6 ms·

What I don't get is why Markdown is always displayed as plain text, when it's supposedly a format to represent styling. Why can't we have a version of Markdown

What I don't get is why Markdown is always displayed as plain text, when it's supposedly a format to represent styling. Why can't we have a version of Markdown that gets syntax highlighting according to the actual written markup, without hiding the markup code? I.e. making identical the "code" form and the final "rendered" form. For example, writing " * this is highlighted * " would be shown as " * this is highlighted * ". Edit: I've just found http://hackcss.com/ http://hackcss.com/ in the comments below, which seems to get it and does what I've explained above, highlighting headers and code with a bold, darker font.

shoover 10y ago
Are you asking for this functionality in the editor or browser or something else? Editors do highlight text as you describe, at least in Emacs in markdown-mode and org-mode. Still, my experiments with variable width fonts in these modes have never stuck. As soon as you need to align anything like a header rule, source code, or table, you need a fixed width font. Then it comes down to whether the mode supports customizing that particular face.
dejawu 10y ago
Some newer Markdown editors will style the raw Markdown in addition to providing the rendered form, such as StackEdit[1] or Nanote[2] (my own work). [1] https://stackedit.io/editor https://stackedit.io/editor [2] https://nanote.co https://nanote.co
- akavel 10y ago
  For a desktop editor, see: http://www.typora.io/ http://www.typora.io/ (non affiliated, I just like it, wanted to write something similar)
  - TuringTest 10y ago
    Yes, Typora's live preview is more or less what I was thinking, showing the markup just for the item rigth below the cursor. I'd still add a mode like Microsoft Word's "show formatting marks", so that the user can decide whether to see the full markdown text or only the word or line being edited.

shoover 10y ago

Are you asking for this functionality in the editor or browser or something else? Editors do highlight text as you describe, at least in Emacs in markdown-mode and org-mode. Still, my experiments with variable width fonts in these modes have never stuck. As soon as you need to align anything like a header rule, source code, or table, you need a fixed width font. Then it comes down to whether the mode supports customizing that particular face.

dejawu 10y ago

Some newer Markdown editors will style the raw Markdown in addition to providing the rendered form, such as StackEdit[1] or Nanote[2] (my own work). [1] https://stackedit.io/editor https://stackedit.io/editor [2] https://nanote.co https://nanote.co

akavel 10y ago
For a desktop editor, see: http://www.typora.io/ http://www.typora.io/ (non affiliated, I just like it, wanted to write something similar)
- TuringTest 10y ago
  Yes, Typora's live preview is more or less what I was thinking, showing the markup just for the item rigth below the cursor. I'd still add a mode like Microsoft Word's "show formatting marks", so that the user can decide whether to see the full markdown text or only the word or line being edited.