4 ms·

I admit to being confused by the multitude of Markdown GUI apps. In my experience, the greatest feature of Markdown is that I can write in the text editor of my

by akerl_ 12y ago

I admit to being confused by the multitude of Markdown GUI apps. In my experience, the greatest feature of Markdown is that I can write in the text editor of my choosing and not need a special app / live preview / fancy tools because writing and formatting Markdown is smooth and natural. Am I missing some great feature that having a dedicated app provides?

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- billforsternz 12y ago
  A good way to remember that it's '[]()' and not the other way around is that starting with parenthesis would be a poor idea because parenthesis occurs in normal text all the time (because people do things like this).
tr4656 12y ago
Sometimes it's useful to have a preview so you can make sure formatting is all correct and you didn't make a mistake somewhere when writing it. I just think of it of a way to make sure everything is done correctly.
ivanstojic 12y ago
It seems like the author of MacDown might also have some sort of a philosophical axe to grind with the author of Mou (http://mouapp.com http://mouapp.com), another popular (albeit non open source / future non-free) Markdown editor. Mou implies that it will become non-free once it leaves the beta, but it's been in beta for years now. The source of the issue seems to be a tweet by Mou's author in which he says that when people say "inspired by X" they actually mean "idea stolen from X." (https://twitter.com/remaerd/status/484914820408279040 https://twitter.com/remaerd/status/484914820408279040).
- diggan 12y ago
  That doesn't seem to be a source of the issue though. Navigating on to the homepage of the application, the author (of MacDown) writes more about the reason there. Apparently, the author of Mou, wants to stop developing Mou and sell the project and the author of MacDown didn't have the cash and decided to write an open source clone of it instead. " Why Another Markdown Editor? I like Mou. I write Markdown all the time, and since I use OS X on a daily basis, Mou is my go-to editor whenever I wish to generate something with markup. But I had always wanted something more. It came as a great shock when Chen Luo announced that he felt he could not actively continue the development, and wished to sell the ownership of Mou. No suitable offers surfaced (I honestly do not think there will be, either), and I decided that instead of waiting for others to do something about this, I should act myself. I don’t have nearly enough money to match Chen Luo’s purposed offer, but I do have my own pocket of tricks and some free time. So I started from scratch, spent some weekends hacking together my own solution. And this is the result. " http://macdown.uranusjr.com/ http://macdown.uranusjr.com/
- masukomi 12y ago
  the Mou developer has declared that he no longer intends to work on it and attempted to sell it on a Chinese Ebay clone. I'm not sure if he was successful or not. That being said, the plan was ALWAYS for it to be non-free when it left beta. It just never left beta. Now, it's either going to wither and die OR the new owner (if there is one) is going to want to recoup their money.
Kronopath 12y ago
I use Macdown when writing things for my Jekyll[0]-powered website. I've installed the CSS of my website as a MacDown theme, and so I can see what the text would look like when published to the site, in real-time while editing. In addition I personally have found that while raw Markdown is great for writing, when it comes down to rereading what I wrote and editing it, I prefer a properly typeset version of the text, so I don't have my reading * flow* _broken up_ by [unnecessary characters](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax) and `so on`. And having a live preview lets me reread as soon as I make the change. It's a minor difference, but I like it. To each his own. [0] http://jekyllrb.com/ http://jekyllrb.com/
- sondr3 12y ago
  I personally use http://marked2app.com/ http://marked2app.com/ for any kind of live preview of websites, or just use the built-in --watch function of Jekyll to automatically generate the site whenever I save a change.
mundizzle 12y ago
agree. i prefer to write anything (code, markdown, etc) in my own text editor - sublime for live preview, i used Marked.app which also supports GitHub flavored markdown
cs02rm0 12y ago
You can have your cake and eat it; break out vi on a remote server and edit away, or get a live preview in as GUI app. Neither is a bad experience, but having a live preview is legitimately a (minor) improvement.
robertwalsh0 12y ago
I've found that these types of apps are a really good way to teach Markdown to non-programmer types at tech companies, ie: marketing, sales, etc. Especially when they want to write things in MSWord that you have to end up getting into your application.

by akerl_ 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

billforsternz 12y ago
A good way to remember that it's '[]()' and not the other way around is that starting with parenthesis would be a poor idea because parenthesis occurs in normal text all the time (because people do things like this).

tr4656 12y ago

Sometimes it's useful to have a preview so you can make sure formatting is all correct and you didn't make a mistake somewhere when writing it. I just think of it of a way to make sure everything is done correctly.

ivanstojic 12y ago

It seems like the author of MacDown might also have some sort of a philosophical axe to grind with the author of Mou (http://mouapp.com http://mouapp.com), another popular (albeit non open source / future non-free) Markdown editor. Mou implies that it will become non-free once it leaves the beta, but it's been in beta for years now. The source of the issue seems to be a tweet by Mou's author in which he says that when people say "inspired by X" they actually mean "idea stolen from X." (https://twitter.com/remaerd/status/484914820408279040 https://twitter.com/remaerd/status/484914820408279040).

diggan 12y ago
That doesn't seem to be a source of the issue though. Navigating on to the homepage of the application, the author (of MacDown) writes more about the reason there. Apparently, the author of Mou, wants to stop developing Mou and sell the project and the author of MacDown didn't have the cash and decided to write an open source clone of it instead. " Why Another Markdown Editor? I like Mou. I write Markdown all the time, and since I use OS X on a daily basis, Mou is my go-to editor whenever I wish to generate something with markup. But I had always wanted something more. It came as a great shock when Chen Luo announced that he felt he could not actively continue the development, and wished to sell the ownership of Mou. No suitable offers surfaced (I honestly do not think there will be, either), and I decided that instead of waiting for others to do something about this, I should act myself. I don’t have nearly enough money to match Chen Luo’s purposed offer, but I do have my own pocket of tricks and some free time. So I started from scratch, spent some weekends hacking together my own solution. And this is the result. " http://macdown.uranusjr.com/ http://macdown.uranusjr.com/
masukomi 12y ago
the Mou developer has declared that he no longer intends to work on it and attempted to sell it on a Chinese Ebay clone. I'm not sure if he was successful or not. That being said, the plan was ALWAYS for it to be non-free when it left beta. It just never left beta. Now, it's either going to wither and die OR the new owner (if there is one) is going to want to recoup their money.

Kronopath 12y ago

I use Macdown when writing things for my Jekyll[0]-powered website. I've installed the CSS of my website as a MacDown theme, and so I can see what the text would look like when published to the site, in real-time while editing. In addition I personally have found that while raw Markdown is great for writing, when it comes down to rereading what I wrote and editing it, I prefer a properly typeset version of the text, so I don't have my reading * flow* _broken up_ by [unnecessary characters](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax) and `so on`. And having a live preview lets me reread as soon as I make the change. It's a minor difference, but I like it. To each his own. [0] http://jekyllrb.com/ http://jekyllrb.com/

sondr3 12y ago
I personally use http://marked2app.com/ http://marked2app.com/ for any kind of live preview of websites, or just use the built-in --watch function of Jekyll to automatically generate the site whenever I save a change.

mundizzle 12y ago

agree. i prefer to write anything (code, markdown, etc) in my own text editor - sublime for live preview, i used Marked.app which also supports GitHub flavored markdown

cs02rm0 12y ago

You can have your cake and eat it; break out vi on a remote server and edit away, or get a live preview in as GUI app. Neither is a bad experience, but having a live preview is legitimately a (minor) improvement.

robertwalsh0 12y ago

I've found that these types of apps are a really good way to teach Markdown to non-programmer types at tech companies, ie: marketing, sales, etc. Especially when they want to write things in MSWord that you have to end up getting into your application.