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I spent about an hour looking for a note taking app today. The problem with most markdown editors is that the note taker rarely reads the note in absentia. I me

I spent about an hour looking for a note taking app today. The problem with most markdown editors is that the note taker rarely reads the note in absentia. I mean, I read my notes as I write them and edit them, but more often than not, I am changing them as I read or consult them. The mou/macdown/classeur approach is to have a preview that can be toggled or visible in split screen mode. Conversely, notes.app on Mac works really well and you can write and read notes on the same "space" but it doesn't support markdown. Maybe I am an edgecase, but I would like to write notes in markdown and have them render line by line[0] so that I have one document and not an editor and a display. Almost wrote one myself but the opportunity cost of spending weeks making it (if I could even deliver) would likely not offset the bit of frustration I get using another editor. If this exists, I want it bad. [0] or like 3 lines at a time or whatever.

octref 11y ago
Maybe Typora[0]? [0]: http://typora.io/ http://typora.io/
- vonklaus 11y ago
  Everyone has a note taking app that fits their style. This seems as close as it can be for me. Love it. Also, I like how you cited it[0]. [0] in such a short comment.
- amk_ 11y ago
  Nice. You can even set the default MD handler as Typora and use it like a wiki editor with relative links.
girvo 11y ago
http://texts.io/ http://texts.io/ is my recommnedation. It's WYSIWYM -- write Markdown, view real formatted text. And it uses Pandoc under the hood, so it's exporting tools are awesome; and worst case, kick it out to XeTex and render it exactly how you want
- vonklaus 11y ago
  This was quite good. I don't know much about Pandoc but it is mentioned quite a bit ITT. I tried texts app() out and it is a strong offering. Great product and does seem to have an awesome workflow, being quite close to what I want. It is a bit pricey ($29.99) for a note taking app but if it fulfilled your use case, it could be worth it for the boost in your productivity.
  - girvo 11y ago
    > It is a bit pricey ($29.99) for a note taking app I agree, it is a bit expensive, but I felt it was well worth it; I now use it for literally all of my document processing, technical documentation, personal writing, proposals, literally everything. Because it runs through Pandoc, I can produce amazingly professional looking documents for everything. It's one of my favourite applications by far!
tambourine_man 11y ago
Take a look at vim-pandoc https://github.com/vim-pandoc/vim-pandoc-syntax/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/vim-pandoc/vim-pandoc-syntax/blob/master/... It uses conceal to show bold/italic text and plain markdown on your editing line
masukomi 11y ago
I'd recommend FoldingText http://www.foldingtext.com/ http://www.foldingtext.com/ Like Typora it only displays the markdown while your cursor is in the portion of text with the markdown tags. Otherwise it's the final rendered version. plus you can style it however you want and add your own JavaScript plugins.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
cben 11y ago
I'm also a believer in in-place formatting rather than 2-pane. Ever since i saw it in [Qute][] (no longer developed), and emacs auctex preview-mode (TiddlyWiki also deserves some credit). Editorially did this well and was well-recieved but for some reason people are not really filling the void. I'm especially surprised it's not more popular on mobile where 2 panes waste real estate and whole-screen toggling is jarring. The only mobile editor with in-place formatting I know is Writer & [Writer Plus][]. [Qute]: http://www.inkcode.net/qute http://www.inkcode.net/qute [Writer Plus]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.easy4u.writer https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.easy4u.writ... Also, --- I'm working on https://mathdown.net https://mathdown.net [https://github.com/cben/mathdown https://github.com/cben/mathdown] which does in-place formatting. It's comparable to Stackedit or Classeur in that it's simply "syntax highlighting", e.g. headings are big and emphasis is italic. - The formatting chars (#, * etc) are still visible, just a bit de-emphasized. I know many people prefer them to disappear except near the cursor. That's trickier to implement with good UX, and not planned soon (PRs welcome of course). - There is no inline image preview (yet). Nor tables, diagrams, embedded videos... Even links are not (yet) clickable. + There is nice in-place LaTeX math rendering (slighly buggy but very usable). This is my biggest unique feature [https://github.com/cben/CodeMirror-MathJax https://github.com/cben/CodeMirror-MathJax]. Comparable to Overleaf.com's "rich text" mode. + I'm doing "soft indent" [https://www.mathdown.net/?doc=demo-indentwrap https://www.mathdown.net/?doc=demo-indentwrap]. This is a really low-hanging way to make one-long-line-per-paragraph usable, which IMHO is essential for in-place styling. + Leading indentation (and list bullets/numbers/quotation) is monospaced to help align stuff. If anybody's building their own, I'm using and strongly recommend CodeMirror. It makes mixed fonts - things like bigger headings - really trivial and supports arbitrary embedded "widgets". @benweet pulled off polished in-place formatting in StackEdit (and on top of contenteditable but that's way harder...

octref 11y ago

Maybe Typora[0]? [0]: http://typora.io/ http://typora.io/

vonklaus 11y ago
Everyone has a note taking app that fits their style. This seems as close as it can be for me. Love it. Also, I like how you cited it[0]. [0] in such a short comment.
amk_ 11y ago
Nice. You can even set the default MD handler as Typora and use it like a wiki editor with relative links.

girvo 11y ago

http://texts.io/ http://texts.io/ is my recommnedation. It's WYSIWYM -- write Markdown, view real formatted text. And it uses Pandoc under the hood, so it's exporting tools are awesome; and worst case, kick it out to XeTex and render it exactly how you want

vonklaus 11y ago
This was quite good. I don't know much about Pandoc but it is mentioned quite a bit ITT. I tried texts app() out and it is a strong offering. Great product and does seem to have an awesome workflow, being quite close to what I want. It is a bit pricey ($29.99) for a note taking app but if it fulfilled your use case, it could be worth it for the boost in your productivity.
- girvo 11y ago
  > It is a bit pricey ($29.99) for a note taking app I agree, it is a bit expensive, but I felt it was well worth it; I now use it for literally all of my document processing, technical documentation, personal writing, proposals, literally everything. Because it runs through Pandoc, I can produce amazingly professional looking documents for everything. It's one of my favourite applications by far!

tambourine_man 11y ago

Take a look at vim-pandoc https://github.com/vim-pandoc/vim-pandoc-syntax/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/vim-pandoc/vim-pandoc-syntax/blob/master/... It uses conceal to show bold/italic text and plain markdown on your editing line

masukomi 11y ago

I'd recommend FoldingText http://www.foldingtext.com/ http://www.foldingtext.com/ Like Typora it only displays the markdown while your cursor is in the portion of text with the markdown tags. Otherwise it's the final rendered version. plus you can style it however you want and add your own JavaScript plugins.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

cben 11y ago

I'm also a believer in in-place formatting rather than 2-pane. Ever since i saw it in [Qute][] (no longer developed), and emacs auctex preview-mode (TiddlyWiki also deserves some credit). Editorially did this well and was well-recieved but for some reason people are not really filling the void. I'm especially surprised it's not more popular on mobile where 2 panes waste real estate and whole-screen toggling is jarring. The only mobile editor with in-place formatting I know is Writer & [Writer Plus][]. [Qute]: http://www.inkcode.net/qute http://www.inkcode.net/qute [Writer Plus]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.easy4u.writer https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.easy4u.writ... Also, --- I'm working on https://mathdown.net https://mathdown.net [https://github.com/cben/mathdown https://github.com/cben/mathdown] which does in-place formatting. It's comparable to Stackedit or Classeur in that it's simply "syntax highlighting", e.g. headings are big and emphasis is italic. - The formatting chars (#, * etc) are still visible, just a bit de-emphasized. I know many people prefer them to disappear except near the cursor. That's trickier to implement with good UX, and not planned soon (PRs welcome of course). - There is no inline image preview (yet). Nor tables, diagrams, embedded videos... Even links are not (yet) clickable. + There is nice in-place LaTeX math rendering (slighly buggy but very usable). This is my biggest unique feature [https://github.com/cben/CodeMirror-MathJax https://github.com/cben/CodeMirror-MathJax]. Comparable to Overleaf.com's "rich text" mode. + I'm doing "soft indent" [https://www.mathdown.net/?doc=demo-indentwrap https://www.mathdown.net/?doc=demo-indentwrap]. This is a really low-hanging way to make one-long-line-per-paragraph usable, which IMHO is essential for in-place styling. + Leading indentation (and list bullets/numbers/quotation) is monospaced to help align stuff. If anybody's building their own, I'm using and strongly recommend CodeMirror. It makes mixed fonts - things like bigger headings - really trivial and supports arbitrary embedded "widgets". @benweet pulled off polished in-place formatting in StackEdit (and on top of contenteditable but that's way harder...