A cross-platform Markdown editor focused on speed and usability

[bestouff]

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

[tempodox]

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.

[yingbo]

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

[pjerem]

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

[maximus-decimus]

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

[account-5]

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

[orangea]

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.

[kcartlidge]

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.

[chubot]

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]

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

[brycewray]

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

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

[NylaTheWolf]

There is a plugin for Obsidian that helps with WYSIWYG!

Also isn't Bear WYSIWYG?

[i_am_proteus]

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

[bobbylarrybobby]

Does Notion not count?

[linsomniac]

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/

[nielsbot]

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]

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

[stephc_int13]

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.

[mastermaq]

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.

[Findecanor]

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]

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.

[slantyyz]

> 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/

[smartmic]

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]

> "features" of Electron

Thank You for TL;DR:

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

[NylaTheWolf]

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"

[slantyyz]

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]

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?

[wingmanjd]

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

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

[mfer]

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

[cjk]

“Focused on speed” and written in Electron.

Sigh.

[andrewshadura]

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