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The killer app for markdown would be a collaborative editor that displays the raw markdown and formatted markdown side-by-side and makes both sides editable. Te

The killer app for markdown would be a collaborative editor that displays the raw markdown and formatted markdown side-by-side and makes both sides editable. Tech people can use `#` and `*` on one side for formatting, product people can use normal text-editor buttons like "header1", "italics", etc.

jxjnskkzxxhx 2y ago
Sounds like an obsidian plugin.
- mock-possum 2y ago
  Notepad++ and VSC both have plugins for this. They’re fine.
- philips 2y ago
  Someone is building that: https://screen.garden https://screen.garden
r3trohack3r 2y ago
I built this in college, but the code is lost. It was a week or so of hacking. I believe in you. IIRC the trick was to get a pipeline for Markdown to HTML, render it into a WYSIWYG editor, then convert the HTML to an AST, and walk that to generate the markdown. I had to “format” both the markdown and html on each render (bidirectional round trip render) because parsing/gen wasn’t whitespace stable.
jkingsman 2y ago
It's not collaborative, but this is what I love about Typora[0]. Click into a styled area and the styling becomes visible. Click out, and you just see the final styling. [0] https://typora.io/ https://typora.io/
- Helmut10001 2y ago
  Typora is really a gem in the Markdown universe.
renewiltord 2y ago
You can do that in IntelliJ. If there's a way to control a tab on a browser you could do that too. When I was writing my thesis, I would have `inotifywait` running on one side and when it detected the file had changed it would run the entire `pdflatex` + `bibtex` pipeline the 6 times or whatever it needed and Evince would hot-reload so I had a live preview. I'm sure a browser can do the same with some command.
pphysch 2y ago
Why does it need to be side by side? Just let each client choose WSIWYG or raw.
- david422 2y ago
  When writing in text mode so that you can see what you are generating. Wouldn't really need it the other direction though.
  - oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
    Isn't the point of Markdown that you don't need to 'see what you are generating', you can just read it? I write Markdown every day, but I do it in a plaintext editor (with syntax highlighting). I have a keyboard shortcut to view a preview in my browser, but I don't see a great need to be viewing that preview all the time.
    - immibis 2y ago
      I think the point of Markdown is to signal that you're someone who uses things like Markdown.
      - pphysch 2y ago
        Markdown is ubiquitous even in boring corporate technical writing processes nowadays. Nothing hip about it.
philips 2y ago
Someone is sort of building this on Obsidian: https://screen.garden https://screen.garden
- packetlost 2y ago
  yoooo this is sweet. Been looking for this for awhile.
- darkteflon 2y ago
  There’s also https://system3.md/relay https://system3.md/relay
  - dtkav 2y ago
    Thanks for the plug :)
eviks 2y ago
This is a very common mistake wasting half your screen, it can't be no killer app
dtkav 2y ago
Here's a comparison chart of collaboration/teamwork plugins in Obsidian. https://system3.md/observatory/categories/collaboration-teamwork https://system3.md/observatory/categories/collaboration-team... Peerdraft, Relay, and Screen Garden are all based on CRDTs, and Obsidian is also currently working on native collaboration. (disclaimer: I work on Relay)
- Helmut10001 2y ago
  Unfortunately, all of these are not self-hostable. I wish there was something like Nextcloud for Markdown Collaboration.
  - dtkav 2y ago
    Relay now supports self hosting the collaboration server. It works with tailscale out of the box. We still have a centralized service for authentication and authorization, but if you self host it is impossible for us to access your files.
Imustaskforhelp 2y ago
I think this feature is already in qownnotes. Surprised , nobody mentioned qownnotes Edit: I was wondering how to enable this mode because it wasn't in my qownnotes ,Here's how I found it , go to the help section , click find action , and search preview and click on show note preview panel. Now the caveat is that if you want to see it blitted , you have to save the file once to see it automatically show in the other side. Maybe this can also be definitely automated / I feel like there was some feature that did that for that as well or atleast its very non trivial. Edit 2 : okay so I just realized that qownnotes also ships with autosave feature which saves and thus also shows what you type in reader mode in like a 0.5 second delay. And I think there is also a way to decrease / increase the autosave part as well Dude , I didn't realize it , but qownnotes is so good!
DidYaWipe 2y ago
Or just a plain VIEWER.
extinctpotato 2y ago
You might appreciate this: https://antmicro.github.io/myst-editor/ https://antmicro.github.io/myst-editor/
_hhnj 2y ago
HackMD already does this. It has a dual-pane view for raw markdown and formatted output, supports WYSIWYG editing, and allows real-time collaboration. Surprised no one mentioned it. - [HackMD: Your Collaborative Markdown Workspace for Knowledge Sharing](https://hackmd.io/ https://hackmd.io/)
walthamstow 2y ago
Notion had the potential to be like this, but instead it's garbage. You can put markdown in, but you can't get it out.

jxjnskkzxxhx 2y ago

Sounds like an obsidian plugin.

mock-possum 2y ago
Notepad++ and VSC both have plugins for this. They’re fine.
philips 2y ago
Someone is building that: https://screen.garden https://screen.garden

r3trohack3r 2y ago

I built this in college, but the code is lost. It was a week or so of hacking. I believe in you. IIRC the trick was to get a pipeline for Markdown to HTML, render it into a WYSIWYG editor, then convert the HTML to an AST, and walk that to generate the markdown. I had to “format” both the markdown and html on each render (bidirectional round trip render) because parsing/gen wasn’t whitespace stable.

jkingsman 2y ago

It's not collaborative, but this is what I love about Typora[0]. Click into a styled area and the styling becomes visible. Click out, and you just see the final styling. [0] https://typora.io/ https://typora.io/

Helmut10001 2y ago
Typora is really a gem in the Markdown universe.

renewiltord 2y ago

You can do that in IntelliJ. If there's a way to control a tab on a browser you could do that too. When I was writing my thesis, I would have `inotifywait` running on one side and when it detected the file had changed it would run the entire `pdflatex` + `bibtex` pipeline the 6 times or whatever it needed and Evince would hot-reload so I had a live preview. I'm sure a browser can do the same with some command.

pphysch 2y ago

Why does it need to be side by side? Just let each client choose WSIWYG or raw.

david422 2y ago
When writing in text mode so that you can see what you are generating. Wouldn't really need it the other direction though.
- oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
  Isn't the point of Markdown that you don't need to 'see what you are generating', you can just read it? I write Markdown every day, but I do it in a plaintext editor (with syntax highlighting). I have a keyboard shortcut to view a preview in my browser, but I don't see a great need to be viewing that preview all the time.
  - immibis 2y ago
    I think the point of Markdown is to signal that you're someone who uses things like Markdown.
    - pphysch 2y ago
      Markdown is ubiquitous even in boring corporate technical writing processes nowadays. Nothing hip about it.

philips 2y ago

Someone is sort of building this on Obsidian: https://screen.garden https://screen.garden

packetlost 2y ago
yoooo this is sweet. Been looking for this for awhile.
darkteflon 2y ago
There’s also https://system3.md/relay https://system3.md/relay
- dtkav 2y ago
  Thanks for the plug :)

eviks 2y ago

This is a very common mistake wasting half your screen, it can't be no killer app

dtkav 2y ago

Here's a comparison chart of collaboration/teamwork plugins in Obsidian. https://system3.md/observatory/categories/collaboration-teamwork https://system3.md/observatory/categories/collaboration-team... Peerdraft, Relay, and Screen Garden are all based on CRDTs, and Obsidian is also currently working on native collaboration. (disclaimer: I work on Relay)

Helmut10001 2y ago
Unfortunately, all of these are not self-hostable. I wish there was something like Nextcloud for Markdown Collaboration.
- dtkav 2y ago
  Relay now supports self hosting the collaboration server. It works with tailscale out of the box. We still have a centralized service for authentication and authorization, but if you self host it is impossible for us to access your files.

Imustaskforhelp 2y ago

I think this feature is already in qownnotes. Surprised , nobody mentioned qownnotes Edit: I was wondering how to enable this mode because it wasn't in my qownnotes ,Here's how I found it , go to the help section , click find action , and search preview and click on show note preview panel. Now the caveat is that if you want to see it blitted , you have to save the file once to see it automatically show in the other side. Maybe this can also be definitely automated / I feel like there was some feature that did that for that as well or atleast its very non trivial. Edit 2 : okay so I just realized that qownnotes also ships with autosave feature which saves and thus also shows what you type in reader mode in like a 0.5 second delay. And I think there is also a way to decrease / increase the autosave part as well Dude , I didn't realize it , but qownnotes is so good!

DidYaWipe 2y ago

Or just a plain VIEWER.

extinctpotato 2y ago

You might appreciate this: https://antmicro.github.io/myst-editor/ https://antmicro.github.io/myst-editor/

_hhnj 2y ago

HackMD already does this. It has a dual-pane view for raw markdown and formatted output, supports WYSIWYG editing, and allows real-time collaboration. Surprised no one mentioned it. - [HackMD: Your Collaborative Markdown Workspace for Knowledge Sharing](https://hackmd.io/ https://hackmd.io/)

walthamstow 2y ago

Notion had the potential to be like this, but instead it's garbage. You can put markdown in, but you can't get it out.