5 ms·

Markdown Editor

montecarl 15y ago
Pretty cool. I'd like a simple editor that worked like this as a desktop application. I also noticed that code blocks don't seem to work properly: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#precode http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#precode
- mkuhn 15y ago
  On Windows I use MarkdownPad [1] which does exactly this. It also allows you to get read of needless UI elements which I very much appreciate. I guess there is similar tools for Linux and Mac OS X. [1] http://markdownpad.com/ http://markdownpad.com/
  - billpatrianakos 15y ago
    For Mac there's actually Mou which is super pretty and just like this. It's in beta and free for now but it's Lion-only and one of the 2 reasons I upgraded. It's that good. It's at mouapp.com. Thanks for the Linux tip, I could use that one.
    - keithpeter 15y ago
      And on GNU/linux there is ReText http://sourceforge.net/p/retext/home/ReText/ http://sourceforge.net/p/retext/home/ReText/ (Python and QT)
    - bodhi 15y ago
      I was going to complain about the tagline > The missing Markdown editor for web developers given that there are many, many markdown editors on OSX. But after seeing the vertical Chinese layout, I'm really impressed! That's cool.
  - chrisledet 15y ago
    I actually created and open sourced my own Markdown Editor, Marker: https://github.com/chrisledet/Marker https://github.com/chrisledet/Marker I was inspired by Mou. Clean and intuitive versus a WYSIWYG editor. Best of all, it's free and open source!
lucisferre 15y ago
Curious is this open source licensed (obviously the code is on the page)? I'd actually like to use it for something.
- nlmoreaux 15y ago
  If you want i've done this under a MIT license a while ago ; it's not a full markdown experience but... http://diplodoc.us/stuffs/JSmarker http://diplodoc.us/stuffs/JSmarker
- joncombe 15y ago
  I didn't attach a license to this as: a) the front-end is just a very simple UI put on top of attacklab.net's showdown.js. Unfortunately, attacklab seems to be dead now but the showdown code has a BSD license, see: http://static.joncom.be/screen/script/showdown.js http://static.joncom.be/screen/script/showdown.js. b) the back-end simply opens and saves text files, I didn't think anyone would want to see that. In answer to your question, attacklab did the hard work and yes there is an open source license attached to his/her work.
pors 15y ago
Shouldn't an <enter> become a <br/>? It currently doesn't. But cool little tool, starts up faster than dreamweaver :)
- podperson 15y ago
  In markdown single line endings are ignored when the lines broken by them might be construed as forming a single paragraph. (It's actually one of the fiddliest bits of markdown.) This rule is quirky -- sometimes you'll end up with (for example) bullet points merged into a paragraph through this quirk.
- RyanMcGreal 15y ago
  In markdown, you need to precede the <enter> with two spaces to get a <br>. As I understand it, Markdown syntax was inspired by email syntax, so we have > for block quotations, * for unordered list items, etc. By this reasoning, a single newline may just be the email client wrapping the text, whereas a double newline means the writer is starting a new paragraph.
  - gordonguthrie 15y ago
    Markdown is pretty gnarly as a language. I wrote a markdown interpreter for Erlang https://github.com/hypernumbers/erlmarkdown https://github.com/hypernumbers/erlmarkdown Initially I wrote it against the Daring Fireball spec but switched it over to track the output of the showdown javascript library. Markdown is not a great language to implement. I wrote a hand parser because there are loads of places where you have to look ahead more than one token (not that I am a great lexer/parser expert).
podperson 15y ago
This doesn't seem like a huge advance from showdown's demo page. http://softwaremaniacs.org/playground/showdown-highlight/ http://softwaremaniacs.org/playground/showdown-highlight/
- cleverjake 15y ago
  Since when does a fun hack have to be an improvement on anything?
kposehn 15y ago
One request: unify it into a wysiwyg editor akin to IAWriter on Mac. Outside that, nicely done :)
dwc 15y ago
If you find this interesting, you might like Pandoc (see http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/try http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/try ). That's a "try it online" page, not quite meant for online authoring but could be made to be. Also available as a standalone utility app and a (haskell) library. I've found this works well, and I love the selection of input/output formats.
- alexchamberlain 15y ago
  This is really good too! I was just looking for an interactive solution, since Markdown is really simple for the lay user to use.
g3orge 15y ago
that eliminates the need for 10$ editors from the Mac App Store.
sathyabhat 15y ago
Is that link to AttackLab correct? It seems to take me to a shady spamblog. http://i.imgur.com/13tap.png http://i.imgur.com/13tap.png
- alexchamberlain 15y ago
  I don't think so.
- bartl 15y ago
  Yes, as I remember it, that link used to be correct, years ago. However, the original site has disappeared.
latchkey 15y ago
http://joncom.be/experiments/markdown-editor/ http://joncom.be/experiments/markdown-editor/ This is from Sept 2010, so it seems a bit outdated. For my site, I've been using the code [1] which powers the StackOverflow editor and it works great. It would be pretty easy to set that code up in a page like this one above and you'd get buttons for making things bold, which seems handy. [1] http://code.google.com/p/pagedown/ http://code.google.com/p/pagedown/
foxhop 15y ago
I've used both Markdown and markItUp! I prefer the latter. I actually wrote my own reSTucturedText set for Pylowiki. markItUp! allows you to build wysiwym (What you see is what you mean) text editor and apply it to all HTML textareas Pylowiki https://bitbucket.org/russellballestrini/pylowiki/src https://bitbucket.org/russellballestrini/pylowiki/src markItUp! http://markitup.jaysalvat.com/ http://markitup.jaysalvat.com/ Pylowiki Demo http://www.foxhop.net http://www.foxhop.net
pandemicsyn 15y ago
I did a similar one (a markdown/stickum mashup) a few weekends ago. - http://ronin.io/md http://ronin.io/md My interface isn't nearly as friendly or clean. But tab indention works, so I got that going for me at least.
schmrz 15y ago
This might be a shameless plug, but I have created a javascript markdown editor a few months ago. I had some problems with the wmd editor (weird quirks and bugs) and generally wanted to play around with js. So, uedit[0] was born. You can use the demo page[1] to see it in action. It works in ie6+ and doesn't require any other js libraries. List items are added automatically and you can use shortcuts for the most frequently used markdown tags such as bold, italic, code listing, images etc. It also uses it's own undo/redo manager for more granular control. [0]: https://github.com/amir-hadzic/uedit https://github.com/amir-hadzic/uedit [1]: http://amir-hadzic.github.com/uedit http://amir-hadzic.github.com/uedit
bflesch 15y ago
Nice idea and impressive implementation. Me and a friend of mine are currently working on something comparable to this demo. We focus on UX and interoperability; our goal is to show it to HN before the end of January.
alpb 15y ago
Mou is a Mac OS X app that allows users to edit Markdown files. http://mouapp.com http://mouapp.com Just wanted to leave this here.
joncombe 15y ago
Thanks for posting this, alexchamberlain, much appreciated.
- alexchamberlain 15y ago
  No worries - I was looking for an editor for Linux, and didn't come across anything. This is great for editing README.md files for GitHub!

Pretty cool. I'd like a simple editor that worked like this as a desktop application. I also noticed that code blocks don't seem to work properly: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#precode http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#precode

mkuhn 15y ago
On Windows I use MarkdownPad [1] which does exactly this. It also allows you to get read of needless UI elements which I very much appreciate. I guess there is similar tools for Linux and Mac OS X. [1] http://markdownpad.com/ http://markdownpad.com/
- billpatrianakos 15y ago
  For Mac there's actually Mou which is super pretty and just like this. It's in beta and free for now but it's Lion-only and one of the 2 reasons I upgraded. It's that good. It's at mouapp.com. Thanks for the Linux tip, I could use that one.
  - keithpeter 15y ago
    And on GNU/linux there is ReText http://sourceforge.net/p/retext/home/ReText/ http://sourceforge.net/p/retext/home/ReText/ (Python and QT)
  - bodhi 15y ago
    I was going to complain about the tagline > The missing Markdown editor for web developers given that there are many, many markdown editors on OSX. But after seeing the vertical Chinese layout, I'm really impressed! That's cool.
- chrisledet 15y ago
  I actually created and open sourced my own Markdown Editor, Marker: https://github.com/chrisledet/Marker https://github.com/chrisledet/Marker I was inspired by Mou. Clean and intuitive versus a WYSIWYG editor. Best of all, it's free and open source!

lucisferre 15y ago

Curious is this open source licensed (obviously the code is on the page)? I'd actually like to use it for something.

nlmoreaux 15y ago
If you want i've done this under a MIT license a while ago ; it's not a full markdown experience but... http://diplodoc.us/stuffs/JSmarker http://diplodoc.us/stuffs/JSmarker
joncombe 15y ago
I didn't attach a license to this as: a) the front-end is just a very simple UI put on top of attacklab.net's showdown.js. Unfortunately, attacklab seems to be dead now but the showdown code has a BSD license, see: http://static.joncom.be/screen/script/showdown.js http://static.joncom.be/screen/script/showdown.js. b) the back-end simply opens and saves text files, I didn't think anyone would want to see that. In answer to your question, attacklab did the hard work and yes there is an open source license attached to his/her work.

pors 15y ago

Shouldn't an <enter> become a <br/>? It currently doesn't. But cool little tool, starts up faster than dreamweaver :)

podperson 15y ago
In markdown single line endings are ignored when the lines broken by them might be construed as forming a single paragraph. (It's actually one of the fiddliest bits of markdown.) This rule is quirky -- sometimes you'll end up with (for example) bullet points merged into a paragraph through this quirk.
RyanMcGreal 15y ago
In markdown, you need to precede the <enter> with two spaces to get a <br>. As I understand it, Markdown syntax was inspired by email syntax, so we have > for block quotations, * for unordered list items, etc. By this reasoning, a single newline may just be the email client wrapping the text, whereas a double newline means the writer is starting a new paragraph.
- gordonguthrie 15y ago
  Markdown is pretty gnarly as a language. I wrote a markdown interpreter for Erlang https://github.com/hypernumbers/erlmarkdown https://github.com/hypernumbers/erlmarkdown Initially I wrote it against the Daring Fireball spec but switched it over to track the output of the showdown javascript library. Markdown is not a great language to implement. I wrote a hand parser because there are loads of places where you have to look ahead more than one token (not that I am a great lexer/parser expert).

podperson 15y ago

This doesn't seem like a huge advance from showdown's demo page. http://softwaremaniacs.org/playground/showdown-highlight/ http://softwaremaniacs.org/playground/showdown-highlight/

cleverjake 15y ago
Since when does a fun hack have to be an improvement on anything?

kposehn 15y ago

One request: unify it into a wysiwyg editor akin to IAWriter on Mac. Outside that, nicely done :)

dwc 15y ago

If you find this interesting, you might like Pandoc (see http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/try http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/try ). That's a "try it online" page, not quite meant for online authoring but could be made to be. Also available as a standalone utility app and a (haskell) library. I've found this works well, and I love the selection of input/output formats.

alexchamberlain 15y ago
This is really good too! I was just looking for an interactive solution, since Markdown is really simple for the lay user to use.

g3orge 15y ago

that eliminates the need for 10$ editors from the Mac App Store.

sathyabhat 15y ago

Is that link to AttackLab correct? It seems to take me to a shady spamblog. http://i.imgur.com/13tap.png http://i.imgur.com/13tap.png

alexchamberlain 15y ago
I don't think so.
bartl 15y ago
Yes, as I remember it, that link used to be correct, years ago. However, the original site has disappeared.

latchkey 15y ago

http://joncom.be/experiments/markdown-editor/ http://joncom.be/experiments/markdown-editor/ This is from Sept 2010, so it seems a bit outdated. For my site, I've been using the code [1] which powers the StackOverflow editor and it works great. It would be pretty easy to set that code up in a page like this one above and you'd get buttons for making things bold, which seems handy. [1] http://code.google.com/p/pagedown/ http://code.google.com/p/pagedown/

foxhop 15y ago

I've used both Markdown and markItUp! I prefer the latter. I actually wrote my own reSTucturedText set for Pylowiki. markItUp! allows you to build wysiwym (What you see is what you mean) text editor and apply it to all HTML textareas Pylowiki https://bitbucket.org/russellballestrini/pylowiki/src https://bitbucket.org/russellballestrini/pylowiki/src markItUp! http://markitup.jaysalvat.com/ http://markitup.jaysalvat.com/ Pylowiki Demo http://www.foxhop.net http://www.foxhop.net

pandemicsyn 15y ago

I did a similar one (a markdown/stickum mashup) a few weekends ago. - http://ronin.io/md http://ronin.io/md My interface isn't nearly as friendly or clean. But tab indention works, so I got that going for me at least.

schmrz 15y ago

This might be a shameless plug, but I have created a javascript markdown editor a few months ago. I had some problems with the wmd editor (weird quirks and bugs) and generally wanted to play around with js. So, uedit[0] was born. You can use the demo page[1] to see it in action. It works in ie6+ and doesn't require any other js libraries. List items are added automatically and you can use shortcuts for the most frequently used markdown tags such as bold, italic, code listing, images etc. It also uses it's own undo/redo manager for more granular control. [0]: https://github.com/amir-hadzic/uedit https://github.com/amir-hadzic/uedit [1]: http://amir-hadzic.github.com/uedit http://amir-hadzic.github.com/uedit

bflesch 15y ago

Nice idea and impressive implementation. Me and a friend of mine are currently working on something comparable to this demo. We focus on UX and interoperability; our goal is to show it to HN before the end of January.

alpb 15y ago

Mou is a Mac OS X app that allows users to edit Markdown files. http://mouapp.com http://mouapp.com Just wanted to leave this here.

joncombe 15y ago

Thanks for posting this, alexchamberlain, much appreciated.

alexchamberlain 15y ago
No worries - I was looking for an editor for Linux, and didn't come across anything. This is great for editing README.md files for GitHub!