7 ms·

Show HN: My WWDC-inspired project. A Markdown editor for Lion

75 points by SeoxyS 15y ago

benatkin 15y ago
I really like the web page. I can't comment on the app, because there's no way to try it without shelling out $20.
emehrkay 15y ago
$20 is a hard "check out." It looks cool though
- keyle 15y ago
  Yes I think it should sit at the $5 mark.
realize 15y ago
Too expensive
swanson 15y ago
Think it's going to be tough to compete on price with: http://markedapp.com/ http://markedapp.com/
rocktronica 15y ago
Wondering how this will stack up to emdee.app (still in development). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foE-dXgTHoU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foE-dXgTHoU
- SeoxyS 15y ago
  The most significant design decision (and something that I think is a major feature over Emdee and Marked (mentioned in another comment) is that there is no distinction between preview and editing modes / views. Your code is stylized as the Markdown it represents, and that's the fundamental idea behind Macchiato.
SeoxyS 15y ago
Woah, this made front-page! I realize the price is kind of prohibitive to just check out. I wish the App Store would let me give a massive discount coupon for HN readers. Turns out that for the niche market I'm targeting, this is just about the right price, though. I'm working on making a downloadable trial version. However, for the time being I have some extra promo codes I can give out. First come first served: H4JTKTFN3FHL RR6AA6696WJK 9F4NFPN3LEFJ F36LEP9T7JMH NTNWAFJ6K9A6 HXRA4TT6WWFN H4HEEWXHXNEF 3RMYERRJXKWW 64AK4K67XPJ3 LPPTJT9PKKR7 I'm open to all feedback! Thanks!
- Skroob 15y ago
  Congrats on the release Kenneth, it looks really great.
- willcodeforfoo 15y ago
  Wow, all gone in less than 14 minutes! Oh well. This kind of reminds me of http://www.iawriter.com/ http://www.iawriter.com/
- terinjokes 15y ago
  Woot I got one of them! I'm composing this reply inside of Macchiato. Honestly, I think it's a pretty decent idea, although it might have a hard time to displace Vim, which I alway have tend to have open. Something that it might easily displace is composing my blog posts, the fact that fullscreen mode knocks out my secondary monitor is probably a good idea, and keeps me focused on the task on hand—writing the blog posts. On that note, I've switched to full screen. The animation to full screen wasn't the smoothest, and doesn't have the same feel that Apple applications scale up. In addition, while the slight gradient works in a small window, blowing that up to the fullscreen doesn't work very well, and I feel like I looking straight into the middle of the sun. I realize that you're attempting to be fairly minimalist with your application, but I think that a less-strain theme for fullscreen would be a very good improvement. I've noticed that while backspacing, especially when typing in a blockquote, the cursor doesn't line up with text you're editing. Small display issue, no biggie. Another thing that I would think very cool for fullscreen writing applications is to display text with TeX-like text justification, so you don't end up with very staggered paragraphs in the middle of your screen. Probably well outside the scope of your application, but thought for other HN-ers. I think that's all feedback I can come up with right now. I'll continue to try out the app, and look forward to what updates you have up your sleeve. EDIT #1: Fixing some grammar. Trying to get the elements right ;) EDIT #2: Apparently I can't make new comments anymore. Since I comment rarely, I assume this was some change as part of HN's vote-less comments change. May I make a theme request? Yes? Great! I really like the Solarized[1] theme, and think it would be a great addition. In addition, I think callahad had a really great review on this same thread. I agree with #5 in particular, being able to switch off the preview, should I come about the need, would be really nice, mostly for the same reason callahad mentions. And #7, too. One last agreement with callahad: > Hopefully this is helpful and not discouraging! I didn't want to take the promo code without leaving you with some feedback. [1]: http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized
geoffb 15y ago
Nice work. Would be great if unordered and ordered lists were stylized.
- SeoxyS 15y ago
  They are, to a small extent. They look like plain text, but if an item wraps across lines, the indent level is preserved. Note: blockquotes and code blocks should do the same thing, but it hasn't been implemented yet.
cambriaone 15y ago
Congrats on launching! It looks cool. I applaud your audacity by pricing it at $20, but that's pretty steep when there are already other markdown focused text editors (marked, iA writer, etc) for much cheaper.
metafour 15y ago
While the stylized text is a nice touch it does seem to be on the upper end of the market in terms of price at $19.99. Would be nice if you included some of the features of Byword on top of what you have. Also, for those mentioning Marked as a competitor I must point out that Marked is actually solely a previewer, not an editor.
homosaur 15y ago
Byword is like 5 bucks. Not sure how this is going to compete, honestly.
callahad 15y ago
There's some great market research being done for you in the comments! It looks like some of your primary competitors are: 1. Emdee: $Unknown, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foE-dXgTHoU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foE-dXgTHoU (Not yet fully released) 2. Markdown Editor: Free, http://keshiki.net/markdown-editor/ http://keshiki.net/markdown-editor/ (Source code available, but no license specified) 3. Marked: $2.99, http://markedapp.com/ http://markedapp.com/ (Previewer, not an editor) 4. Byword: $9.99, http://bywordapp.com/ http://bywordapp.com/ 5. iA Writer: $17.99, http://www.iawriter.com/ http://www.iawriter.com/ 6. WriteRoom: $24.99, http://hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom http://hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom
- bodhi 15y ago
  Hey cool. Someone else actually knows about My Markdown Editor! I wrote #2. It's got some issues, and according to some feedback, it doesn't work on Lion (I haven't updated yet, so I can't test.) As for licence, I should really add a note to that page. I guess BSD/MIT will do. Or GPL if you so desire :)
Kwpolska 15y ago
$20, are you crazy? Vim is the best choice.
tszming 15y ago
I am using Markdownlive, it support instant preview (mit-license, need to compile using xcode) https://github.com/rentzsch/markdownlive https://github.com/rentzsch/markdownlive
bodhi 15y ago
> The internals of the app uses NSRegularExpression I tried to implement my version of this idea[1] with regular expressions too, using OgreKit. I ran into all sorts of problems with corner cases, especially with nesting of block-level elements (lists/blockquotes/code). I wanted to switch over to a parser-based implementation, but at the time all the existing parsers were setup to emit HTML, so getting character-offsets out of the parser wasn't possible without hacking the parser to death. There's been some good discussion on the Markdown list[2] recently about these sorts of things, a really interesting example is PEG Markdown Highlight[3], which is exactly what I wanted to do with my app, but I was too busy (read: lazy) to get around to. [1]: http://keshiki.net/markdown-editor/ http://keshiki.net/markdown-editor/ [2]: http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss [3]: Project: http://hasseg.org/peg-markdown-highlight/ http://hasseg.org/peg-markdown-highlight/ Discussion: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/2011-June/002129.html http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/2011-June...
- xentronium 15y ago
  > I wanted to switch over to a parser-based implementation, but at the time all the existing parsers were setup to emit HTML, so getting character-offsets out of the parser wasn't possible without hacking the parser to death. You might want to try libupskirt [1], library github uses. [1] http://fossil.instinctive.eu/libupskirt/index http://fossil.instinctive.eu/libupskirt/index
  - bodhi 15y ago
    Cool, thanks. I haven't looked deeply into it, but from a quick glance it seems to want to transform the input. For my use case I need a parse tree, with specific byte (well, character really) offsets. For example, I need to know where the link started, not that there is now a a link with text T and href H. My program (and Macchiato I assume) doesn't actually transform the source to an output format, we add attributes to the source text (similar to RTF).
jonknee 15y ago
Why is your app's squeeze page so big? It's over 3MB, mostly being weighed down by a 2.46MB background image (because it's a photo and you used PNG, you could cut it down by an order of magnitude by using JPEG). I'm glad I wasn't on 3G...

75 points by SeoxyS 15y ago

benatkin 15y ago

I really like the web page. I can't comment on the app, because there's no way to try it without shelling out $20.

emehrkay 15y ago

$20 is a hard "check out." It looks cool though

keyle 15y ago
Yes I think it should sit at the $5 mark.

realize 15y ago

Too expensive

swanson 15y ago

Think it's going to be tough to compete on price with: http://markedapp.com/ http://markedapp.com/

rocktronica 15y ago

Wondering how this will stack up to emdee.app (still in development). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foE-dXgTHoU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foE-dXgTHoU

SeoxyS 15y ago
The most significant design decision (and something that I think is a major feature over Emdee and Marked (mentioned in another comment) is that there is no distinction between preview and editing modes / views. Your code is stylized as the Markdown it represents, and that's the fundamental idea behind Macchiato.

SeoxyS 15y ago

Woah, this made front-page! I realize the price is kind of prohibitive to just check out. I wish the App Store would let me give a massive discount coupon for HN readers. Turns out that for the niche market I'm targeting, this is just about the right price, though. I'm working on making a downloadable trial version. However, for the time being I have some extra promo codes I can give out. First come first served: H4JTKTFN3FHL RR6AA6696WJK 9F4NFPN3LEFJ F36LEP9T7JMH NTNWAFJ6K9A6 HXRA4TT6WWFN H4HEEWXHXNEF 3RMYERRJXKWW 64AK4K67XPJ3 LPPTJT9PKKR7 I'm open to all feedback! Thanks!

Skroob 15y ago
Congrats on the release Kenneth, it looks really great.
willcodeforfoo 15y ago
Wow, all gone in less than 14 minutes! Oh well. This kind of reminds me of http://www.iawriter.com/ http://www.iawriter.com/
terinjokes 15y ago
Woot I got one of them! I'm composing this reply inside of Macchiato. Honestly, I think it's a pretty decent idea, although it might have a hard time to displace Vim, which I alway have tend to have open. Something that it might easily displace is composing my blog posts, the fact that fullscreen mode knocks out my secondary monitor is probably a good idea, and keeps me focused on the task on hand—writing the blog posts. On that note, I've switched to full screen. The animation to full screen wasn't the smoothest, and doesn't have the same feel that Apple applications scale up. In addition, while the slight gradient works in a small window, blowing that up to the fullscreen doesn't work very well, and I feel like I looking straight into the middle of the sun. I realize that you're attempting to be fairly minimalist with your application, but I think that a less-strain theme for fullscreen would be a very good improvement. I've noticed that while backspacing, especially when typing in a blockquote, the cursor doesn't line up with text you're editing. Small display issue, no biggie. Another thing that I would think very cool for fullscreen writing applications is to display text with TeX-like text justification, so you don't end up with very staggered paragraphs in the middle of your screen. Probably well outside the scope of your application, but thought for other HN-ers. I think that's all feedback I can come up with right now. I'll continue to try out the app, and look forward to what updates you have up your sleeve. EDIT #1: Fixing some grammar. Trying to get the elements right ;) EDIT #2: Apparently I can't make new comments anymore. Since I comment rarely, I assume this was some change as part of HN's vote-less comments change. May I make a theme request? Yes? Great! I really like the Solarized[1] theme, and think it would be a great addition. In addition, I think callahad had a really great review on this same thread. I agree with #5 in particular, being able to switch off the preview, should I come about the need, would be really nice, mostly for the same reason callahad mentions. And #7, too. One last agreement with callahad: > Hopefully this is helpful and not discouraging! I didn't want to take the promo code without leaving you with some feedback. [1]: http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized

geoffb 15y ago

Nice work. Would be great if unordered and ordered lists were stylized.

SeoxyS 15y ago
They are, to a small extent. They look like plain text, but if an item wraps across lines, the indent level is preserved. Note: blockquotes and code blocks should do the same thing, but it hasn't been implemented yet.

cambriaone 15y ago

Congrats on launching! It looks cool. I applaud your audacity by pricing it at $20, but that's pretty steep when there are already other markdown focused text editors (marked, iA writer, etc) for much cheaper.

metafour 15y ago

While the stylized text is a nice touch it does seem to be on the upper end of the market in terms of price at $19.99. Would be nice if you included some of the features of Byword on top of what you have. Also, for those mentioning Marked as a competitor I must point out that Marked is actually solely a previewer, not an editor.

homosaur 15y ago

Byword is like 5 bucks. Not sure how this is going to compete, honestly.

callahad 15y ago

There's some great market research being done for you in the comments! It looks like some of your primary competitors are: 1. Emdee: $Unknown, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foE-dXgTHoU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foE-dXgTHoU (Not yet fully released) 2. Markdown Editor: Free, http://keshiki.net/markdown-editor/ http://keshiki.net/markdown-editor/ (Source code available, but no license specified) 3. Marked: $2.99, http://markedapp.com/ http://markedapp.com/ (Previewer, not an editor) 4. Byword: $9.99, http://bywordapp.com/ http://bywordapp.com/ 5. iA Writer: $17.99, http://www.iawriter.com/ http://www.iawriter.com/ 6. WriteRoom: $24.99, http://hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom http://hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom

bodhi 15y ago
Hey cool. Someone else actually knows about My Markdown Editor! I wrote #2. It's got some issues, and according to some feedback, it doesn't work on Lion (I haven't updated yet, so I can't test.) As for licence, I should really add a note to that page. I guess BSD/MIT will do. Or GPL if you so desire :)

Kwpolska 15y ago

$20, are you crazy? Vim is the best choice.

tszming 15y ago

I am using Markdownlive, it support instant preview (mit-license, need to compile using xcode) https://github.com/rentzsch/markdownlive https://github.com/rentzsch/markdownlive

bodhi 15y ago

> The internals of the app uses NSRegularExpression I tried to implement my version of this idea[1] with regular expressions too, using OgreKit. I ran into all sorts of problems with corner cases, especially with nesting of block-level elements (lists/blockquotes/code). I wanted to switch over to a parser-based implementation, but at the time all the existing parsers were setup to emit HTML, so getting character-offsets out of the parser wasn't possible without hacking the parser to death. There's been some good discussion on the Markdown list[2] recently about these sorts of things, a really interesting example is PEG Markdown Highlight[3], which is exactly what I wanted to do with my app, but I was too busy (read: lazy) to get around to. [1]: http://keshiki.net/markdown-editor/ http://keshiki.net/markdown-editor/ [2]: http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss [3]: Project: http://hasseg.org/peg-markdown-highlight/ http://hasseg.org/peg-markdown-highlight/ Discussion: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/2011-June/002129.html http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/2011-June...

xentronium 15y ago
> I wanted to switch over to a parser-based implementation, but at the time all the existing parsers were setup to emit HTML, so getting character-offsets out of the parser wasn't possible without hacking the parser to death. You might want to try libupskirt [1], library github uses. [1] http://fossil.instinctive.eu/libupskirt/index http://fossil.instinctive.eu/libupskirt/index
- bodhi 15y ago
  Cool, thanks. I haven't looked deeply into it, but from a quick glance it seems to want to transform the input. For my use case I need a parse tree, with specific byte (well, character really) offsets. For example, I need to know where the link started, not that there is now a a link with text T and href H. My program (and Macchiato I assume) doesn't actually transform the source to an output format, we add attributes to the source text (similar to RTF).

jonknee 15y ago

Why is your app's squeeze page so big? It's over 3MB, mostly being weighed down by a 2.46MB background image (because it's a photo and you used PNG, you could cut it down by an order of magnitude by using JPEG). I'm glad I wasn't on 3G...