apple.com/se/app/erato/id658913051

muaddirac• 12 years ago

This is awesome because I like Mou but it had some pretty big pain points:

- Large files caused it to slow unbearably/crash

- Scroll tracking was terrible (TexWorks is the only similar thing I've seen that does it well).

It looks like these aren't necessarily fixed in MacDown 0.1, but at least there's the opportunity to improve it with time.

arikrak• 12 years ago

How do these mac markdown editors compare to in-browser editors like https://stackedit.io/ ?

webwielder• 12 years ago

I approve of the old school MacName.

beltex• 12 years ago

Nice work!

What about Atom's markdown preview though? I found myself switching over to that from Mou.

https://github.com/atom/markdown-preview

jasonlaster11• 12 years ago

same!

stock_toaster• 12 years ago

I think I prefer Marked. It lets me bring my own editor (vim), and simply aut-updates when it detects the file has changed.

pwenzel• 12 years ago

I use Marked and Sublime Text. Like peas and carrots.

ehPReth• 12 years ago

According to https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&... and a quick Wolfram Alpha hit Mou's asking price is ~US$80,220

Nemcue• 12 years ago

That's interesting; and way too much for such a rudimentary app -- which probably shouldn't even be a native mac app in the first place.

I wonder how he came up with that price.

owenversteeg• 12 years ago

It says in the translated description:

* first in Google for "markdown mac"

* domain name, logo, branding

* source code

* good reputation/press reviews

I don't think it's worth what he's asking (500,000 RMB, which is ~80,000 USD.)

jmromer• 12 years ago

Mou's live preview was neat for about a week, but eventually I just switched to Sublime Text with the MarkdownEditing, Markdown Preview, and Markdown TOC packages. Powerful stuff, and as-good-as-live preview in your browser.

https://sublime.wbond.net/packages/MarkdownEditing https://github.com/revolunet/sublimetext-markdown-preview http://dotcypress.github.io/GitHubMarkdownPreview/

rodion_89• 12 years ago

Kinda surprised by the rise in markdown editors whose selling point is the live preview mode. I always felt that the best feature of markdown was that the raw text made it somewhat obvious how it should be rendered. If a preview mode is need I almost want to jump straight to a WYSIWYG editor

rbritton• 12 years ago

The one place I find that useful is for blog posts. I like having the ability to apply the blog's CSS to the markdown source before posting to make sure it looks right.

samuli• 12 years ago

It is probably because live preview is considerably easier to implement than a good code editor like "Markdown completion".

hunvreus3• 12 years ago

Agreed. We actually wrote a WYSIWYG editor on top of Markdown last year (https://github.com/wiredcraft/moleskin) but never ended up pushing it out: Markdown is simple as it is, syntax highlighting should be enough.

gog• 12 years ago

Call me lazy, but do you have a demo somewhere?

gravity13• 12 years ago

It's both a great way to learn markdown and be sure that your output is valid when having to write things in markdown. I can't tell you how many times I've realized I made a mistake when I've already pushed a readme to github and saw the rendered markdown there...

kalleboo• 12 years ago

I wonder how feasible it would be to make a markdown sanity checker, to catch common errors, or if it would have too many false alarms. "Are you sure you wanted to make a paragraph with a ton of asterisks in it, or did you really want a list?" etc.

But really, when you make errors like that, it means the markup language isn't intuitive enough. I can never ever remember the proper order for links in Markdown, I hate it. I'd rather have a WYSIWYG-ish editor that both shows your markup (so you can edit it with the keyboard) but also styles bold, headers etc on the fly.

johnchristopher2• 12 years ago

I run a small website that uses markdown files to render content. Users just need to upload those files and the site is updated accordingly. The haroopad editor, mou, and others help them get visual feedback on what they are doing before submitting and refreshing the site.

jason_slack4• 12 years ago

what are you using? I'm looking at this now for my personal website. MDWiki looks interesting: http://dynalon.github.io/mdwiki/#!index.md

tomchristie• 12 years ago

I find having a live preview really gives me a better feel for the flow of the document. I love Markdown for it's simplicity, but that doesn't mean I only ever want to see it rendered in plain text.

schuke• 12 years ago

I think there are two kinds of users of Markdown. One is those who don't need or want WYSIWYG. The other still want WYSIWYG but don't want to shift+arrowing around or constantly leaving the keyboard to reach for the mouse. The number of Markdown editors with live preview probably says that the latter group is actually not small.

shortformblog3• 12 years ago

This is actually my take on things. I use Mou as a writer and I think the live preview thing helps me get an idea what the final result will be. Being able to set up the CSS based on a website is also useful for knowing how headlines will line up, for example.

cabalamat2• 12 years ago

I find Markdown best for writing in but looking at the processed output best for proofreading.

sdegutis• 12 years ago

My biggest use for Markdown is writing my README.md files for my Github projects. And while I do care how it looks plain, I care more about how it looks to users who visit my project's Github page.

santa_boy• 12 years ago

There are lots of open source editors coming of late.

[Haroopad](http://pad.haroopress.com/) is my favourite markdown editor of late. It is based on node-webkit and is also open source.

The main points I wish it could include is word completions similar to sublime and spelling corrections.

tempodox• 12 years ago

This might be useful, but I'd prefer it if there was a way to turn the live preview off. I don't need a new preview with every letter I type.

Luyt• 12 years ago

MacDown requires OSX 10.8 or later.

coldtea• 12 years ago

Which one should be running anyway, seeing that 10.9 is the current version for a year, and we're on to 10.10 soon.

OS X releases are like minor Linux distro updates -- not in they have limited changes, but in that you don't want to fall far behind the latest version.

It's a different approach than Windows, where people can still run XP with no problem -- not that you couldn't run 10.4 or 10.3 (and some people do), but the Mac world changes and software is updated to reflect that (takes advantage of new APIs, integration, changes in style etc).

In Windows there is software available in new versions in 2014, even MS made, that still uses stuff like file open dialogs from 1998.

Malarkey73• 12 years ago

I like Dillinger which is online. It has preview pane and links/saves with your Dropbox/Github/GoogleDrive or a local folder.

http://dillinger.io

btd• 12 years ago

Looks interesting, will give it a try. Also nice project is https://stackedit.io/.

iamtew• 12 years ago

Dillinger is indeed nice, but I would like a native desktop program with the same functionality, as I'm not always connected to the internet.

Of course, I could just run it locally on my laptop, but for some reason I still prefer my web browser for web browsing, and native programs for other stuff.

Or if I could get the same functionality in Sublime Text 3 that'd be even better, but I don't know how to build a plugin to do that, or haven't found one that does.

lloeki2• 12 years ago

Try Atom[0], start a new file or open a markdown file and toggle the preview pane.

I liked the feature so much that I made svg-preview: write SVG code on the left, live preview on the right.

[0] https://github.com/atom/markdown-preview

[1] https://github.com/atom/svg-preview

talles• 12 years ago

Another Markdown editor for OS X!

Anyone besides me ever noticed how there are many options for markdown editors for Macs, but really few (decent) ones for Windows or Linux?

filmgirlcw3• 12 years ago

Well, historically I think it was because Markdown was created by a Mac user. And most of the early Markdown hackers were Mac users.

Obv. Markdown is now much broader, but I still think the market of people who actively care about a Markdown-based editor for desktop or mobile are more likely to be using a Mac and iOS than Windows/Linux/Android.

If you think about it, however, that's a huge market opportunity for Markdown devs on those platforms.

cabalamat2• 12 years ago

One problem with Markdown is that every Markdown app uses a different version of it.

rubiquity• 12 years ago

Does anybody have any experience with this and LightPaper[0]? I'm curious if I should switch. There's so many markdown editors out there. How can I know that I'm using the best one for me? (joking) Markdown editors feel like it should be the example for the paradox of choice.

0 - http://clockworkengine.com/lightpaper-mac/

filmgirlcw3• 12 years ago

My only real issue with these is that there isn't an easy way to do a RegEX to remove certain types of formatting when copying the HTML. In an ideal world, I'd prefer to not have <p> tags, for instance, because most of the time, the place I'm pasting the content inserts them at any line break automatically. I realize this isn't always the case but it's one of those "frustrating" aspects that makes me continue to use an old-as-hell TextMate bundle a friend customized for me 5 years ago.

MacDown: Open-source Markdown editor for OS X

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