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Show HN: Marksmith – a GitHub-style Markdown editor for Ruby on Rails
- sscarduzio 2y agoThis is exactly what I needed, but I need JS or Python backend. Any chance to make it work?
- adrianthedev 2y agoThe JS side is made in StimulusJS. You can take it, it's MIT. I haven't worked with python and don't have plans to port it to React or anything else. If you do start work on it, I can guide you though the process if you need a hand...
- adenta 2y agoIf I was to build out a react integration, would you recommend: A. Rebuild the stimulus portions in react B. Write a react wrapper around the stimulus I use rails for everything I do, but like to use vite_rails on the front end for react. Excited to use this library!
- adrianthedev 2y agoHmmm... My responsible developer gut tells me to redo it in React so you don't import StimulusJS just to render one editor. It's like having jQuery as a dependency in a React project.
- adenta 2y agoAnother question: Does this integrate with action_text? Wasn’t that a big thing in rails 6/7, with like… trix?
- adrianthedev 2y agoIn theory it does. The thing with ActionText is that it adds some HTML to the content, but in theory it should work.
- Lio 2y agoNice work Adrian. Out of interest are there any plans to support embedding Mermaid diagrams in the same way as Github supports?
- adrianthedev 2y agoLet's open an issue and discuss it there. I never used diagrams and that library, but if I see a couple of other implementations, maybe it can be a drop-in...
- sagasu007 2y agolook good ~
- Bergrebell 2y agoavo is just great! we have used it in 3 projects by now and couldn’t be happier with the product and community! nice to see that they are starting to push the whole ecosystem.
- adrianthedev 2y agoThank you for your kind words. A rising tide lifts all boats!
- briandear 2y agoDo normal people use Markdown? Or is it a dev/“techie” thing?
- vallode 2y agoI've had good success teaching markdown to a fair few non-techie people. At the end of the day it better serves as a machine-readable middleground between a user-facing WYSIWYG (markdown-powered) editor and the server responding to it.
- Bluestrike2 2y agoIt's common enough that a bigger percentage of normal people than you'd think probably find themselves using it on sites at least occasionally (Reddit, etc.), even if they don't consciously think of it as Markdown or know all the particulars of the syntax. The GitHub-style editors are nice in that when a user sees the syntax directly when they press a formatting button in the markdown-toolbar-element, it makes associating a hash symbol with a headline or two asterisks surrounding a word with bold text pretty straightforward. In that sense, they teach you through using it since the syntax is fairly simple for the basics for someone seeing it the first time. Use it a couple of times, and you'll skip touching the buttons--at least for the basics. That said, I think a Writebook-style editor[0] mentioned elsewhere may have some advantages for people with less computer experience, but I don't think a straight GitHub-style one like this is bad in those circumstances. It's quite good, especially if you pair it with some instructions (whether they be in a modal or whatever have you). 0. https://once.com/writebook https://once.com/writebook
- shafyy 2y agoThis looks great! I'd also love a non-Markdown view for less technical folks. Or can you write in the "preview mode"? I read that 37signals will also spin-off the markdown editor they built for Writebook (https://once.com/writebook https://once.com/writebook), so nice to have different options.
- adrianthedev 2y agoI'd use the Rhino Editor for that. It's based on TipTap and is very extendable. I used it in a few projects and loved it.
- shafyy 2y agoThanks, I'll have a look!
- timsco 2y agoThank you so much for this.
- xutopia 2y agoThe Ruby world is feeling a revival for the last year. More and more people using it and lots of new libraries coming out or being updated.
- adrianthedev 2y agoYup. I agree. It's going to be hard to make a dent in the JS world, but it's coming back!
- teaearlgraycold 2y agoRuby needs a type system comparable to TypeScript to compete.
- downrightmike 2y agoWe are in 2025, can we please start using dark mode as the default on websites?
- andrewmutz 2y agoAny stats on how many people use dark mode in the OS vs light mode? My sense was that dark mode was less popular.
- chilipepperhott 2y agoI'm pretty sure dark mode is less popular.
- sevg 2y agoWhy do you assume everyone prefers dark mode? :) It’s hard to know how popular dark vs light is among people who work in tech, but in my anecdotal data the majority of people/coworkers I’ve seen use GitHub have it in light mode. There may be an argument to default to “system”.
- stiltzkin 2y ago[dead]
- adrianthedev 2y agoSo awesome to see this on the first page. Thanks everyone!
- chilipepperhott 2y agoHuh. It would be cool to get Harper integrated into this https://writewithharper.com https://writewithharper.com
- Merovex 2y agoDHH has said that Markdown editing will be a feature in 8.1. Also, Marksmith requires the use of ViewComponent, which is non-standard.