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I think this is part of the appeal of Markdown-based editors. The nicer ones can make the text look good both while typing and when exporting, but there's littl

I think this is part of the appeal of Markdown-based editors. The nicer ones can make the text look good both while typing and when exporting, but there's little to no hidden magic. WordPerfect, XyWrite/Nota Bene, and WordStar had -- and still have -- fans who insist that they were unparalleled at "just sit down and write"; good Markdown editors bring a lot of that back. (And no, Markdown isn't, on its own, a replacement for a full-blown word processor, LaTeX, or the like. Many classes of documents just aren't that complicated, though.)

cout 5y ago
That's a great point. I often do writing in markdown format using vim. I really wanted to like LaTeX for writing, but I kept having to look up how to use it.
- chipotle_coyote 5y ago
  I've typeset a couple books with LaTeX, but I wrote them in other things and did conversion after the fact using Pandoc. :)
andi999 5y ago
Can you name a good markdown editor?
- chipotle_coyote 5y ago
  Yes, although I've found these tend to be apps people have strong opinions about. :) Currently, I use Ulysses for big documents (like multi-chapter stories) as well as for blog posts, since it can publish directly to WordPress, Ghost, Micro.blog, and Medium. It's a little idiosyncratic, and it's for Mac, iOS only. A very similar app that's for Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android is iA Writer. It's also idiosyncratic, but has slightly different pluses and minuses. I used it before Ulysses, though, and might yet go back. For shorter stuff I tend to write in Drafts, although that's another Mac/iOS thing. Since I'm obviously a Mac user, I don't know a lot about what's available on Linux other than code editors, which personally I haven't found that I like as much for prose. Definitely a YMMV thing. Sublime Text and Visual Studio Code both have decent Markdown modes and have various extensions to do interesting things, though, like Markdown linting. Emacs and Vim both actually have great Markdown modes, too, but I just don't like either one for prose.
- kcartlidge 5y ago
  If you work across platforms, and if you don't mind Microsoft stuff, then Visual Studio Code both syntax highlights Markdown and also offers a good live preview. It's a little bloated, but is surprisingly fast - unless you load it down with extensions.
anthk 5y ago
Groff+Mom is much smaller than LaTeX but far better than Markdown.
- chipotle_coyote 5y ago
  It depends on what you mean by "better." :) The problem is they're not exactly the same thing: Groff (and LaTeX) are much closer in spirit to HTML than they are to Markdown, in that they're the final format you're going to use to render the final product. Markdown, though, was always intended as an intermediate format that you'd run through a processor to produce HTML. It's not as capable as HTML (or LaTeX or...) because it wasn't ever meant to be; it's supposed to cover the basics. MOM has macros for pairwise kerning, horizontal and vertical movements, and precisely-measured horizontal rules; those are things that are way outside Markdown's scopes. As for whether or not MOM is easier than Markdown for "first draft" writing, though? To pull just a single bit out of a FAQ that I wrote recently, in Markdown I wrote: **That's pretty cool! What about, uh, not movie theaters?** The home version of Atmos works _essentially_ the same way, just mapping to fewer speakers---typically just five, although you can get fancy and go up to eleven. From what I see, in MOM, that would become: \*[BD]That's pretty cool! What about, uh, not movie theaters?\*[PREV] The home version of Atmos works \*[IT]essentially\*[PREV] the same way, just mapping to fewer speakers\[EM]typically just five, although you can get fancy and go up to eleven. So when it comes to ease of writing, the thing Markdown was specifically aimed at, I'm gonna say it definitely has the edge. If I was going to typeset a book in Groff, I'd be down for writing a Markdown-to-MOM translator, which seems like it'd probably be pretty easy. But I wouldn't start out drafting in MOM any more than I'd start out drafting in LaTeX. Or HTML.
  - anthk 5y ago
    Some Unix nerd already did a md to groff translator written in AWK. https://box.matto.nl/convert-markdownish-to-pdf-with-groff-mom.html https://box.matto.nl/convert-markdownish-to-pdf-with-groff-m...

cout 5y ago

That's a great point. I often do writing in markdown format using vim. I really wanted to like LaTeX for writing, but I kept having to look up how to use it.

chipotle_coyote 5y ago
I've typeset a couple books with LaTeX, but I wrote them in other things and did conversion after the fact using Pandoc. :)

andi999 5y ago

Can you name a good markdown editor?

chipotle_coyote 5y ago
Yes, although I've found these tend to be apps people have strong opinions about. :) Currently, I use Ulysses for big documents (like multi-chapter stories) as well as for blog posts, since it can publish directly to WordPress, Ghost, Micro.blog, and Medium. It's a little idiosyncratic, and it's for Mac, iOS only. A very similar app that's for Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android is iA Writer. It's also idiosyncratic, but has slightly different pluses and minuses. I used it before Ulysses, though, and might yet go back. For shorter stuff I tend to write in Drafts, although that's another Mac/iOS thing. Since I'm obviously a Mac user, I don't know a lot about what's available on Linux other than code editors, which personally I haven't found that I like as much for prose. Definitely a YMMV thing. Sublime Text and Visual Studio Code both have decent Markdown modes and have various extensions to do interesting things, though, like Markdown linting. Emacs and Vim both actually have great Markdown modes, too, but I just don't like either one for prose.
kcartlidge 5y ago
If you work across platforms, and if you don't mind Microsoft stuff, then Visual Studio Code both syntax highlights Markdown and also offers a good live preview. It's a little bloated, but is surprisingly fast - unless you load it down with extensions.

anthk 5y ago

Groff+Mom is much smaller than LaTeX but far better than Markdown.

chipotle_coyote 5y ago
It depends on what you mean by "better." :) The problem is they're not exactly the same thing: Groff (and LaTeX) are much closer in spirit to HTML than they are to Markdown, in that they're the final format you're going to use to render the final product. Markdown, though, was always intended as an intermediate format that you'd run through a processor to produce HTML. It's not as capable as HTML (or LaTeX or...) because it wasn't ever meant to be; it's supposed to cover the basics. MOM has macros for pairwise kerning, horizontal and vertical movements, and precisely-measured horizontal rules; those are things that are way outside Markdown's scopes. As for whether or not MOM is easier than Markdown for "first draft" writing, though? To pull just a single bit out of a FAQ that I wrote recently, in Markdown I wrote: **That's pretty cool! What about, uh, not movie theaters?** The home version of Atmos works _essentially_ the same way, just mapping to fewer speakers---typically just five, although you can get fancy and go up to eleven. From what I see, in MOM, that would become: \*[BD]That's pretty cool! What about, uh, not movie theaters?\*[PREV] The home version of Atmos works \*[IT]essentially\*[PREV] the same way, just mapping to fewer speakers\[EM]typically just five, although you can get fancy and go up to eleven. So when it comes to ease of writing, the thing Markdown was specifically aimed at, I'm gonna say it definitely has the edge. If I was going to typeset a book in Groff, I'd be down for writing a Markdown-to-MOM translator, which seems like it'd probably be pretty easy. But I wouldn't start out drafting in MOM any more than I'd start out drafting in LaTeX. Or HTML.
- anthk 5y ago
  Some Unix nerd already did a md to groff translator written in AWK. https://box.matto.nl/convert-markdownish-to-pdf-with-groff-mom.html https://box.matto.nl/convert-markdownish-to-pdf-with-groff-m...