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I understand the motivation behind creating a local-only WYSIWYG Markdown editor, but I can't help but feel conflicted about it. Markdown was designed to priori

I understand the motivation behind creating a local-only WYSIWYG Markdown editor, but I can't help but feel conflicted about it. Markdown was designed to prioritize simplicity and readability, allowing documents to be published as plain text without any markup clutter. Introducing a WYSIWYG editor seems to contradict the essence of Markdown itself. While I appreciate the effort and consideration for different use cases, the combination of Markdown syntax with a WYSIWYG editor strikes me as odd. However, everyone has their own preferences, so perhaps there is a balance to be found between simplicity and flexibility. Keep exploring and iterating, and who knows, you might discover the sweet spot that works for you and your users.

misnome 3y ago
> I personally find the combination of Markdown syntax with a WYSIWYG editor to be a bit odd. I can see where you are coming from in terms of wanting to stay "true" to the intention of being able to read the plain text (although it always supported the html escape hatch from the beginning), but for me personally the value is that I can write in something WYSIWIG, and drop photos/screenshots/diagrams/sketches into my notes without having to switch back and forth (or have a preview-window by the side taking double the space) - with the absolutely crucial feature that I can do so without being beholden to a single app or nonportable file format. I mainly use Obsidian for this now, but if I wanted to switch away the Obsidian-only features are small/unobtrusive enough that I wouldn't really miss them; I can edit things remotely on the terminal easily enough; and in the end the entire thing is just a git repository of markdown files.
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toastal 3y ago
A lot of folks only care about the visual output of Markdown with little regard for the HTML semantics of the output or the plaintext legibility. This is why tools like these are created. Its also the audience that made READMEs no longer plaintext readable—embedded with all sorts of HTML, graphics, badges, manual table of contents, center tags, etc. Meanwhile the focus on the visual will help increase the rampant abuse of > to put a box around things instead of a semantically denoting blockquotes for quoting sources.

misnome 3y ago

> I personally find the combination of Markdown syntax with a WYSIWYG editor to be a bit odd. I can see where you are coming from in terms of wanting to stay "true" to the intention of being able to read the plain text (although it always supported the html escape hatch from the beginning), but for me personally the value is that I can write in something WYSIWIG, and drop photos/screenshots/diagrams/sketches into my notes without having to switch back and forth (or have a preview-window by the side taking double the space) - with the absolutely crucial feature that I can do so without being beholden to a single app or nonportable file format. I mainly use Obsidian for this now, but if I wanted to switch away the Obsidian-only features are small/unobtrusive enough that I wouldn't really miss them; I can edit things remotely on the terminal easily enough; and in the end the entire thing is just a git repository of markdown files.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

toastal 3y ago

A lot of folks only care about the visual output of Markdown with little regard for the HTML semantics of the output or the plaintext legibility. This is why tools like these are created. Its also the audience that made READMEs no longer plaintext readable—embedded with all sorts of HTML, graphics, badges, manual table of contents, center tags, etc. Meanwhile the focus on the visual will help increase the rampant abuse of > to put a box around things instead of a semantically denoting blockquotes for quoting sources.