6 ms·

Abricotine – WYSIWYM Markdown editor – open source and cross platform

68 points by jenningsjason 9y ago

jitl 9y ago
This is an electron app.
drenvuk 9y ago
This is cool but it makes me wonder about all of the electron apps that are coming out. Is there something more efficient that could do the same? Why are QT and GTK not nearly as popular?
- guessmyname 9y ago
  > Why are QT and GTK not nearly as popular? Because the people who are building and releasing these Electron apps are not interested to learn GTK/Qt; simple as that. Same reason why JavaScript is so "popular" because it's easy [1] to learn and — with the help of these other projects, Electron just being one of them — it becomes very easy to develop "cross-platform" applications. Imagine being a 12 years old interested to become a desktop application developer, and then someone comes and gives you the option to spend several hours learning GTK/Qt with C++/Python, and then another person gives them the option to learn JavaScript (a language that is daily giving something to talk about) with Electron, what would be your choice? [1] If you disregard all the ambiguity of the language.
- jahewson 9y ago
  "More efficient" how? At saving developer time? At producing shippable end products? At debugging? Will using GTK result in a better product that increases the end-user's "efficiency" more? Or will it really result in the developer shipping a product with 1/10th the features, or nothing at all?
  - drenvuk 9y ago
    Funny how you mentioned nothing of the computing resources required to run any of these. Sometimes it's alright to spend more time creating a product when the end result uses less CPU and less memory. It's not all or nothing.
    - tomtimtall 9y ago
      If it makes no notisable difference to the user and cost you more time, you are just wasting time that could have been spend better on improving the users experiance.
turbinerneiter 9y ago
Is the editor really a problem to solve for Markdown? Philosophically I regard Markdown as a language in the text-only-editor-unimportant family. I recently built a (simple, only works for me) filter for pandoc that allows for formulas in Markdown tables. org-mode features is what Markdown is missing, but without the marriage to the editor. At the same time: an editor like this makes Markdown more accessible for non-hackers, which is always good.
- masukomi 9y ago
  > Is the editor really a problem to solve for Markdown? I don't think it's a "problem to solve" i think it's an opportunity to grasp. I love markdown and can read it just fine without an editor like this, but I, and many others, find it useful to have headings actually be darker and bigger. There's value to those typographical changes. There's value to links being a different color. Having an editor that can provide your eyes with helpful things.... helps.
coleifer 9y ago
Too bad it's electron. I'm working on a just-for-fun markdown editor using GtkSourceView and GtkWebkit and, despite a slight learning curve getting familiar with gtk, it's been a pleasure to work on. Ugh...electron? Really??
- always_good 9y ago
  These kinds of dismissive comments make me wonder if the writer ever created anything of substance in their life. For example, notice how this project is actually accessible for people to try today. Building something in the privacy of localhost is pretty worthless if you think it equips you with the power of judgement. That's the easiest part of building something. Congratulations on your unreleased hobby project that doesn't use Electron. Let's keep this sort of comment off HN. You'll notice it only squanders interesting discussion from the pool. In fact, that it's built with Electron suggests that the core can be factored out into a library that you can embed in a website or another project, and that's great. So, please, spare us next time.
  - kej 9y ago
    One, you're replying to a guy with thousands of stars on his released github projects. Two, there are tradeoffs in using electron, and it's not unreasonable to discuss those. This place would lose a lot of its value if we're not allowed to discuss the pros and cons of technical decisions that go into a project.
    - ianai 9y ago
      It’s weird, but I think you’re both right. My first reaction to anything html/javascript/etc is a mix of “ew” and “that’s not very impressive“. But I also think it’s important to be inclusive and flexible. Society’s best off when people fight past their internal prejudices, but my past experiences with html/JavaScript put a bad memory in my mind. Ultimately, this looks like a well executed program from the screenshots. I say kudos to the developer of it. They did something productive and made something useful.
  - 9y ago
timwis 9y ago
Anyone know of a markdown editor that has quick, notational velocity style file search/creation and just saves files to the hard disk? (So I can sync the directory via Dropbox or Google drive myself)
- jamessb 9y ago
  I use nvALT. >nvALT 2 is a fork of the original Notational Velocity with some additional features and interface modifications, including MultiMarkdown functionality. http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/ http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/
rayalez 9y ago
This looks really awesome! I really wish I could use it as a library and embed it into my SaaS app. Is there a way to extract just the rendering functionality and add it to a website?
- fastball 9y ago
  Why not just use a markdown rendering engine with added features like kramdown[1]? 1. https://kramdown.gettalong.org/ https://kramdown.gettalong.org/
  - rayalez 9y ago
    Because I want realtime WYSIWYG markdown editing, kinda like in SimpleMDE or Typora.
- willglynn 9y ago
  I'm not sure if it's exactly the same features but I've had success with https://simplemde.com https://simplemde.com for rich Markdown entry on the web. I like that it's usable by people who want to click buttons -- and that by showing users both the formatting and the Markdown that caused it, it teaches how to skip the buttons in the future. At the same time, if you're a Markdown user doing everything on the keyboard, it's completely unobtrusive. Everybody wins.
NightMKoder 9y ago
On a related note: I’ve recently started using https://hackmd.io/ https://hackmd.io/ for markdown. It supports the full gh markdown and more. The best part is the collaborative editing. Big thumbs up to the guys working on the product - I haven’t missed desktop apps for markdown at all. I’m looking forward to trying their slideshow features. Disclosure: I have no affiliation with them :). I’m just a fanboy at this point.
kennydude 9y ago
Never heard syntax highlighting referred to as "code coloration" before. Looks nice though.
mikedelfino 9y ago
Just tested it and it seems really promising. Great work! I wish it could replace the formatting syntax as you type, like Typora [1] does. The document becomes much cleaner to read while still being efficient to write. [1] https://typora.io/ https://typora.io/
rraghur 9y ago
I think the way electron apps abound when there are possibly better alternatives is similar to the way markdown abounds in spite of other better 'lightweight' markup alternatives.. after years of using markdown, I've migrated to asciidoc and couldn't be happier that I don't have to rely on custom extensions.. I guess it's a mindshare thing and a learning curve thing.. I guess markdown is good enough for the vast majority of cases.. but when it isn't, it becomes a pita..
fiveFeet 9y ago
Does anyone know of a similar project for editing mediawiki files?

68 points by jenningsjason 9y ago

jitl 9y ago

This is an electron app.

This is cool but it makes me wonder about all of the electron apps that are coming out. Is there something more efficient that could do the same? Why are QT and GTK not nearly as popular?

guessmyname 9y ago
> Why are QT and GTK not nearly as popular? Because the people who are building and releasing these Electron apps are not interested to learn GTK/Qt; simple as that. Same reason why JavaScript is so "popular" because it's easy [1] to learn and — with the help of these other projects, Electron just being one of them — it becomes very easy to develop "cross-platform" applications. Imagine being a 12 years old interested to become a desktop application developer, and then someone comes and gives you the option to spend several hours learning GTK/Qt with C++/Python, and then another person gives them the option to learn JavaScript (a language that is daily giving something to talk about) with Electron, what would be your choice? [1] If you disregard all the ambiguity of the language.
jahewson 9y ago
"More efficient" how? At saving developer time? At producing shippable end products? At debugging? Will using GTK result in a better product that increases the end-user's "efficiency" more? Or will it really result in the developer shipping a product with 1/10th the features, or nothing at all?
- drenvuk 9y ago
  Funny how you mentioned nothing of the computing resources required to run any of these. Sometimes it's alright to spend more time creating a product when the end result uses less CPU and less memory. It's not all or nothing.
  - tomtimtall 9y ago
    If it makes no notisable difference to the user and cost you more time, you are just wasting time that could have been spend better on improving the users experiance.

turbinerneiter 9y ago

Is the editor really a problem to solve for Markdown? Philosophically I regard Markdown as a language in the text-only-editor-unimportant family. I recently built a (simple, only works for me) filter for pandoc that allows for formulas in Markdown tables. org-mode features is what Markdown is missing, but without the marriage to the editor. At the same time: an editor like this makes Markdown more accessible for non-hackers, which is always good.

masukomi 9y ago
> Is the editor really a problem to solve for Markdown? I don't think it's a "problem to solve" i think it's an opportunity to grasp. I love markdown and can read it just fine without an editor like this, but I, and many others, find it useful to have headings actually be darker and bigger. There's value to those typographical changes. There's value to links being a different color. Having an editor that can provide your eyes with helpful things.... helps.

coleifer 9y ago

Too bad it's electron. I'm working on a just-for-fun markdown editor using GtkSourceView and GtkWebkit and, despite a slight learning curve getting familiar with gtk, it's been a pleasure to work on. Ugh...electron? Really??

always_good 9y ago
These kinds of dismissive comments make me wonder if the writer ever created anything of substance in their life. For example, notice how this project is actually accessible for people to try today. Building something in the privacy of localhost is pretty worthless if you think it equips you with the power of judgement. That's the easiest part of building something. Congratulations on your unreleased hobby project that doesn't use Electron. Let's keep this sort of comment off HN. You'll notice it only squanders interesting discussion from the pool. In fact, that it's built with Electron suggests that the core can be factored out into a library that you can embed in a website or another project, and that's great. So, please, spare us next time.
- kej 9y ago
  One, you're replying to a guy with thousands of stars on his released github projects. Two, there are tradeoffs in using electron, and it's not unreasonable to discuss those. This place would lose a lot of its value if we're not allowed to discuss the pros and cons of technical decisions that go into a project.
  - ianai 9y ago
    It’s weird, but I think you’re both right. My first reaction to anything html/javascript/etc is a mix of “ew” and “that’s not very impressive“. But I also think it’s important to be inclusive and flexible. Society’s best off when people fight past their internal prejudices, but my past experiences with html/JavaScript put a bad memory in my mind. Ultimately, this looks like a well executed program from the screenshots. I say kudos to the developer of it. They did something productive and made something useful.
- 9y ago

timwis 9y ago

Anyone know of a markdown editor that has quick, notational velocity style file search/creation and just saves files to the hard disk? (So I can sync the directory via Dropbox or Google drive myself)

jamessb 9y ago
I use nvALT. >nvALT 2 is a fork of the original Notational Velocity with some additional features and interface modifications, including MultiMarkdown functionality. http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/ http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/

rayalez 9y ago

This looks really awesome! I really wish I could use it as a library and embed it into my SaaS app. Is there a way to extract just the rendering functionality and add it to a website?

fastball 9y ago
Why not just use a markdown rendering engine with added features like kramdown[1]? 1. https://kramdown.gettalong.org/ https://kramdown.gettalong.org/
- rayalez 9y ago
  Because I want realtime WYSIWYG markdown editing, kinda like in SimpleMDE or Typora.
willglynn 9y ago
I'm not sure if it's exactly the same features but I've had success with https://simplemde.com https://simplemde.com for rich Markdown entry on the web. I like that it's usable by people who want to click buttons -- and that by showing users both the formatting and the Markdown that caused it, it teaches how to skip the buttons in the future. At the same time, if you're a Markdown user doing everything on the keyboard, it's completely unobtrusive. Everybody wins.

NightMKoder 9y ago

On a related note: I’ve recently started using https://hackmd.io/ https://hackmd.io/ for markdown. It supports the full gh markdown and more. The best part is the collaborative editing. Big thumbs up to the guys working on the product - I haven’t missed desktop apps for markdown at all. I’m looking forward to trying their slideshow features. Disclosure: I have no affiliation with them :). I’m just a fanboy at this point.

kennydude 9y ago

Never heard syntax highlighting referred to as "code coloration" before. Looks nice though.

mikedelfino 9y ago

Just tested it and it seems really promising. Great work! I wish it could replace the formatting syntax as you type, like Typora [1] does. The document becomes much cleaner to read while still being efficient to write. [1] https://typora.io/ https://typora.io/

rraghur 9y ago

I think the way electron apps abound when there are possibly better alternatives is similar to the way markdown abounds in spite of other better 'lightweight' markup alternatives.. after years of using markdown, I've migrated to asciidoc and couldn't be happier that I don't have to rely on custom extensions.. I guess it's a mindshare thing and a learning curve thing.. I guess markdown is good enough for the vast majority of cases.. but when it isn't, it becomes a pita..

fiveFeet 9y ago

Does anyone know of a similar project for editing mediawiki files?