6 ms·

Prose, a content editor for GitHub

101 points by avinashv 12y ago

bowerbird 12y ago
another interesting topic that floats by on hackernews, with no upvotes (except mine) and no comments (except mine). does anybody have any suggestions for a smarter site? -bowerbird
entelarust 12y ago
Use this all the time to update READMEs and documentation Great, clean interface
- dominotw 12y ago
  Could you tell me how this differs from githubs own markdown editor. I played with this for a bit but I failed to notice anything.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
skybrian 12y ago
It seems nice, but I'd like to know more about where the UI is hosted and whether I can easily host it myself. Is there an architecture diagram somewhere? (Ideally I'd run it on App Engine.)
- tmcw 12y ago
  The UI is hosted on Github pages: there's no server-side code. The only required server-side component is https://github.com/prose/gatekeeper https://github.com/prose/gatekeeper - an app that makes OAuth possible with CORS.
jorde 12y ago
Could anyone provide screenshots? I hate to be a hater but authorizing an app to access all my private repos is little too much (not sure how GH allows OAuth scoping)
- jgeewax 12y ago
  Couldn't agree more... Do we really need to grant read and write access to all repos? Sucks if GH's scoping is that coarse.
  - malandrew 12y ago
    Unfortunately Amazon is the only cloud provider out there with a robust ACL system. Is there an open industry standard for implementing ACL policies flexibly like the one Amazon has?
    - garblegarble 12y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XACML http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XACML would be one - it can be a little complicated, but if you can get over that it's quite nice and also adds the idea of an Obligation (something that must be performed on a grant/deny - for example, logging/e-mailing)
  - Wingman4l7 12y ago
    It definitely isn't that coarse: https://developer.github.com/v3/oauth/#scopes https://developer.github.com/v3/oauth/#scopes
    - VoxPelli 12y ago
      GitHub are also working on enabling users to accept just a subset of the requested scopes, like just access to public repos, which will make using all of the more fine-grained scopes easier: https://developer.github.com/changes/2013-10-04-oauth-changes-coming/ https://developer.github.com/changes/2013-10-04-oauth-change...
  - hk__2 12y ago
    No it’s not, you can make an app that have access only to your public info, and/or public repos, etc.
  - stanzheng 12y ago
jackmaney 12y ago
While the design looks nice, what does this offer that GitHub's editing functionality[1] does not? [1]: https://help.github.com/articles/editing-files https://help.github.com/articles/editing-files
- craigmccaskill 12y ago
  Prose is tweaked specifically to offer additional features to sites built with Jekyll. They have a markdown editor, similar to the one github offers, but have a few extra features to deal with Jekyll specific stuff like drafts, image uploading and a distraction free writing mode.
  - tsm 12y ago
    I don't know much about Jekyll, but vanilla Github offers a distraction-free editor called "zen mode".
- VoxPelli 12y ago
  It can be configured to work almost like how you would expect a typical CMS to work – with different content types, additional fields in the forms etc: https://github.com/prose/prose/wiki/Prose-Configuration https://github.com/prose/prose/wiki/Prose-Configuration Which means users don't have to know much about Jekyll to add content to such a site.
pron 12y ago
Prose is made by Development Seed (the company behind the healtcare.gov frontend, IIRC). There are screenshots here: http://developmentseed.org/blog/2012/june/25/prose-a-content-editor-for-github/ http://developmentseed.org/blog/2012/june/25/prose-a-content... Prose is an open source node.js app, and can be self-hosted: https://github.com/prose/prose https://github.com/prose/prose
- gregchapple 12y ago
  Actually, it's a Backbone.js application. It uses the browserify library to load other modules, which is what the "require('blah')" bits are. this confused me too when I first read it. so essentially you can run this on a static file server like GH pages. As far as I remember in order to get the GitHub authentication piece working you need to use an external app simply for the authentication with GitHub. DevelopmentSeed also wrote an app for this called gatekeeper (I think) which I believe is a node.js application. impressive stuff.
  - kjell 12y ago
    Yes: https://github.com/prose/gatekeeper https://github.com/prose/gatekeeper I believe all the gatekeeper does is forward the oauth confirmation callback to prose so the client side app can use it. So, anyone worried about security can run their own gatekeeper and their own prose without having to worry about the NSA (oh, wait…)
  - camus2 12y ago
    A trick one can use is to delegate github oauth to Firebase ,since it supports github authorization.
- rhythmvs 12y ago
  If you’re looking for an open source, self-hosted, webbased plain-text editor, that supports Markdown, reST, and LaTeX, and has Git integration too: just stumbled upon https://notex.ch/ https://notex.ch/ — quite impressive work. Doesn’t look as nice as Prose.io e.a., but even the GUI is well-done.
venantius 12y ago
This seems like a great product, but the fact that they include no product details or information doesn't meet the high bar that should be met for someone to provide OAuth access to GitHub.
woutervdb 12y ago
Too bad the site doesn't work on my phone at all. Xperia T using Dolphin Browser. Gives me all kinds of floating boxes and a useless progress spinner.
AdrianRossouw 12y ago
Prose.io is a completely client side editor that authenticates against github to allow you to directly edit your markdown files in the repo. It has a tiny tiny server-side component that exists only to complete the oauth handshake (for the remote server to have something to call back to), called gate keeper. It's completely open source and self-hostable. They also make a webhook so you can trigger rebuilding on your own server. They built it to be able to replace their need on a traditional CMS when they switched from Drupal to Node.JS many years ago. http://developmentseed.org/blog/2012/07/27/build-cms-free-websites/ http://developmentseed.org/blog/2012/07/27/build-cms-free-we... DevelopmentSeed was the company that eventually spun off into MapBox.com, the open source open data map tile hosted service. They have a long history with the open source community, and are spearheading a lot of the open source mapping stack by employing the lead developers of mapnik, leaflet and much more. Other than Mapbox.com and Prose.io they also built : TileMill - https://www.mapbox.com/tilemill/ https://www.mapbox.com/tilemill/ - An node-webkit based map designer Id - http://ideditor.com/ http://ideditor.com/ - The OpenStreetMap editing interface (disclaimer: I used to work for them, and left around the time they spun off into mapbox)
rando289 12y ago
The editor is content? Absolutely anything you are editing could be described as content. I edit the contents of my editing buffer.
hablahaha 12y ago
Two Things: 1. The link to view the Github projects sites are wrong, they attach the prose.io domain to the actual domain. 2. It's cool that there is a publish button that shows if it has been published, but then when I clicked on it, it said it would be unpublished. I know I have to save first, but that was kind of bad UX. Also when I click it again to set it back to publish, the record still appears to be dirty, with changes to save. Kind of unsettling since I was just browsing to see the functionality. One more thing: Is there a service (hosted or otherwise) that has this kind of web based editing with a preview of MY website, not just the plain Markdown? I like that non devs could edit it, but we also have our own CSS that could change the way it looks (video embedding, etc.).
mrmondo 12y ago
"This application will be able to read and write all public and private repo data. This includes the following: Code, Issues, Pull requests, Wikis, Settings, Webhooks and services, Deploy keys" ...nope!
camus2 12y ago
Nice,definetly a nice idea.
monokrome 12y ago
I don't understand how anything like this could just assume that I'm going to give it access to my private repos. Do people seriously do this?
artellectual 12y ago
this is really good stuff, its very fast to navigate through different files and edit content. it will work really well with my up coming gem.
Malarkey73 12y ago
This is another of those websites that asks you to sign up without explaining what it does ... except for the "learn more" button which takes you to a page which explains very very little. nice font.
antjanus 12y ago
Why does this show up once a month on Hacker News? Seriously. We've discussed this tool to death. And every time, the same discussions follow: "Hi! I'm a purist. I use VIM to edit my Github textfiles. If you configure VIM correctly, it'll work better than anything in the world!" "Hi! I'm a non-purist and have tried 50 different tools, let me list them out!" I don't ever see any other tool or article reposted as much as Prose.io
- nilliams 12y ago
  I think you're sort of missing the point. It's not about 'editing your github files', and anybody who brings up VIM is definitely missing the point (it's not for you!). As I understand it Prose is about the potential to host totally CMS-free sites (e.g. Jekyll sites) on Github and give your customers a decent editor to alter their content. It's potentially combining the best of the 'push to git to deploy static site' ethos with 'CMS-like editing capabilities so your customers can reasonably edit content'. I think that's why a lot of people are watching this project closely. I personally would be happy to see this reposted once a month so we can see its progress and maybe encourage more competition in this space.
  - antjanus 12y ago
    I'm not here to discuss the tool. It's a good tool. Nothing wrong with it. It's a great tool, worth discussing. It has its uses etc. However, there's nothing visibly new with each repost. If someone posted like a release, or maybe a changelog, or a blog post with some feature updates, sure. But as of right now, I see Prose get reposted monthly, with no visible changes. And THAT'S annoying.
    - eevilspock 12y ago
      Is the same person reposting it? If so, its spam and should be reported. If it's a new person each time, and each time it continues to get up-voted, then you're going to have to just live with it just like we all have to live with articles we don't care for making it to the front page. Obviously HN has consciously made a decision to allow reposts after some cool-off period.
sntran 12y ago
I used Prose before. However, after Heartbleed incident, I removed many OAuth tokens in GitHub, including Prose, and now the site won't load for me at all.
laacz 12y ago
How is it better than github editor?

101 points by avinashv 12y ago

another interesting topic that floats by on hackernews, with no upvotes (except mine) and no comments (except mine). does anybody have any suggestions for a smarter site? -bowerbird

entelarust 12y ago

Use this all the time to update READMEs and documentation Great, clean interface

dominotw 12y ago
Could you tell me how this differs from githubs own markdown editor. I played with this for a bit but I failed to notice anything.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

skybrian 12y ago

It seems nice, but I'd like to know more about where the UI is hosted and whether I can easily host it myself. Is there an architecture diagram somewhere? (Ideally I'd run it on App Engine.)

tmcw 12y ago
The UI is hosted on Github pages: there's no server-side code. The only required server-side component is https://github.com/prose/gatekeeper https://github.com/prose/gatekeeper - an app that makes OAuth possible with CORS.

jorde 12y ago

Could anyone provide screenshots? I hate to be a hater but authorizing an app to access all my private repos is little too much (not sure how GH allows OAuth scoping)

jgeewax 12y ago
Couldn't agree more... Do we really need to grant read and write access to all repos? Sucks if GH's scoping is that coarse.
- malandrew 12y ago
  Unfortunately Amazon is the only cloud provider out there with a robust ACL system. Is there an open industry standard for implementing ACL policies flexibly like the one Amazon has?
  - garblegarble 12y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XACML http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XACML would be one - it can be a little complicated, but if you can get over that it's quite nice and also adds the idea of an Obligation (something that must be performed on a grant/deny - for example, logging/e-mailing)
- Wingman4l7 12y ago
  It definitely isn't that coarse: https://developer.github.com/v3/oauth/#scopes https://developer.github.com/v3/oauth/#scopes
  - VoxPelli 12y ago
    GitHub are also working on enabling users to accept just a subset of the requested scopes, like just access to public repos, which will make using all of the more fine-grained scopes easier: https://developer.github.com/changes/2013-10-04-oauth-changes-coming/ https://developer.github.com/changes/2013-10-04-oauth-change...
- hk__2 12y ago
  No it’s not, you can make an app that have access only to your public info, and/or public repos, etc.
- stanzheng 12y ago

jackmaney 12y ago

While the design looks nice, what does this offer that GitHub's editing functionality[1] does not? [1]: https://help.github.com/articles/editing-files https://help.github.com/articles/editing-files

craigmccaskill 12y ago
Prose is tweaked specifically to offer additional features to sites built with Jekyll. They have a markdown editor, similar to the one github offers, but have a few extra features to deal with Jekyll specific stuff like drafts, image uploading and a distraction free writing mode.
- tsm 12y ago
  I don't know much about Jekyll, but vanilla Github offers a distraction-free editor called "zen mode".
VoxPelli 12y ago
It can be configured to work almost like how you would expect a typical CMS to work – with different content types, additional fields in the forms etc: https://github.com/prose/prose/wiki/Prose-Configuration https://github.com/prose/prose/wiki/Prose-Configuration Which means users don't have to know much about Jekyll to add content to such a site.

pron 12y ago

Prose is made by Development Seed (the company behind the healtcare.gov frontend, IIRC). There are screenshots here: http://developmentseed.org/blog/2012/june/25/prose-a-content-editor-for-github/ http://developmentseed.org/blog/2012/june/25/prose-a-content... Prose is an open source node.js app, and can be self-hosted: https://github.com/prose/prose https://github.com/prose/prose

gregchapple 12y ago
Actually, it's a Backbone.js application. It uses the browserify library to load other modules, which is what the "require('blah')" bits are. this confused me too when I first read it. so essentially you can run this on a static file server like GH pages. As far as I remember in order to get the GitHub authentication piece working you need to use an external app simply for the authentication with GitHub. DevelopmentSeed also wrote an app for this called gatekeeper (I think) which I believe is a node.js application. impressive stuff.
- kjell 12y ago
  Yes: https://github.com/prose/gatekeeper https://github.com/prose/gatekeeper I believe all the gatekeeper does is forward the oauth confirmation callback to prose so the client side app can use it. So, anyone worried about security can run their own gatekeeper and their own prose without having to worry about the NSA (oh, wait…)
- camus2 12y ago
  A trick one can use is to delegate github oauth to Firebase ,since it supports github authorization.
rhythmvs 12y ago
If you’re looking for an open source, self-hosted, webbased plain-text editor, that supports Markdown, reST, and LaTeX, and has Git integration too: just stumbled upon https://notex.ch/ https://notex.ch/ — quite impressive work. Doesn’t look as nice as Prose.io e.a., but even the GUI is well-done.

venantius 12y ago

This seems like a great product, but the fact that they include no product details or information doesn't meet the high bar that should be met for someone to provide OAuth access to GitHub.

woutervdb 12y ago

Too bad the site doesn't work on my phone at all. Xperia T using Dolphin Browser. Gives me all kinds of floating boxes and a useless progress spinner.

AdrianRossouw 12y ago

Prose.io is a completely client side editor that authenticates against github to allow you to directly edit your markdown files in the repo. It has a tiny tiny server-side component that exists only to complete the oauth handshake (for the remote server to have something to call back to), called gate keeper. It's completely open source and self-hostable. They also make a webhook so you can trigger rebuilding on your own server. They built it to be able to replace their need on a traditional CMS when they switched from Drupal to Node.JS many years ago. http://developmentseed.org/blog/2012/07/27/build-cms-free-websites/ http://developmentseed.org/blog/2012/07/27/build-cms-free-we... DevelopmentSeed was the company that eventually spun off into MapBox.com, the open source open data map tile hosted service. They have a long history with the open source community, and are spearheading a lot of the open source mapping stack by employing the lead developers of mapnik, leaflet and much more. Other than Mapbox.com and Prose.io they also built : TileMill - https://www.mapbox.com/tilemill/ https://www.mapbox.com/tilemill/ - An node-webkit based map designer Id - http://ideditor.com/ http://ideditor.com/ - The OpenStreetMap editing interface (disclaimer: I used to work for them, and left around the time they spun off into mapbox)

rando289 12y ago

The editor is content? Absolutely anything you are editing could be described as content. I edit the contents of my editing buffer.

hablahaha 12y ago

Two Things: 1. The link to view the Github projects sites are wrong, they attach the prose.io domain to the actual domain. 2. It's cool that there is a publish button that shows if it has been published, but then when I clicked on it, it said it would be unpublished. I know I have to save first, but that was kind of bad UX. Also when I click it again to set it back to publish, the record still appears to be dirty, with changes to save. Kind of unsettling since I was just browsing to see the functionality. One more thing: Is there a service (hosted or otherwise) that has this kind of web based editing with a preview of MY website, not just the plain Markdown? I like that non devs could edit it, but we also have our own CSS that could change the way it looks (video embedding, etc.).

mrmondo 12y ago

"This application will be able to read and write all public and private repo data. This includes the following: Code, Issues, Pull requests, Wikis, Settings, Webhooks and services, Deploy keys" ...nope!

camus2 12y ago

Nice,definetly a nice idea.

monokrome 12y ago

I don't understand how anything like this could just assume that I'm going to give it access to my private repos. Do people seriously do this?

artellectual 12y ago

this is really good stuff, its very fast to navigate through different files and edit content. it will work really well with my up coming gem.

Malarkey73 12y ago

This is another of those websites that asks you to sign up without explaining what it does ... except for the "learn more" button which takes you to a page which explains very very little. nice font.

antjanus 12y ago

Why does this show up once a month on Hacker News? Seriously. We've discussed this tool to death. And every time, the same discussions follow: "Hi! I'm a purist. I use VIM to edit my Github textfiles. If you configure VIM correctly, it'll work better than anything in the world!" "Hi! I'm a non-purist and have tried 50 different tools, let me list them out!" I don't ever see any other tool or article reposted as much as Prose.io

nilliams 12y ago
I think you're sort of missing the point. It's not about 'editing your github files', and anybody who brings up VIM is definitely missing the point (it's not for you!). As I understand it Prose is about the potential to host totally CMS-free sites (e.g. Jekyll sites) on Github and give your customers a decent editor to alter their content. It's potentially combining the best of the 'push to git to deploy static site' ethos with 'CMS-like editing capabilities so your customers can reasonably edit content'. I think that's why a lot of people are watching this project closely. I personally would be happy to see this reposted once a month so we can see its progress and maybe encourage more competition in this space.
- antjanus 12y ago
  I'm not here to discuss the tool. It's a good tool. Nothing wrong with it. It's a great tool, worth discussing. It has its uses etc. However, there's nothing visibly new with each repost. If someone posted like a release, or maybe a changelog, or a blog post with some feature updates, sure. But as of right now, I see Prose get reposted monthly, with no visible changes. And THAT'S annoying.
  - eevilspock 12y ago
    Is the same person reposting it? If so, its spam and should be reported. If it's a new person each time, and each time it continues to get up-voted, then you're going to have to just live with it just like we all have to live with articles we don't care for making it to the front page. Obviously HN has consciously made a decision to allow reposts after some cool-off period.

sntran 12y ago

I used Prose before. However, after Heartbleed incident, I removed many OAuth tokens in GitHub, including Prose, and now the site won't load for me at all.

laacz 12y ago

How is it better than github editor?