14 ms·

Typora – A cross platform markdown editor

the_duke 10y ago
No plain download for Linux available. Just a Debian repo. Not open source, apparently. Looks quite nice though. I'd try it out if I could install it on Arch...
- Jiig 10y ago
  There's a page[1] detailing how to get get the .deb file without apt, and then use dpkg for arch [2] to install it if you wanted to. Of course you'd have to manually update, and pacman won't know about it. [1] http://support.typora.io/Typora-on-Linux/ http://support.typora.io/Typora-on-Linux/ [2] https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/dpkg https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/dpkg EDIT: Turns out there is an AUR package already: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/typora/ https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/typora/
  - the_duke 10y ago
    Good catch. Serves me right for just googling for "aur typora".
- mwambua 10y ago
  I found this a little annoying myself. Lately 'Linux' somehow only translates to 'Only Debian/Ubuntu'. However, this is the first one I've come across that doesn't even distribute plain old gzipped binaries.
mdciotti 10y ago
I've been using Typora for several months now. It's the best native markdown editor I've found. Extremely smooth to write in preview mode using markdown notation. Inline math support is nice, but I wish it had block/equation math support. Code highlighting, table support, and YAML front-matters are also great. I love being able to switch between source and preview with command+/.
- nikkev 10y ago
  It does, just look under paragraph.
  - tnecniv 10y ago
    Not OP, but whenever I enter Latex into the math block, nothing ends up getting saved?
jkmcf 10y ago
For those who check comments first... I use this daily on macOS and it is a fantastic user experience. The Markdown editor doesn't have a separate preview window. It auto detects your blocks and toggles between editing and rendering. Overall very polished. It has Mermaid ASCII diagramming support, which I love, but I wonder whether the diagrams should be imported images since you would need Typora in order to see it rendered. Reminder that it is still beta. I'm still hoping for a more unified Evernote-ish side bar since right now it depends on using a file browser of some sort, with no built-in search across notes.
- dunham 10y ago
  FoldingText.app on OSX and "usecanvas.com" on the web work similarly. I really like that editing model for markdown. (Hiding all the markup except that which is surrounding or adjacent to the cursor.) I'd love to see someone implement it on top of draft.js or something. (I haven't gotten around to yet myself yet - too many projects, too little time.)
  - matt4077 10y ago
    I'd love to see it as a renderer for source code comments. I'd love to have th jupyter experience in an actual editor.
  - aviraldg 10y ago
    We're doing something similar on riot.im with our new editor.
- wodenokoto 10y ago
  How does it handle images? Can I drag'n'drop images and will they just be linked or saved to a place relative to the document?
  - algorithmsRcool 10y ago
    I just tried it. You can drag images into the doc and it will show the image WYSIWYG, but the image url looks to be an absolute path, not a relative one. It does not move the image.
tmikaeld 10y ago
It's hard to stop being used to the folder-tree in LightPaper, makes it much simpler to organise MD files.
serialpreneur 10y ago
I have been using Typora for the past 6+ months. Love it! Best markdown editor for my needs. Its simplicity is its best feature.
steadicat 10y ago
What’s missing in most of these markdown editors (including this one), is the ability to copy the formatted document as clean rich text, for pasting into email and other apps. For example, a simple document with a list gives you this very clean HTML if you “copy code”: Here is an email with a bunch of lists: <ul><li> Item one </li> <li> Item two <ul><li> Item three</li> </ul> </li> </ul> But if you copy the rich text and paste into a contenteditable field, you get this (ugh): <div><p cid="c1" mdtype="paragraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-margin-before: 1rem; -webkit-margin-after: 1rem; margin: 30px 0px 0.8em; width: inherit; position: relative; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Open Sans", "Clear Sans", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap; text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Here is an email with a bunch of lists:<ul class="ul-list" cid="c23" mdtype="list" data-mark="-" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0.8em 0px; padding-left: 30px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Open Sans", "Clear Sans", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap; text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li cid="c24" mdtype="list_item" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; position: relative;">Item one</li><li cid="c33" mdtype="list_item" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; position: relative;">Item two<ul class="ul-list" cid="c41" mdtype="list" data-mark="-" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding-left: 30px;"><li cid="c40" mdtype="list_item" class="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; position: relative;">Item three</li><li cid="c40" mdtype="list_item" class="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; position: relative;"><div> </div></li></ul></li></ul><p cid="c120" mdtype="paragraph" class="unholdable" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-margin-before: 1rem; -webkit-margin-after: 1rem; margin: 0.8em 0px; width: inherit; position: relative; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Open Sans", "Clear Sans", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap; text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div>
oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
Crashes for me on OSX 10.9.5: Assertion failed: (tokenCount < maxCountIncludingZeroTerminator - 1), function CUIRenditionKeySetValueForAttribute, file /SourceCache/CoreUI/CoreUI-231.1/CoreTheme/ThemeStorage/CUIThemeRendition.m, line 136.
GordonS 10y ago
Does this only support GitHub-flavoured markdown? I didn't find the website very informative (honestly, confusing if anything), and couldn't find reference to anything else, like Asciidoctor.
- vonklaus 10y ago
  I like it. Used it for >several months. If you have used mou before it is similar. You can edit the themes (ive downloaded some from github) and you can configure a couple markdown flavors out of the box iirc. It renders in place in real time unlike some of the ones that load on half of the screen. Worth a download. They smoothed out a lot of the issues with updating content & cursor movement. Best markdown editor ive used, if viewing the rendered markdown matters to you. You can export as a pdf and a couple other doctypes which is nice for sending to non-technical teamenbers who have no markdown reader.
  - GordonS 10y ago
    Any idea if it works with Asciidoctor?
    - vonklaus 10y ago
      Not familiar with that. Probably not. Its a few MBs of diskspace & works out of the box. Prob be quicker to dl & dump it if you dont like it. All editors/notes/workflow are highly subjective, i tried macdown, mou, a bunch of similar os x notes clones, notes, evernote, ect. I like this for notes & simple docs. I would really like it if it had a sidebar with directories but the reason so many of these things exist is that everyone angry enough just builds their own.
- algorithmsRcool 10y ago
  According to their docs they use Github-flavored markdown. But they also apparently support lots of extensions to it. See here http://support.typora.io/Markdown-Reference/ http://support.typora.io/Markdown-Reference/ And here for other docs http://support.typora.io/ http://support.typora.io/
whatgoodisaroad 10y ago
"A truly minimal markdown editor" Is less-minimal than nano.
- vonklaus 10y ago
  What would that look like? Just nano, but removing the few shortcuts except key entry & save.
- vonklaus 10y ago
  What would that look like? Just nano, but removing the few shortcuts except key entry & save.
hyperhopper 10y ago
With everybody scrambling to support markdown, I'm surprised there isn't more support for org mode. Once switching to it I can't go back.
- Steeeve 10y ago
  I want to love org mode, but I don't know it well enough. I've only seen a video that reviewed how great it was, but I haven't seen any tutorials/videos on how to actually use it that went into detail. Any pointers on getting started.
tokenizerrr 10y ago
The windows download page does not have a way for you to go back to the main page... Not even clicking back in the browser. Well, there is the "Typora on Mac" button on the top right, which oddly enough does take you back to the homepage. But who would think to click that?
therealasdf 10y ago
This is beautiful
ijafri 10y ago
they have done/got a lot of things right.
mattivc 10y ago
I have been using MacDown for a while now, which again was a replacement for Mou. But this looks even better.
ausjke 10y ago
used various markdown editor these years, I now settle down on vscode for editing and if I need export to PDF I use remarkable which does the job well including various utf-8 fonts. tried typora quickly, it looks nice, however it can't handle export-to-pdf with some asia fonts in it for me, hope that can be improved. it's fair to say pandoc can't do utf-8 fonts for PDF reliably either.
- algorithmsRcool 10y ago
  Makes sense, Typora uses Pandoc under the covers for it's import/export. I use vscode for my markdown editing also, but the lack of help with tables and other formatting hurt along with the lack of a offline spellchecker makes vscode a bit painful.
captainmuon 10y ago
Very pretty. I like how it hides the markup, but still feels like you are editing markdown (e.g. <Backspace> removes the hidden formatting characters). Unfortunately, there is quite some input lag for me (Windows 10, reasonably fast laptop, HighDpi (Yoga Pro 2). I have this in many Electron apps, some less (Simplenote is very snappy, VS Code is OK), some much more (Atom), but it almost alway feels wierd.
cloverich 10y ago
If creator reads this: I note that its currently free and in Beta. What is the expected cost, and the transition from a beta client to the paid one? e.g. can I just stay on beta forever and only pay if I want to upgrade to get the new features? etc. Looks very nice so far!
mankash666 10y ago
Just curious if a WYSIWYG is planned for this. With all the possible languages one can learn, learning one for documentation alone seems like cognitive overload, especially if an application can do it for you
- no_protocol 10y ago
  This already is "what you see is what you get" -- are you asking about some kind of buttons for hints to insert the markup for a certain type?
  - mankash666 10y ago
    No it's not. You have to type in actual Markdown semantics for the rendering to occur. You don't write XML when you write in MS word, do you?
    - no_protocol 10y ago
      The demo shows at least a shortcut key for bold text, I'm guessing there are more.
    - algorithmsRcool 10y ago
      You do not have to type the markdown. You can press Ctrl+B and bold text. You can right click and insert a Table and fill it in as WYSIWYG. You can always type markdown but you don't have to. Pressing Ctrl + / will toggle the whole doc to pure markdown so you can tweak for a second and then flip back to WYSIWYG.
- inimino 10y ago
  The only draw of markdown is that it's just plain text. If the overhead of learning it doesn't appeal to you then I think a standard WYSIWYG word processor would be a better choice.
  - mankash666 10y ago
    I don't see how WYSIWYG conflicts with markdowns version controllability, which is it's real advantage over something like MS word. FYI, markdown has WYSIWYG editors already, and this is one of them. This one relies on keyboard shortcuts versus clickable hints, which MS word offers, making it appealing to a non programmer
brbsix 10y ago
Is that deb source line correct? It's listed in the installation instructions as: deb https://typora.io linux/ `apt-get update` barks out the following warning: W: Conflicting distribution: https://typora.io linux/ InRelease (expected linux but got ) To suppress the message I ended up changing it to: deb https://typora.io/linux ./
no_protocol 10y ago
I read the page a few times through and I can't find answers to a couple questions. If someone has already installed the app, can you clarify: - When I save the document, is it just plain markdown as text? - If I copy and paste it into an input element in my browser that expects markdown, will it be copying just plaintext markdown? - What if I copy and paste it into something like Microsoft Word? If the creator is listening, I have some comments for your site: - I tried clicking/typing on the opening page before realizing I had to scroll down. - I eventually found that there were some clickable words that changed displayed images, but it wasn't obvious. - After finding I could click some words, I expected to be able to click the menu options under 'Accessibility' and found it a bit ironic that they weren't clickable. On the positive side: - The moving image showing a user typing markdown in and the text transforming is awesome and looks great. This looks pretty but I can't see myself using it much, I'm usually writing markdown in vim. Anyone know of a vim plugin to split the window to a live preview for markdown? It is pretty much readable as plain text, but it would be nice to see a preview to know if I've made an error in the markup.
- algorithmsRcool 10y ago
  - Saving is as plain markdown. But you can export to a variety of formats (they use pandoc) - There is a setting for copy/paste to use markdown vs plain text - Pasting into word would be as HTML since word is rich text
  - no_protocol 10y ago
    > - There is a setting for copy/paste to use markdown vs plain text Do you mean markdown vs rich text? Or can it paste markdown, plain text, and rich text?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - algorithmsRcool 10y ago
      No, the setting is Preferences > Editor > Default copy behavior When i turn it off (default) and copy/paste into notepad it only pastes plain text with no markdown. When i turn it on and copy paste into notepad it retains the markdown formatting characters (*'s, ```'s and etc...) Pasting into MS Word (a rich text editor) always pastes as rich text regardless of the setting
bananabill 10y ago
I think I may be missing the main usecase here but how come I see so many different markdown editors on here all the time? Markdown is pretty simple and easy to read in plaintext, or with simple highlighting so what's the point? Or am I just being one of those weirdos that's like "WHO NEEDS SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING YOU SCRUBS!"?
- algorithmsRcool 10y ago
  For me it works well because of: - Spellcheck - WYSIWYG for complex/annoying markdown (try adding a column to a 20 row table in markdown unassisted) - Nice unobtrusive typing experience - Easy toggle switch to raw markdown (Ctrl + /) - Syntax highlighting for code blocks - Familiar hotkeys for formatting (Ctrl + B for bold, Ctrl + 1 for H1, Ctrl + 2 for H2 etc...)
- bachmeier 10y ago
  > Markdown is pretty simple and easy to read in plaintext That is actually the main reason for markdown's existence [1], so I have the same issue with these editors. I don't understand attempts to hide the formatting. "The overriding design goal for Markdown’s formatting syntax is to make it as readable as possible. The idea is that a Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions." [1] https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/ https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
  - daurnimator 10y ago
    I often like to preview how text works as I work on it. e.g. if I bold this, does it look out of place or to check that internal links work. However, I currently just use my normal text editor and open the output in a browser (if compiling to html)/terminal (if compiling to man pages)/evince (if compiling to pdf)
  - creshal 10y ago
    Markdown is simple and easy to read to coders, and others with (for a lack of a better term) mathematical inclination. It would be really awesome if we could get the current "Word for everything crowd" to use markdown too, and assistive WYSIWYG editors are a lot more attractive to them.
pugworthy 10y ago
Fool that I am, I stared at the page for quite some time wondering when the loading animation was going to end and the page load. Then I saw the scroll bar...
- inimino 10y ago
  There's also a little downward-pointing arrow at the bottom, but I agree the design is unintuitive.
tomne 10y ago
Isn't that called vim (or insert your actual editor of choice)? Markdown is meant to be readable while editing, I actually find having the rendered edition on top of your edition really confusing, when you can just open the .md file in your editor while having your preview outside of it updated after each save.
gravypod 10y ago
Is there an AUR or an arch package for this?
desireco42 10y ago
This is pretty awesome. My initial thought was that we really don't need another Markdown editor, these are becoming like ToDo lists. However, it looks awesome, so far it seems to work really well. Support for unicode is great.
StavrosK 10y ago
Having just installed SolveSpace, a parametric 3D CAD tool which includes a solver in 1.9 MB, I can't help but feel a bit sad when a minimal Markdown editor is a 34 MB file :( I wonder if there's a better option for crossplatform apps than Electron. Maybe Rust? Or Python+PyQT?
- ovao 10y ago
  Still less than Google's site for the new Pixel [1] :) [1] https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/ckhRCy/pixel.google.com https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/ckhRCy/pixel.google.com
  - truncate 10y ago
    I would like to see what is the size of this page in countries with slower internet.
    - mzehrer 10y ago
      I would guess they don"t care. These countries are not exactly the target market for such a expensive phone.
      - tvararu 10y ago
        It costs $2.60 to view the website in Canada with non-retina images. Source: https://whatdoesmysitecost.com/test/161007_QR_78c23294113b6c95811fd521859f820a https://whatdoesmysitecost.com/test/161007_QR_78c23294113b6c...
  - whocanfly 10y ago
    97.7% of which is images. Also, PageSpeed gives it a 48/100 on desktop.
  - kup0 10y ago
    Why the heck are they using PNG for a large photo panorama? That's 5MB right there for one image.
guessmyname 10y ago
I used to use Haroopad [1] unfortunately the author seemed to stop its development some time ago. This seems like a good alternative, in fact, it looks and works so well that I can justify its dependency on Electron. Props to @abnerlee for its work. I will definitely recommend this application to my friends. [1] http://pad.haroopress.com/ http://pad.haroopress.com/
- acemarke 10y ago
  I just found Haroopad myself a couple weeks ago, but did note its lack of updates. I may try out Typora for comparison. That said, Haroopad seems to work pretty well for me at the moment.
adamrezich 10y ago
Cool app! Glad it's for Windows! Maybe it's just me though, but I think a smooth transition when the text restructures would make it a lot less jarring.
nodesocket 10y ago
This is amazing for writing documentation. Writers can write inside of Typora and export to pdf (print) and html (web). Exporting to html even brings in code fence block styles and language color pigments. Bravo!
shRaj9fEc8Vith 10y ago
not bad start up time consider it's using Electron! Love it so far.
aq3cn 10y ago
It is a great software. Much better than paid options out there. I tested it on Mac and Ubuntu. I wanted Windows version too but was reluctant to install it. Is there a portable version of it? I like to keep it on pendrive. Edit: Don't mind, I loved it so much and I could stop myself from installing it on my Windows machine too. But I still want the portable version so that I can use it when I don't have admin privileges to install software.
asimjalis 10y ago
Nice tool. Like it. Especially like the fact that it does syntax coloring for different languages. There is nothing like this as far as I know. Usually Markdown editors are not WYSIWYG.
mintplant 10y ago
VirusTotal scan of the installer, in case anyone is interested: https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/c825f1c56df8802215011f31c30f477544ca84c02a95269eae3f38fcf20ffe5b/analysis/ https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/c825f1c56df8802215011f31c... (1/56 detection ratio and it looks like a false positive)
- creshal 10y ago
  Some virus scanners have gone full retard and flag all executables they haven't seen before.
  - davidjhall 10y ago
    Hurm -- I just had Avira and Windows Defender flag it as unsafe. They both said they detected Adware/Filefinder.IL Is that a common missed signature? Does it have a common pattern?
    - creshal 10y ago
      No idea, to be honest. I'm not really using Windows actively any more, but complaints about heuristics detections crop up all the time. EDIT: I've just uploaded a test electron binary I made myself to see whether it triggers on all of them. 0 detections for mine, but mine are always digitally signed. I'm not sure whether and how that affects heuristics, but theoretically it should.
dewiz 10y ago
I gave Typora a test drive with Readme.MD from Github. The rendering is considerably different, too early to use it. IntelliJ IDEA MD support is still the best tool IMHO.
vaags 10y ago
Looks nice. I've been using Writemonkey for a few years, but might consider switching to this if the price won't be too high. The showstopper for me, at the moment, is the non-international spellchecker. I need my native language (Norwegian). I would also like the option to have a tiny clock in the bottom right of the page (like Writemonkey has). It's useful for fullscreen writing. Writemonkey is probably the best alternative for Windows. It has way more features, and it's free (unless you need plugin-support). It does not, however, have inline live preview.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
yason 10y ago
Looks nice but isn't the point of markdown pretty much that you can still do your typing in clear, explicit plaintext and then merely generate properly formatted html/pdf/whatnot from it, effectively avoiding any wysiwyg editing? That's what different mark-up languages such as SGML (HTML/XML), LaTeX, even Org mode, etc generally try to achieve: to separate content and presentation. That is, to write the meat of the text explicitly and not even able to worry about how it will look.
- cpplinuxdude 10y ago
  View > Source Code Mode
- wodenokoto 10y ago
  Yes and no. The point of markdown is that it is human readable both plaintext and rendered. Writing in a rendered environment looks nice, which to some people foster writing. Writing in a rendered environment ensures your markup is correct ( as it wouldn't render, if it wasn't) For me, those two things ensures that I don't have to worry about how things look when I write.
salex89 10y ago
I'll forgive the application size, because I like it. I hope there are plans to add tabs, because the current approach is a bit clunky, you can switch between open windows with Ctrl+Tab but the windows are independent.
fuzzygroup 10y ago
I just installed this and what I found was that it works nicely but, at least on OSX, it renders correctly but doesn't copy # or ## elements during a copy / paste operation. It correctly saves them to do disc but doesn't put them in the paste buffer. Pity. Its a pretty app but if they got that wrong, I wonder what else is lurking. I don't need another editor that writes files. I could, however, use something I can paste markdown into, fix a formatting issue, and move back to a text buffer in a browser / Github readme, etc.
- fuzzygroup 10y ago
  Update: I just dug into it some more and there is a specific Copy to Markdown (shift+command+c) command so that does make it a bit more interesting for me as a command+tab paste / fix / shift+command+c way of debugging markdown hell. Apologies for the initial error.
- MattBearman 10y ago
  If you just select all and copy a lot of formatting is lost. However, you can go Edit > Copy As Markdown (shift+cmd+c) and that keeps all formatting, even headings
- fuzzygroup 10y ago
  I just tested a use case of: * paste in a Jekyll formatted markdown document * select all (which it couldn't do with something of 3,103 words - I had to do it manually) * shift+command+c to copy it as markdown * paste it into a TextMate window * The initial ---- markup to denote the header block is missing * The tags: [] array statement is converted into a header I hope the author notices; it really is pretty.
mrmondo 10y ago
Yikes this is massive - is it a JavaScript site embedded in a frame by chance?
- creshal 10y ago
  Electron does a bit more than that (full-blown nodejs in background), which of course only increases the footprint. But apart from the final binary size, it's an okay-ish development to work with. Especially for rapid prototyping. (Disclaimer, shameless self plug: I wrote a blog article on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12651601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12651601 )
tauchunfall 10y ago
This looks like a WYSIWYM (what you see is what you mean) editor similar to LyX.
baldfat 10y ago
NOT CROSS PLATFORM Linux User Here. (I am actually an OpenSUE and Arch user) when you think providing an Ubuntu solution https://www.typora.io/#linux https://www.typora.io/#linux and have sudo add-apt-repository 'deb https://typora.io https://typora.io linux/' this does not make this a Linux platform solution. Currently I think 1) Provide a RPM and a DEB 2) Provide a tar ball of the source so it can be compiled 3) Using a Linux application installer like flatpak, appimage or snap would also make it acceptable to me instead of RPM/DEB Thank you for your work but being on Linux isn't simple and I don't think it is accurate to say cross compatible on Linux when all we got is a deb. Hope that in the next 3 years it gets easier. The best solution I believe for providing packages for multiple of distribution is SUSE Build Services https://build.opensuse.org/ https://build.opensuse.org/. It provides the ability to build once and SUSE build solution will make packages for other distros. So it will make a deb, rpm and you could even have a package for Arch. https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Build_Service_Tutorial https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Build_Service_Tutorial
- ericfrederich 10y ago
  RHEL / CentOS user here... I feel the same
- creshal 10y ago
  FWIW, electron-builder even offers to generate Debian, RPM, Arch and plain tar packages simultaneously. So there's really no reason not to offer all.
  - baldfat 10y ago
    So then the ability to provide all three is even simpler?
    - creshal 10y ago
      Assuming typora uses electron-builder (which most electron projects do), then it's just a config setting for their build pipeline, yes.
- 10y ago
mrwnmonm 10y ago
it is weird how you could ignore new startups, then use their products later this is not just an app i like, i actually was going to build this, but when i saw it, i downloaded, tried it, then forget about it don't be disappointing if small people are using it at the beginning, just keep improving it
NuDinNou 10y ago
> * Free during beta. Ok, bye.
Fogest 10y ago
It's a little laggy when I'm typing, I keep notes for my whole class, not one file per lecture so the files are decently big. I have found all markdown editors with live preview have this same problem as they redraw on every keystroke and this is fairly slow process with a big document and slow computer. My note taking laptop is not very powerful. This program looks great and I really want to use it, so I may need to start creating a new notes file for every lecture and then using a script to combine them later and export to PDF.
anotheryou 10y ago
Super sweet! Any chance for vim and not hiding the syntax in the styled view? With that I'd switch in a heartbeat. Also nice to have: optionally show invisible characters. Than the headline margins and doubled spaces become easier to digest.

No plain download for Linux available. Just a Debian repo. Not open source, apparently. Looks quite nice though. I'd try it out if I could install it on Arch...

Jiig 10y ago
There's a page[1] detailing how to get get the .deb file without apt, and then use dpkg for arch [2] to install it if you wanted to. Of course you'd have to manually update, and pacman won't know about it. [1] http://support.typora.io/Typora-on-Linux/ http://support.typora.io/Typora-on-Linux/ [2] https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/dpkg https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/dpkg EDIT: Turns out there is an AUR package already: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/typora/ https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/typora/
- the_duke 10y ago
  Good catch. Serves me right for just googling for "aur typora".
mwambua 10y ago
I found this a little annoying myself. Lately 'Linux' somehow only translates to 'Only Debian/Ubuntu'. However, this is the first one I've come across that doesn't even distribute plain old gzipped binaries.

mdciotti 10y ago

I've been using Typora for several months now. It's the best native markdown editor I've found. Extremely smooth to write in preview mode using markdown notation. Inline math support is nice, but I wish it had block/equation math support. Code highlighting, table support, and YAML front-matters are also great. I love being able to switch between source and preview with command+/.

nikkev 10y ago
It does, just look under paragraph.
- tnecniv 10y ago
  Not OP, but whenever I enter Latex into the math block, nothing ends up getting saved?

jkmcf 10y ago

For those who check comments first... I use this daily on macOS and it is a fantastic user experience. The Markdown editor doesn't have a separate preview window. It auto detects your blocks and toggles between editing and rendering. Overall very polished. It has Mermaid ASCII diagramming support, which I love, but I wonder whether the diagrams should be imported images since you would need Typora in order to see it rendered. Reminder that it is still beta. I'm still hoping for a more unified Evernote-ish side bar since right now it depends on using a file browser of some sort, with no built-in search across notes.

dunham 10y ago
FoldingText.app on OSX and "usecanvas.com" on the web work similarly. I really like that editing model for markdown. (Hiding all the markup except that which is surrounding or adjacent to the cursor.) I'd love to see someone implement it on top of draft.js or something. (I haven't gotten around to yet myself yet - too many projects, too little time.)
- matt4077 10y ago
  I'd love to see it as a renderer for source code comments. I'd love to have th jupyter experience in an actual editor.
- aviraldg 10y ago
  We're doing something similar on riot.im with our new editor.
wodenokoto 10y ago
How does it handle images? Can I drag'n'drop images and will they just be linked or saved to a place relative to the document?
- algorithmsRcool 10y ago
  I just tried it. You can drag images into the doc and it will show the image WYSIWYG, but the image url looks to be an absolute path, not a relative one. It does not move the image.

tmikaeld 10y ago

It's hard to stop being used to the folder-tree in LightPaper, makes it much simpler to organise MD files.

serialpreneur 10y ago

I have been using Typora for the past 6+ months. Love it! Best markdown editor for my needs. Its simplicity is its best feature.

steadicat 10y ago

What’s missing in most of these markdown editors (including this one), is the ability to copy the formatted document as clean rich text, for pasting into email and other apps. For example, a simple document with a list gives you this very clean HTML if you “copy code”: Here is an email with a bunch of lists: <ul><li> Item one </li> <li> Item two <ul><li> Item three</li> </ul> </li> </ul> But if you copy the rich text and paste into a contenteditable field, you get this (ugh): <div><p cid="c1" mdtype="paragraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-margin-before: 1rem; -webkit-margin-after: 1rem; margin: 30px 0px 0.8em; width: inherit; position: relative; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Open Sans", "Clear Sans", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap; text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Here is an email with a bunch of lists:<ul class="ul-list" cid="c23" mdtype="list" data-mark="-" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0.8em 0px; padding-left: 30px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Open Sans", "Clear Sans", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap; text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li cid="c24" mdtype="list_item" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; position: relative;">Item one</li><li cid="c33" mdtype="list_item" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; position: relative;">Item two<ul class="ul-list" cid="c41" mdtype="list" data-mark="-" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding-left: 30px;"><li cid="c40" mdtype="list_item" class="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; position: relative;">Item three</li><li cid="c40" mdtype="list_item" class="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; position: relative;"><div> </div></li></ul></li></ul><p cid="c120" mdtype="paragraph" class="unholdable" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-margin-before: 1rem; -webkit-margin-after: 1rem; margin: 0.8em 0px; width: inherit; position: relative; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Open Sans", "Clear Sans", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap; text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div>

oneeyedpigeon 10y ago

Crashes for me on OSX 10.9.5: Assertion failed: (tokenCount < maxCountIncludingZeroTerminator - 1), function CUIRenditionKeySetValueForAttribute, file /SourceCache/CoreUI/CoreUI-231.1/CoreTheme/ThemeStorage/CUIThemeRendition.m, line 136.

GordonS 10y ago

Does this only support GitHub-flavoured markdown? I didn't find the website very informative (honestly, confusing if anything), and couldn't find reference to anything else, like Asciidoctor.

vonklaus 10y ago
I like it. Used it for >several months. If you have used mou before it is similar. You can edit the themes (ive downloaded some from github) and you can configure a couple markdown flavors out of the box iirc. It renders in place in real time unlike some of the ones that load on half of the screen. Worth a download. They smoothed out a lot of the issues with updating content & cursor movement. Best markdown editor ive used, if viewing the rendered markdown matters to you. You can export as a pdf and a couple other doctypes which is nice for sending to non-technical teamenbers who have no markdown reader.
- GordonS 10y ago
  Any idea if it works with Asciidoctor?
  - vonklaus 10y ago
    Not familiar with that. Probably not. Its a few MBs of diskspace & works out of the box. Prob be quicker to dl & dump it if you dont like it. All editors/notes/workflow are highly subjective, i tried macdown, mou, a bunch of similar os x notes clones, notes, evernote, ect. I like this for notes & simple docs. I would really like it if it had a sidebar with directories but the reason so many of these things exist is that everyone angry enough just builds their own.
algorithmsRcool 10y ago
According to their docs they use Github-flavored markdown. But they also apparently support lots of extensions to it. See here http://support.typora.io/Markdown-Reference/ http://support.typora.io/Markdown-Reference/ And here for other docs http://support.typora.io/ http://support.typora.io/

whatgoodisaroad 10y ago

"A truly minimal markdown editor" Is less-minimal than nano.

vonklaus 10y ago
What would that look like? Just nano, but removing the few shortcuts except key entry & save.
vonklaus 10y ago
What would that look like? Just nano, but removing the few shortcuts except key entry & save.

hyperhopper 10y ago

With everybody scrambling to support markdown, I'm surprised there isn't more support for org mode. Once switching to it I can't go back.

Steeeve 10y ago
I want to love org mode, but I don't know it well enough. I've only seen a video that reviewed how great it was, but I haven't seen any tutorials/videos on how to actually use it that went into detail. Any pointers on getting started.

tokenizerrr 10y ago

The windows download page does not have a way for you to go back to the main page... Not even clicking back in the browser. Well, there is the "Typora on Mac" button on the top right, which oddly enough does take you back to the homepage. But who would think to click that?

therealasdf 10y ago

This is beautiful

ijafri 10y ago

they have done/got a lot of things right.

mattivc 10y ago

I have been using MacDown for a while now, which again was a replacement for Mou. But this looks even better.

ausjke 10y ago

used various markdown editor these years, I now settle down on vscode for editing and if I need export to PDF I use remarkable which does the job well including various utf-8 fonts. tried typora quickly, it looks nice, however it can't handle export-to-pdf with some asia fonts in it for me, hope that can be improved. it's fair to say pandoc can't do utf-8 fonts for PDF reliably either.

algorithmsRcool 10y ago
Makes sense, Typora uses Pandoc under the covers for it's import/export. I use vscode for my markdown editing also, but the lack of help with tables and other formatting hurt along with the lack of a offline spellchecker makes vscode a bit painful.

captainmuon 10y ago

Very pretty. I like how it hides the markup, but still feels like you are editing markdown (e.g. <Backspace> removes the hidden formatting characters). Unfortunately, there is quite some input lag for me (Windows 10, reasonably fast laptop, HighDpi (Yoga Pro 2). I have this in many Electron apps, some less (Simplenote is very snappy, VS Code is OK), some much more (Atom), but it almost alway feels wierd.

cloverich 10y ago

If creator reads this: I note that its currently free and in Beta. What is the expected cost, and the transition from a beta client to the paid one? e.g. can I just stay on beta forever and only pay if I want to upgrade to get the new features? etc. Looks very nice so far!

mankash666 10y ago

Just curious if a WYSIWYG is planned for this. With all the possible languages one can learn, learning one for documentation alone seems like cognitive overload, especially if an application can do it for you

no_protocol 10y ago
This already is "what you see is what you get" -- are you asking about some kind of buttons for hints to insert the markup for a certain type?
- mankash666 10y ago
  No it's not. You have to type in actual Markdown semantics for the rendering to occur. You don't write XML when you write in MS word, do you?
  - no_protocol 10y ago
    The demo shows at least a shortcut key for bold text, I'm guessing there are more.
  - algorithmsRcool 10y ago
    You do not have to type the markdown. You can press Ctrl+B and bold text. You can right click and insert a Table and fill it in as WYSIWYG. You can always type markdown but you don't have to. Pressing Ctrl + / will toggle the whole doc to pure markdown so you can tweak for a second and then flip back to WYSIWYG.
inimino 10y ago
The only draw of markdown is that it's just plain text. If the overhead of learning it doesn't appeal to you then I think a standard WYSIWYG word processor would be a better choice.
- mankash666 10y ago
  I don't see how WYSIWYG conflicts with markdowns version controllability, which is it's real advantage over something like MS word. FYI, markdown has WYSIWYG editors already, and this is one of them. This one relies on keyboard shortcuts versus clickable hints, which MS word offers, making it appealing to a non programmer

brbsix 10y ago

Is that deb source line correct? It's listed in the installation instructions as: deb https://typora.io linux/ `apt-get update` barks out the following warning: W: Conflicting distribution: https://typora.io linux/ InRelease (expected linux but got ) To suppress the message I ended up changing it to: deb https://typora.io/linux ./

no_protocol 10y ago

I read the page a few times through and I can't find answers to a couple questions. If someone has already installed the app, can you clarify: - When I save the document, is it just plain markdown as text? - If I copy and paste it into an input element in my browser that expects markdown, will it be copying just plaintext markdown? - What if I copy and paste it into something like Microsoft Word? If the creator is listening, I have some comments for your site: - I tried clicking/typing on the opening page before realizing I had to scroll down. - I eventually found that there were some clickable words that changed displayed images, but it wasn't obvious. - After finding I could click some words, I expected to be able to click the menu options under 'Accessibility' and found it a bit ironic that they weren't clickable. On the positive side: - The moving image showing a user typing markdown in and the text transforming is awesome and looks great. This looks pretty but I can't see myself using it much, I'm usually writing markdown in vim. Anyone know of a vim plugin to split the window to a live preview for markdown? It is pretty much readable as plain text, but it would be nice to see a preview to know if I've made an error in the markup.

algorithmsRcool 10y ago
- Saving is as plain markdown. But you can export to a variety of formats (they use pandoc) - There is a setting for copy/paste to use markdown vs plain text - Pasting into word would be as HTML since word is rich text
- no_protocol 10y ago
  > - There is a setting for copy/paste to use markdown vs plain text Do you mean markdown vs rich text? Or can it paste markdown, plain text, and rich text?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - algorithmsRcool 10y ago
    No, the setting is Preferences > Editor > Default copy behavior When i turn it off (default) and copy/paste into notepad it only pastes plain text with no markdown. When i turn it on and copy paste into notepad it retains the markdown formatting characters (*'s, ```'s and etc...) Pasting into MS Word (a rich text editor) always pastes as rich text regardless of the setting

bananabill 10y ago

I think I may be missing the main usecase here but how come I see so many different markdown editors on here all the time? Markdown is pretty simple and easy to read in plaintext, or with simple highlighting so what's the point? Or am I just being one of those weirdos that's like "WHO NEEDS SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING YOU SCRUBS!"?

algorithmsRcool 10y ago
For me it works well because of: - Spellcheck - WYSIWYG for complex/annoying markdown (try adding a column to a 20 row table in markdown unassisted) - Nice unobtrusive typing experience - Easy toggle switch to raw markdown (Ctrl + /) - Syntax highlighting for code blocks - Familiar hotkeys for formatting (Ctrl + B for bold, Ctrl + 1 for H1, Ctrl + 2 for H2 etc...)
bachmeier 10y ago
> Markdown is pretty simple and easy to read in plaintext That is actually the main reason for markdown's existence [1], so I have the same issue with these editors. I don't understand attempts to hide the formatting. "The overriding design goal for Markdown’s formatting syntax is to make it as readable as possible. The idea is that a Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions." [1] https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/ https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
- daurnimator 10y ago
  I often like to preview how text works as I work on it. e.g. if I bold this, does it look out of place or to check that internal links work. However, I currently just use my normal text editor and open the output in a browser (if compiling to html)/terminal (if compiling to man pages)/evince (if compiling to pdf)
- creshal 10y ago
  Markdown is simple and easy to read to coders, and others with (for a lack of a better term) mathematical inclination. It would be really awesome if we could get the current "Word for everything crowd" to use markdown too, and assistive WYSIWYG editors are a lot more attractive to them.

pugworthy 10y ago

Fool that I am, I stared at the page for quite some time wondering when the loading animation was going to end and the page load. Then I saw the scroll bar...

inimino 10y ago
There's also a little downward-pointing arrow at the bottom, but I agree the design is unintuitive.

tomne 10y ago

Isn't that called vim (or insert your actual editor of choice)? Markdown is meant to be readable while editing, I actually find having the rendered edition on top of your edition really confusing, when you can just open the .md file in your editor while having your preview outside of it updated after each save.

gravypod 10y ago

Is there an AUR or an arch package for this?

desireco42 10y ago

This is pretty awesome. My initial thought was that we really don't need another Markdown editor, these are becoming like ToDo lists. However, it looks awesome, so far it seems to work really well. Support for unicode is great.

StavrosK 10y ago

Having just installed SolveSpace, a parametric 3D CAD tool which includes a solver in 1.9 MB, I can't help but feel a bit sad when a minimal Markdown editor is a 34 MB file :( I wonder if there's a better option for crossplatform apps than Electron. Maybe Rust? Or Python+PyQT?

ovao 10y ago
Still less than Google's site for the new Pixel [1] :) [1] https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/ckhRCy/pixel.google.com https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/ckhRCy/pixel.google.com
- truncate 10y ago
  I would like to see what is the size of this page in countries with slower internet.
  - mzehrer 10y ago
    I would guess they don"t care. These countries are not exactly the target market for such a expensive phone.
    - tvararu 10y ago
      It costs $2.60 to view the website in Canada with non-retina images. Source: https://whatdoesmysitecost.com/test/161007_QR_78c23294113b6c95811fd521859f820a https://whatdoesmysitecost.com/test/161007_QR_78c23294113b6c...
- whocanfly 10y ago
  97.7% of which is images. Also, PageSpeed gives it a 48/100 on desktop.
- kup0 10y ago
  Why the heck are they using PNG for a large photo panorama? That's 5MB right there for one image.

guessmyname 10y ago

I used to use Haroopad [1] unfortunately the author seemed to stop its development some time ago. This seems like a good alternative, in fact, it looks and works so well that I can justify its dependency on Electron. Props to @abnerlee for its work. I will definitely recommend this application to my friends. [1] http://pad.haroopress.com/ http://pad.haroopress.com/

acemarke 10y ago
I just found Haroopad myself a couple weeks ago, but did note its lack of updates. I may try out Typora for comparison. That said, Haroopad seems to work pretty well for me at the moment.

adamrezich 10y ago

Cool app! Glad it's for Windows! Maybe it's just me though, but I think a smooth transition when the text restructures would make it a lot less jarring.

nodesocket 10y ago

This is amazing for writing documentation. Writers can write inside of Typora and export to pdf (print) and html (web). Exporting to html even brings in code fence block styles and language color pigments. Bravo!

shRaj9fEc8Vith 10y ago

not bad start up time consider it's using Electron! Love it so far.

aq3cn 10y ago

It is a great software. Much better than paid options out there. I tested it on Mac and Ubuntu. I wanted Windows version too but was reluctant to install it. Is there a portable version of it? I like to keep it on pendrive. Edit: Don't mind, I loved it so much and I could stop myself from installing it on my Windows machine too. But I still want the portable version so that I can use it when I don't have admin privileges to install software.

asimjalis 10y ago

Nice tool. Like it. Especially like the fact that it does syntax coloring for different languages. There is nothing like this as far as I know. Usually Markdown editors are not WYSIWYG.

mintplant 10y ago

VirusTotal scan of the installer, in case anyone is interested: https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/c825f1c56df8802215011f31c30f477544ca84c02a95269eae3f38fcf20ffe5b/analysis/ https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/c825f1c56df8802215011f31c... (1/56 detection ratio and it looks like a false positive)

creshal 10y ago
Some virus scanners have gone full retard and flag all executables they haven't seen before.
- davidjhall 10y ago
  Hurm -- I just had Avira and Windows Defender flag it as unsafe. They both said they detected Adware/Filefinder.IL Is that a common missed signature? Does it have a common pattern?
  - creshal 10y ago
    No idea, to be honest. I'm not really using Windows actively any more, but complaints about heuristics detections crop up all the time. EDIT: I've just uploaded a test electron binary I made myself to see whether it triggers on all of them. 0 detections for mine, but mine are always digitally signed. I'm not sure whether and how that affects heuristics, but theoretically it should.

dewiz 10y ago

I gave Typora a test drive with Readme.MD from Github. The rendering is considerably different, too early to use it. IntelliJ IDEA MD support is still the best tool IMHO.

vaags 10y ago

Looks nice. I've been using Writemonkey for a few years, but might consider switching to this if the price won't be too high. The showstopper for me, at the moment, is the non-international spellchecker. I need my native language (Norwegian). I would also like the option to have a tiny clock in the bottom right of the page (like Writemonkey has). It's useful for fullscreen writing. Writemonkey is probably the best alternative for Windows. It has way more features, and it's free (unless you need plugin-support). It does not, however, have inline live preview.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

yason 10y ago

Looks nice but isn't the point of markdown pretty much that you can still do your typing in clear, explicit plaintext and then merely generate properly formatted html/pdf/whatnot from it, effectively avoiding any wysiwyg editing? That's what different mark-up languages such as SGML (HTML/XML), LaTeX, even Org mode, etc generally try to achieve: to separate content and presentation. That is, to write the meat of the text explicitly and not even able to worry about how it will look.

cpplinuxdude 10y ago
View > Source Code Mode
wodenokoto 10y ago
Yes and no. The point of markdown is that it is human readable both plaintext and rendered. Writing in a rendered environment looks nice, which to some people foster writing. Writing in a rendered environment ensures your markup is correct ( as it wouldn't render, if it wasn't) For me, those two things ensures that I don't have to worry about how things look when I write.

salex89 10y ago

I'll forgive the application size, because I like it. I hope there are plans to add tabs, because the current approach is a bit clunky, you can switch between open windows with Ctrl+Tab but the windows are independent.

fuzzygroup 10y ago

I just installed this and what I found was that it works nicely but, at least on OSX, it renders correctly but doesn't copy # or ## elements during a copy / paste operation. It correctly saves them to do disc but doesn't put them in the paste buffer. Pity. Its a pretty app but if they got that wrong, I wonder what else is lurking. I don't need another editor that writes files. I could, however, use something I can paste markdown into, fix a formatting issue, and move back to a text buffer in a browser / Github readme, etc.

fuzzygroup 10y ago
Update: I just dug into it some more and there is a specific Copy to Markdown (shift+command+c) command so that does make it a bit more interesting for me as a command+tab paste / fix / shift+command+c way of debugging markdown hell. Apologies for the initial error.
MattBearman 10y ago
If you just select all and copy a lot of formatting is lost. However, you can go Edit > Copy As Markdown (shift+cmd+c) and that keeps all formatting, even headings
fuzzygroup 10y ago
I just tested a use case of: * paste in a Jekyll formatted markdown document * select all (which it couldn't do with something of 3,103 words - I had to do it manually) * shift+command+c to copy it as markdown * paste it into a TextMate window * The initial ---- markup to denote the header block is missing * The tags: [] array statement is converted into a header I hope the author notices; it really is pretty.

mrmondo 10y ago

Yikes this is massive - is it a JavaScript site embedded in a frame by chance?

creshal 10y ago
Electron does a bit more than that (full-blown nodejs in background), which of course only increases the footprint. But apart from the final binary size, it's an okay-ish development to work with. Especially for rapid prototyping. (Disclaimer, shameless self plug: I wrote a blog article on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12651601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12651601 )

tauchunfall 10y ago

This looks like a WYSIWYM (what you see is what you mean) editor similar to LyX.

baldfat 10y ago

NOT CROSS PLATFORM Linux User Here. (I am actually an OpenSUE and Arch user) when you think providing an Ubuntu solution https://www.typora.io/#linux https://www.typora.io/#linux and have sudo add-apt-repository 'deb https://typora.io https://typora.io linux/' this does not make this a Linux platform solution. Currently I think 1) Provide a RPM and a DEB 2) Provide a tar ball of the source so it can be compiled 3) Using a Linux application installer like flatpak, appimage or snap would also make it acceptable to me instead of RPM/DEB Thank you for your work but being on Linux isn't simple and I don't think it is accurate to say cross compatible on Linux when all we got is a deb. Hope that in the next 3 years it gets easier. The best solution I believe for providing packages for multiple of distribution is SUSE Build Services https://build.opensuse.org/ https://build.opensuse.org/. It provides the ability to build once and SUSE build solution will make packages for other distros. So it will make a deb, rpm and you could even have a package for Arch. https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Build_Service_Tutorial https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Build_Service_Tutorial

ericfrederich 10y ago
RHEL / CentOS user here... I feel the same
creshal 10y ago
FWIW, electron-builder even offers to generate Debian, RPM, Arch and plain tar packages simultaneously. So there's really no reason not to offer all.
- baldfat 10y ago
  So then the ability to provide all three is even simpler?
  - creshal 10y ago
    Assuming typora uses electron-builder (which most electron projects do), then it's just a config setting for their build pipeline, yes.
10y ago

mrwnmonm 10y ago

it is weird how you could ignore new startups, then use their products later this is not just an app i like, i actually was going to build this, but when i saw it, i downloaded, tried it, then forget about it don't be disappointing if small people are using it at the beginning, just keep improving it

NuDinNou 10y ago

> * Free during beta. Ok, bye.

Fogest 10y ago

It's a little laggy when I'm typing, I keep notes for my whole class, not one file per lecture so the files are decently big. I have found all markdown editors with live preview have this same problem as they redraw on every keystroke and this is fairly slow process with a big document and slow computer. My note taking laptop is not very powerful. This program looks great and I really want to use it, so I may need to start creating a new notes file for every lecture and then using a script to combine them later and export to PDF.

anotheryou 10y ago

Super sweet! Any chance for vim and not hiding the syntax in the styled view? With that I'd switch in a heartbeat. Also nice to have: optionally show invisible characters. Than the headline margins and doubled spaces become easier to digest.