I spent an hour or so with SmartDown today, and wrote this blog entry:
http://jaslarue.blogspot.com/2014/11/smartdown-markdown-editor-for-windows.html

I like it a lot. But like many of us here, I'm always looking for the multi-platform tool, always ready-to-hand, with just the right mix of features.

For me, I realize, the feature list is small.

- Minimal interface elements. Elegance.
- Full editing set. It should do what I expect it to do, with the commands I'm used to.
- Word count. I'm a writer. Gotta have it. It's how my editors pitch it, and how I know if I delivered.
- Spell check. Duh.
- Outlining. I really hadn't thought about this as "folding" - although Dr. Andus has brought it up in the past, with his noticing of that feature. It's not quite the same thing as outlining software. Once you collapse "folded" text, there are no commands for moving it up or down outside copy and paste. It's possible, I see, to move a heading, only to realize that you've stranded the subordinate text somewhere else. But it's still way better than most plain text tools.
- Markdown. I'm not quite up to speed with all this yet. But it's a nice, plain text alternative to formatting. Most of what I need is readily available.
- Export. At the end, I have to be able to send my work to software other people can deal with. RTF and PDF and HTML usually work. And SmartDown does that.

So bottom line: pretty darn good. If the job is cranking out text - article length certainly, maybe even book length - this is software that writers will love. It lacks a few things and I don't know how much it will cost. But I like it, and the authors seem to be looking at an iOS version, too. Dunno about Linux.

At any rate, as always, you folks have delivered new and cool links. Thanks.


A few final thoughts:

- I like SmartDown's ability to quickly switch between edit and view.
-

Sorry, ignore that last few lines of the previous post. I don't seem to be able to go back and clean it up.

I copy this from the Gingko thread http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/5502/0/gingko-developers-part-ways-development-to-continue to keep my question in context:

Posted by MadaboutDana / Nov 15, 2014 at 08:53 PM: Yes, SmartDown does look interesting, and the French developer has just confirmed to me that they’re going to release a Mac version, too, albeit after the Windows version.


Any word on a Linux version? Or possibility to run SmartDown under Wine / Crossover (also available for Mac) ?

SmartDown update: since I see that my trial version is about to expire (on Dec. 10), I went to the site to see what the price is.it looks like it will be $24.99, with an introductory price of $19,99. I'm sure it's worth it. After having spent some time looking at other "zenware" type writing tools (particularly SmartMonkey), I think SmartDown is quite good. But I also think that I probably wouldn't use it. I use outliners (Notecase Pro, mostly) for complicated things, or LibreOffice for standard documents, and a variety of other apps on other platforms (Workflowy, SimpleNote). My usual discovery is that I don't actually need more tools. I need to spend more time using them. That's CRIMPING in a nutshell, I guess.

jaslar wrote:

SmartDown update: since I see that my trial version is about to expire
(on Dec. 10), I went to the site to see what the price is.it looks like
it will be $24.99, with an introductory price of $19,99. I'm sure it's
worth it.

I see his planning some new features as well:

- More export formats (latex, ODT, OPML, …) will come in a near future.
- We will add also more settings directly accessible from the preferences window.
- Goals management and meta-data (author, …) are also features requested by a lot of people and we agree that SmartDown should support them.

http://www.aflava.com/smartdown-1-0-is-available-discover-a-nice-place-to-write/

Apparently SmartDown also has its own text expansion:

http://www.aflava.com/write-faster-with-smartdown-snippets/

I don't think I'd be using that as I already have a text expander.

To me the main attraction of SmartDown for now is:
- the colourising of the Markdown code, which makes it easier to see;
- support for colourised Critic Markup (might be the only one on Windows?) for editing a manuscript written in plain text or markdown;
- text folding;
- focus mode.

These features just all make it easier to work with long text (c. 10k words in my case, typically) in plain text format.

It looks like the forthcoming SmartDown 2 is going to have Markdown support for footnotes:

http://www.aflava.com/markdown-footnotes-support/

It's also possible to sign up for a private beta now:

http://www.aflava.com/join-us/

I should also add that the developer is very receptive. I have just made a couple of suggestions on his blog and he has implemented them within a matter of minutes (check out the screenshots):

http://www.aflava.com/the-future-of-smartdown/#comment-2437462701

Anyone know for sure if the Smartdown for Windows discussed in this thread is related to the Smartdown available for Mac? They seem to have some similar features, but the companies appear to be different.

Steve Z.

Stephen,

I do not KNOW for sure. But both companies are from Lyons, France. Would be quite a coincidence if 2 companies from the same town in France developed an app under the same name and with (almost) the same feature set.

Best wishes
Franz

Hi, Franz,

Thank you for giving me an answer. I decided to take the bull by the horns and sent an e-mail to the developer of the Mac version and got a response that, indeed, he also does the Windows version. Sort of odd that he'd keep the companies separate like that. It would seem there would be some synergy in housing them under one company. Oh, well.

Thanks, again.

Steve Z.

Franz Grieser wrote:

Stephen,

I do not KNOW for sure. But both companies are from Lyons, France. Would
be quite a coincidence if 2 companies from the same town in France
developed an app under the same name and with (almost) the same feature
set.

Best wishes
Franz

He's a very nice bloke and responds very readily to queries, suggestions etc. I've got both versions of SmartDown, and I think it's very promising.

As for the two companies thing (Aflava, Neomobili), I think it's just one of those positioning gambits that people sometimes take to address different markets. But the real, rapidly growing market nowadays is cross-platform compatibility, not individual operating systems.

I've never had the need for tables in Markdown (or, rather, never occurred to me to try to use Markdown for that), but that might change now that I've seen how SmartDown II is going to handle them.

Check out the video, it's pretty cool (for a text editor):

http://www.aflava.com/markdown-tables-support-in-smartdown-ii/

I wonder though how a Markdown table exports to RTF or .docx format for instance? Anyone had experience with that?

SmartDown 2's private beta is now available:

http://www.aflava.com/first-private-beta-version-of-smartdown-2/

There is also a forum where feedback is beginning to come in:

http://www.aflava.com/forum/

SmartDown 2 Beta has got a dark theme now:

http://www.aflava.com/smartdown-0-9-0-is-now-available/

I spent an hour or so with the beta version, and SmartDown II is quite different from the first. The screenshots Dr. Andus links to tell the tale. Although I haven't used either, the Snippets look a lot like Scrivener and Ulysses - except that SDII doesn't allow you (at least, I haven't figured it out yet) to reorder them. But the editor itself is better and more customizable in appearance. Worth a look.