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Show HN: A user-friendly UI for viewing and editing Markdown files
- two_handfuls 3y agoSo, a picture and a download link. Adding a list of features would be nice. Does it support checkboxes? Mermaid? Folding? Does the editor it comes with support search and replace? Multi-caret editing? Maybe it’s just me, but I have long stopped downloading stuff just in case it’s good. You have to convince me first, then I will download.
- neodymiumphish 3y agoAgreed! It says editing. Does that include tracked changes?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jon9544hn 3y agoLooks almost identical to [typora](https://typora.io https://typora.io)
- oneeyedpigeon 3y agoWorth noting Typora is neither free nor free.
- Zambyte 3y agoYeah, $15 for a markdown editor that's locked to a maximum of 3 devices that I don't even control is a tall ask. OPs program is significantly more attractive.
- kkukshtel 3y agoTypora is my go-to markdown editor and imo really worth it. One really nice feature it has is the ability to paste in images and have them automatically get put in a pre-defined folder, which is pretty crucial to static blog site deployment. Typora + Blot.im have been hard to beat for me.
- gumby 3y agoIsn’t the point of markdown that it’s a bridge to ordinary text editors? Programs like TextEdit and Word should have a “save as Markdown” option, but it isn’t that important.
- Octoth0rpe 3y agoI'm _really really_ not a fan of the app insisting on defining a 'project' before allowing you to open a file. I recognize that project-oriented management is probably a requirement for something like this given that markdown files usually do exist as a collection of related documents, but I regularly want to just open a README.md.
- oneeyedpigeon 3y agoI'm with you — same issue as Obsidian.
- jwells89 3y agoHaven’t tried Marker so I don’t know how it works, but at least in Obsidian “projects” are just folders. At least for my usage, this isn’t really an issue because most of the Markdown files I create are going to be in one of a few locations (blog posts, mind dumps, etc). It’s still useful to have a one-off editor but there are several programs that can fill that purpose well.
- oneeyedpigeon 3y agoObsidian isn't terrible, I just wish I could open a single Markdown file. README.md is pretty common; any arbitrary location can contain a .md file that I might want to open. Marker looks a lot worse, though. I gave my 'project' a name and selected a folder—one containing a big hierarchy, tbf, but the app gave no guidance. All I get now is a blank window, even when I restart. There doesn't seem to be any menu item that will let me create a new project or recover from this state. I guess I'll have to reinstall... This is the problem with the 'project' (or 'vault') approach, IMO—if I'm just opening a file, I know what that is, what it means. When your app revolves around some bespoke notion of whatever a 'project' is, and that's the first experience of your app I get, that's not great.
- PurpleRamen 3y agoObsidian is vault-centric and has some harsh limitations in what workflows it allows because of this. It doesn't matter whether vaults are folders, because there is more to this than just the folder. This is really annoying, because Obsidian is a one of the best markdown-editors at the moment, with a good plugin-community, unlike others.
- SirMaster 3y agoBeen using StackEdit myself but I might check this out.
- josebama 3y agoWhat's the license of the code? I don't see any in the repo https://github.com/tk04/Marker https://github.com/tk04/Marker
- jcheng 3y agoLooks like they added one (MIT) after you posted this: https://github.com/tk04/Marker/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/tk04/Marker/blob/master/LICENSE
- michaelbuckbee 3y agoThis looks like a neat app for non-developers, but for dev's it is really hard to beat the VS Code extensions for handling markdown. My heavily used ones are: Markdown to HTML (copy), which lets you write and preview markdown and then copy+paste it as html into things like newsletters, CMS, etc. as a single step. The other one is Markdown to PDF, which lets you organize a series of markdown files into a coherent structure and then spits out an ebook on command.
- blackhaj7 3y agoNeat. I didn’t know about markdown to HTML Any recommendations for extensions to help with authoring markdown in VSCode?
- inferense 3y agothere's a similar app made specifically for devs - https://acreom.com https://acreom.com disclaimer: I am the maker of acreom
- airstrike 3y agothat looks so neat! I'm building a modern cross-platform app and aiming for a similar look-and-feel so I'm curious what your stack looks like, especially the UI (it's not a note-taking app but more like spreadsheets and presentations, so I promise I'm not a competitor!)
- 3y ago
- alalani1 3y agoDoes this support MDX? Would be very curious to try it out if that's the case
- arek_nawo 3y agoMDX, with the custom content involved, is though. I've been working on a hybrid WYSIWYG editor for MDX at Vrite (https://vrite.io https://vrite.io). Currently supports custom block elements and JSON-serializable attributes. Now looking into inline content and building an extension system to render custom previews for the nodes. Check it out if you're interested - it's also open-source.
- AiAi 3y agoI used to use Marktext and Typora for this.
- gavi 3y agoThis is great. Please check obsidian which I think is excellent also.
- nico 3y agoLooks really nice Slightly on a tangent, anyone knows of a good markdown reader library for the terminal in python? Here’s a Go example: https://github.com/charmbracelet/glow https://github.com/charmbracelet/glow Btw, the Charm/charmbracelet projects are fantastic, wish there was something like that but in python
- henrun12 3y agoThe design is super clean
- herdcall 3y agoThere is "pandoc" if you folks haven't tried it, it is amazingly simple and effective and will convert from a ton of input formats (including markdown) to a ton of output formats (including html, word, whatever).
- kps 3y agoI use Pandoc to view markdown in a terminal using `less` (see `lesspipe(1)`), either through html and `elinks` or through a custom writer ([2] forked from [1]). [0] My `.lessfilter` configuration: https://gist.github.com/kpschoedel/62888f552dc9d920d600166e586c4d43 https://gist.github.com/kpschoedel/62888f552dc9d920d600166e5... [1] https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/pandoc-terminal-writer https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/pandoc-terminal-writer [2] https://github.com/kpschoedel/pandoc-terminal-writer https://github.com/kpschoedel/pandoc-terminal-writer
- a1o 3y agoOh yeah, I use pandoc + lua in Continuous Integration to build docs from their sources and it's pretty effective!
- rubymamis 3y agoLooks really cool! For anyone looking for a very similar UI but an editor that also supports complex blocks (like Kanban, images etc) you can check out my note-taking app Plume with a block editor[1] (beta is out in about a month, sign up for the waitlist!). Every note is a simple plain text string (with Markdown syntax) that is rendered via Qt C++ and QML. [1] https://get-plume.com/ https://get-plume.com/ EDIT: Added the app isn't out yet (about a month more of hard work!)
- syncbehind 3y agoNot a dig at you, but I see you plugging this on everything even remotely similar to your app. With the caveat that your product is not even out? Is the intention just to build hype? Seems a bit disingenuous is all.
- rubymamis 3y ago> Is the intention just to build hype? No, the intention is to build a waitlist to get feedback from target users. I'm following sort of a similar plan the Linear guys went with[1]. EDIT: It also gives me a lot of motivation to see people liking what I build and waiting to use it - which takes tremendous tall on me since I'm working on it 24/7 every day for the past 7 months. [1] https://linear.app/blog/rethinking-the-startup-mvp-building-a-competitive-product https://linear.app/blog/rethinking-the-startup-mvp-building-...
- syncbehind 3y agoI think my reason for commenting was because the way you comment makes it seem like the product is out to try / "check out my product!" but the product doesn't even exist. It feels dishonest? Like a bait and switch. That being said, good luck.
- rubymamis 3y agoOh, gotcha, I edited the comment to add that the app isn't out yet. Thanks.
- dunno7456 3y agoThere is also ghostwriter which is quite good
- tinycombinator 3y agoAt first, I thought this was another repo called Marker, also a markdown editor: https://github.com/fabiocolacio/Marker https://github.com/fabiocolacio/Marker
- cuuupid 3y agoAs a huge asterisk this is a Tauri wrapper around Tiptap that does filesystem management. You can use Tiptap yourself easily as it's open source: https://tiptap.dev/ https://tiptap.dev/ https://github.com/ueberdosis/tiptap https://github.com/ueberdosis/tiptap Tiptap is immensely popular, supports both Vue and React, is super lightweight and has a huge community of extensions. I've been using this since 2019 and can't recommend it enough. A number of comments here are asking for functionality that is built in, easily available as an extension, or easily add-able!
- MarkSweep 3y agoWhy do you need a huge asterisk about the editor control library this app is using? Many text editors follow this pattern: Notepad++ : Scintilla Notepad.exe : Win32 EDIT control TextEdit.app : NSTextView It’s not like you can download and run Tiptap as an application, right?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tobr 3y ago> this is a Tauri wrapper around Tiptap that does filesystem management Isn't Tiptap a wrapper around ProseMirror that does SaaS pricing?
- arek_nawo 3y agoWhy is it a "huge asterisk"? I'm also working on a WYSIWYG editor and using TipTap. It's great, but on its own, it's not a ready editor, but a great framework. There's a lot you can do with TipTap (and ProseMirror) to make your editor stand out and fit your use case better than others.
- eviks 3y agoYou could partially match the output by tuning your syntax highlighting rules to make various markup invisible, thus leaving you with only the bold word without the asterisks. Though still won't help with search ignoring markup
- cwoolfe 3y agoThe app isn't part of the developer program so when you try to open the app, MacOS says "You should move this app to the trash" haha! Workaround via running: xattr -c /Applications/Marker.app
- whalesalad 3y agoLooks like logseq
- jasonjmcghee 3y agos/Secure/Local It's TipTap + Radix wrapped in tauri. No encryption / security features AFAICT.
- samstave 3y agoHehe - just to note, the logo icon "download" button is for windows: https://i.imgur.com/QqQKFWE.png https://i.imgur.com/QqQKFWE.png - isnt it? typical the apple is on the download button for mac?
- hougaard 3y agoCame here to say the same, kinda misleading :)
- WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- codazoda 3y agoLooks interesting. I don't love the title, subtitle business. I assume it will add yaml content to the top of the post. I'd like to hide that as I don't add yaml to my markdown files. There may be a config option for this but I didn't keep it installed long enough to find out.
- tqwhite 3y agoWhen I download the version for M1 Macintosh, it tells me the application is damaged. FYI.
- l3x 3y agoAnyone know of a collaborative markdown editor? Like a Google Doc but where everyone can write in markdown?
- matrss 3y agohttps://hedgedoc.org/ https://hedgedoc.org/
- arek_nawo 3y agoAre you looking specifically for Markdown or e.g. a WYSIWYG with Markdown shortcuts support? I’m building something in this space and I’m curious what’s the appeal of the former vs the latter?
- l3x 3y agoNot s important if it's markdown or wysiwyg in the interface (although an intelligent mix like the obsidian editor would be nice) The main thing is to have markdown as the output format and if I copy text from the editor that it pastes in markdown
- dimask 3y agohttps://hackmd.io https://hackmd.io looks great, though I have not used it as much as I would have liked to.
- jdcampolargo 3y agoIt would be cool if you can more functionality like adding images easily and so on. Look at this: https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/1751350002281300461 https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/1751350002281300461
- godelski 3y agoIsn't this obsidian? It looks very much like it. Not that there's much to go on. https://obsidian.md/ https://obsidian.md/
- better_sh 3y agolol yeah that was my first thought. UI looks pretty similar
- lf-non 3y agoI tried this out. I think this app will benefit from a clear identification of purpose and target user base and tailoring its features around that. Eg. If it is trying to be a generic markdown file editor, I wouldn't want it to insert yaml frontmatter without being more explicit about it. If it is trying to be a note taking tool, I'd expect to be able to interlink local markdown files and navigate files through them (I couldn't get that to work). If non technical users are the primary audience, the git integration may not be ideal sync solution for them. If it is for technical users, we would likely want to be able to edit the front matter ourselves (to add options specific to jekyll/pandoc or whatever else will use that markdown) etc.
- maigret 3y agoOne thing I've not found yet is a quick, preferably mobile also MD editor for my static blogs/websites. That would mean connecting the editor to GitHub so it can commit or create a PR when I press on publish, and being able to define repos and locations for editing content. Moving notes to published articles would then be easy on the go, when the inspiration often comes.
- mfer 3y agoIt is NOT open source. If you look, there is no license file or license stated otherwise.
- AceJohnny2 3y agoTangential: anyone remember WordPerfect on DOS, and how you could switch between WYSIWYG mode and "markup" mode, where you could delete style markers? The more things change...
- codelobe 3y agoIndeed. When I ask (now retiring) office workers they typically agree that WordPerfect 5.1 is the best document editor our Earth has to offer.
- wduquette 3y agoIt was pretty good...but I don't miss having to manually manage printer drivers for it.
- ivanbozic 3y agoInterestingly, George R. R. Martin still uses WordStar 4.0 [1] to write all of his books. It even predates WordPerfect 5.1 by three years (1986 and 1989). [1] https://techcrunch.com/2014/05/14/george-r-r-martin-writes-everything-in-wordstar-4-0-on-a-dos-machine/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/05/14/george-r-r-martin-writes-e...
- w10-1 3y ago175 stars, first commit 14 days ago, no real docs or other activity outside HN. No acknowledgement of predecessors or collaborators - or license? And now, as I finish typing this comment, stars up to 189.
- aredox 3y agoHN as an attack vector. Definitely a good way to get reach.
- whynotmaybe 3y agoNot sure I get your point. It now has 196 stars. Is it good or bad?
- bluish29 3y agoI, for one, use GitHub stars as a way of bookmarking projects. Which means I will star a project that I want to look into later. And most of the time I completely forget about it.
- thangalin 3y agoOf possible interest is my Markdown editor, KeenWrite: https://keenwrite.com/ https://keenwrite.com/ It features math, interpolated variables, theme-driven PDF output, and is cross-platform. Have a peek at the screenshots and tutorials: * https://keenwrite.com/screenshots.html https://keenwrite.com/screenshots.html * https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB-WIt1cZYLm1MMx2FBG9KWzPIoWZMKu_ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB-WIt1cZYLm1MMx2FBG9... Document meta data and all variables are stored in an external YAML file. These variables can be edited directly within the editor. Variables can be used within the document and within text-based diagram descriptions (such as GraphViz and anything else supported by https://kroki.io/ https://kroki.io/). There's also a command-line interface for integrating into CI/CD pipelines or similar workflows. https://gitlab.com/DaveJarvis/KeenWrite/-/blob/main/docs/cmd.md https://gitlab.com/DaveJarvis/KeenWrite/-/blob/main/docs/cmd...
- djbusby 3y agoHave you thought about YAML headers in the doc? Lots of site-generators (eg Hugo) do that.
- thangalin 3y agoYes, I have. I disagree with adding YAML headers into documents because it inevitably mixes presentation with content. KeenWrite takes a different approach in keeping presentation completely separate, allowing the content to vary independently. Aside, KeenWrite generates XHTML documents as an intermediary step towards producing PDF files, making it an alternative site generator. Nonetheless, if someone wants to use an existing site generator, they can do so while keeping their Markdown documents free of presentation logic. In Linux, it can be as simple as: cat header.yaml source.md > combined.md Then run the site generator on the combined output file. In the screenshots, the theme-driven PDF output shows the same content presented in two different PDF files: one with a ToC and one without. Whether a table of contents is included is presentation logic, dictated by the typesetting engine configuration. If you place the ToC controls in the YAML header for the document, then it means having to change the content to add or remove the ToC. That then presumes the type of transformations the Markdown will undergo, which, IMO, defeats the purpose of a plain text document.
- miramba 3y agoI am trying to replace google docs with markdowns, but it's difficult to find a suitable editor, so I gave this a try. Here are a few observations on a M1 Mac: * very clean interface: But too clean for my taste. I like WYSIWYG controls like BIU and I like to apply styles directly (like in Word/gdocs) as opposed to many md-Editors with a code/preview split. * the HN-title implies that I can quickly edit a .md file, but it asks me to define a project first - no direct file opening. * I opened an existing file with a h1-header on top, the app adds a title and subtitle on top anyway - not wanted. I couldn't find a way to remove them either. * It seems I cant move the window by "pulling" the area where the titlebar would be. The window is stuck on a center-top position. So far, the markdown editor that comes closest to my requirements is the vscode plugin "Markdown Editor" (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=adamerose.markdown-wysiwyg https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=adameros...) Thanks for your work and good luck! Edit: Attempt to style my comment for better readability.
- chambored 3y agoIf you haven't tried Obsidian, I would. It has the features you were looking for. The downside being it is directory (vault) based as well and doesn't really offer the ability to edit one off files.
- anigbrowl 3y agoExporting from Obsidian is so easy though. I forget how the defaults are, but installing hte Pandoc plugin makes it a zero-effort option.
- a1o 3y agoTry this one later, of all linked in the thread, it looked very clean to me https://github.com/1943time/bluestone https://github.com/1943time/bluestone https://www.bluemd.me/ https://www.bluemd.me/ https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bluestone-markdown/id6451391474 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bluestone-markdown/id645139147... I myself am currently playing with WriterSide from JetBrains but it's still in experimental stage.
- Emphere 3y ago
- juujian 3y agoDoes it support using different engines for the preview? I have been looking forever for an open source markdown editor that allows me to use pandoc as the backend.
- caxco93 3y agoIn case you are wondering, this is using https://tauri.app/ https://tauri.app/ which allows it to be web based inside a native app. I was not familiar with that project, but taking a peek at the Activity Monitor, it seems to spin up 2 processes, one for tauri itself which I presume is a small static file server (around 60MB memory), and one for the main UI window (around 30MB memory).
- tamimio 3y agoAt least add a screenshot to see it without installation, since the whole selling point is the “user-friendly UI”..
- kushan2020 3y agoIf some of you want to try out a fully web based approach to markdown editing checkout https://bangle.io https://bangle.io
- neilv 3y agoFor also viewing and editing these Markdown files from Emacs, you can get semi-WYSIWYG there. Especially if you take advantage of Emacs "fill" features, such as for making nested bulleted/numbered lists readable. (setq-default fill-column 79) (global-set-key (kbd "C-'") #'imenu-list-smart-toggle) (autoload 'markdown-mode "markdown-mode" nil t) (autoload 'imenu-list "imenu-list" nil t) (autoload 'imenu-list-minor-mode "imenu-list" nil t) (autoload 'imenu-list-noselect "imenu-list" nil t) (autoload 'imenu-list-smart-toggle "imenu-list" nil t) [...] (custom-set-variables [...] '(markdown-hide-urls t) [...]) ;; Note: These face colors assume black-on-white normal colors. (custom-set-faces [...] '(markdown-blockquote-face ((t (:inherit nil :background "gray95" :foreground "gray25")))) '(markdown-bold-face ((t (:inherit nil :slant normal :weight bold)))) '(markdown-header-delimiter-face ((t (:inherit markdown-markup-face)))) '(markdown-header-face ((t (:inherit nil :weight bold :family "sans")))) '(markdown-header-face-1 ((t (:inherit markdown-header-face :height 2.0)))) '(markdown-header-face-2 ((t (:inherit markdown-header-face :height 1.6)))) '(markdown-header-face-3 ((t (:inherit markdown-header-face :height 1.2)))) '(markdown-header-face-4 ((t (:inherit markdown-header-face :height 1.1)))) '(markdown-header-face-5 ((t (:inherit markdown-header-face :height 1.0)))) '(markdown-highlight-face ((t (:foreground "blue" :underline t)))) '(markdown-html-attr-name-face ((t (:inherit markdown-markup-face)))) '(markdown-html-attr-value-face ((t (:inherit markdown-markup-face)))) '(markdown-html-tag-name-face ((t (:inherit markdown-markup-face)))) '(markdown-inline-code-face ((t (:inherit nil :foreground "green4")))) '(markdown-italic-face ((t (:inherit nil :slant italic :weight normal)))) '(markdown-language-keyword-face ((t (:foreground "gray80")))) '(markdown-link-face ((t (:inherit nil :foreground "blue3")))) '(markdown-list-face ((t (:inherit nil :weight bold)))) '(markdown-pre-face ((t (:inherit markdown-inline-code-face :background "#f4fff4")))) '(markdown-reference-face ((t (:weight bold)))) '(markdown-strike-through-face ((t (:inherit nil :strike-through t)))) '(markdown-table-face ((t (:inherit nil :background "#fafafa")))) '(markdown-url-face ((t (:inherit markdown-markup-face)))) [...])
- jiehong 3y agoReminds me of iA Writer [0] which started in 2010. [0]: https://ia.net/writer https://ia.net/writer
- rcarmo 3y agoia Writer was designed to act like a normal desktop app (I use it across all Apple platforms, and it is almost perfect). This is still a little far behind.
- noiv 3y agoI really like Markdown, but I wish it would support inline images, perhaps using base64 encoded ones to keep all in one file.
- Retr0id 3y agoWhat makes a markdown editor secure?
- pknerd 3y agoMarkdown is usually used by developers. Almost all IDEs now have support for it. I wonder why one needs a separate MD editor.
- syockit 3y agoI've tested so many Markdown editors with WYSIWYG or instant preview, but this is the first one with only 4MB download size! Is using Tauri the secret sauce to this magic? Too bad it doesn't have built-in math editor.
- anigbrowl 3y agoWhat differentiates this from (say) Obsidian?
- alsetmusic 3y agoTried to run on an M1 Max and got the following error: '“Marker.app” is damaged and can’t be opened. You should eject the disk image.' This was on the Marker_1.0.0_aarch64.dmg build. I downloaded again and got the same.
- xk_id 3y ago> Everything you create lives in your filesystem. We reached a point in the consumer tech circus where storing text files locally is considered a “feature”.
- cjbprime 3y agoIf any of the open source WYSIWYG Markdown editors can be brought into a VS Code extension, would be amazing. (I've tried the existing VS Code Marketplace extensions and they're pretty terrible.)
- g9yuayon 3y agoHow is this compared to Obsidian? Currently Obsidian is by far the best Markdown editor I've used. The inline preview mode is amazing, and I appreciate how easy it is to embed math equations and diagrams. Speaking of this, shame on Google. The editor of Google Docs is so awful that I can't it is built by Google.
- saasxyz 3y agoInteresting tool but that warning that I have to run an command to make it work, really turned off me. Also, I am curious if you distribute an executable via Github, you need to still apply for Apple dev program?