And a very nice one. In fact, it's suddenly become my number one favourite on the Mac!

It's called LightPaper, and it's currently free. It's extremely flexible: it has a navigation pane that shows a selected set of folders (if you want it; easy to toggle on/off); it has syntax highlighting, but also real-time preview (if you want it; again, easy to toggle on/off). It has tabs for multiple documents, but can also open multiple windows (all tabbed).

It's very fast, too. If it supported GitHub syntax, I'd be in love! As it is, I'm still looking for a simple, fast Markdown editor for Mac that can support the task list I've created in 1Writer on iOS (using the classic GitHub - [ ] to indicate tasks). The only MacOS editor I've found that supports this is Erato. A number of online editors are compatible (e.g. Draft).

LightPaper also supports MultiMarkdown, Math Rendering and can export as HTML and PDF. You can find it here: http://www.ashokgelal.com/lightpaper-for-mac/

And did I mention it's free? ;-)

2014 is the year of Markdown -- so many riches. These editors begin to blur together -- LightPaper looks similar to Markdown Pro, for example. I'm looking for a blogger who is tracking all the Multi/Markdown flavors and add-ons in a unified feature list. Has anyone seen a blogger doing that analysis?

> I’m still looking for a simple, fast Markdown editor for Mac that can support the task list I’ve created in 1Writer on iOS (using the classic GitHub - [ ] to indicate tasks).

What does "support" mean, here? Something like FoldingText -- does that work with 1Writer documents?

Alas not, FoldingText uses internal cunning to interpret a bullet-point list appearing after a special .todo extension as a list of tasks.

By "support" I really mean, is compatible with the GitHub flavour of (Multi)Markdown. FoldingText is not.

Paul Korm wrote:

2014 is the year of Markdown -- so many riches. These editors begin to
blur together...

Indeed yes. (A sign of the times is the "conversion" of the author David Hewson to Markdown. A year ago he said he didn't "get" it; now he's written a book about writing a novel in Ulysses III.)

Many of these editors are going to fall by the wayside; one searches, sometimes vainly, for differentiators.

I think what I like most about LightPaper is its flexibility: it's got more or less ALL the features of other editors, but you can choose which ones to toggle on/off.

For example, I like the inline styling thing, but don't usually like real-time HTML preview (often distracting). Others I know love real-time preview. And I sometimes find it useful if I'm using functions I'm not so familiar with (e.g. tables). In LightPaper, inline styling is always there, and you can toggle preview on/off. Now that's a differentiator right there.

Then there's the navigation bar. You won't find a more comprehensive navigation bar than Ulysses III's, but LightPaper's is up there with the best. Not least because you can open multiple windows, each with its own navigation bar pointing to a different set of folders.

Finally, there's the tab thing. Again, it's nice to have the choice between looking at documents in separate windows, or in separate tabs.

Separately, they're all small things, but together, they do make LightPaper stand out. There's one more thing, actually, and that's LightPaper's speed. It's a very smooth editor, more so than others I've used (and I've got quite a collection!). The combination makes it my favourite by far. GitHub-flavoured Markdown would be the icing on the cake...

Let's face it, Markdown on its own is very simple. Differentiation based purely on what Markdown can do is a losing battle. It's the clever little extras that make the difference.

Cheers,
Bill

Yet another Markdown editor, this time for Windows. It looks like this editor is focusing on writing web pages and blog posts. Seems to be early stage. (The web page is in Italian.)

BadWrite
http://www.steo.it/badwrite/

Dr Andus wrote:

Yet another Markdown editor, this time for Windows. It looks like this
editor is focusing on writing web pages and blog posts. Seems to be
early stage. (The web page is in Italian.)

BadWrite
http://www.steo.it/badwrite/

That may well be a good piece of software, and I'm sure the name is sensible in Italian - but for sales to non-Italian speakers...?

Or non-Italian speakers not well-versed in 21st-century American slang?

Hugh wrote:

That may well be a good piece of software, and I'm sure the name is
sensible in Italian - but for sales to non-Italian speakers...?

I don't think it's a commercial venture - looks like made it for him/herself and just sharing it. But it's more memorable (to me at least) than a generic name like "Markdown edit" http://markdownedit.com/

Not sure when this one arrived :

"Dillinger is a cloud-enabled, mobile-ready, offline-storage, AngularJS powered HTML5 Markdown editor."

http://dillinger.io

Installable on Linux, OS X, (Windows?)

Here is yet another one. Looks like it's from France. Haven't had a chance to try it yet but looks interesting:

Abricotine - open-source markdown editor (Windows 7+ and Linux in beta release)

http://abricotine.brrd.fr/

Indeed. And some unexpected news about OmniOutliner, which is about to become a "new" Markdown editor. From DaringFireball.net:

Up next, some cool news for OmniOutliner:

For OmniOutliner, I’m very pleased to share that we have
some major writing improvements on the way! On both Mac
and iOS, we plan to support distraction-free full-screen editing,
the ability to see your current word count, and support for
directly editing Markdown documents.

Dr Andus wrote:

Abricotine - open-source markdown editor (Windows 7+ and Linux in beta
release)
http://abricotine.brrd.fr/

Hm, I don't seem to be able to download the installer. I tried downloading Abricotine-win32-x64.zip for Abricotine 0.2.2, but it gets stuck at about 51.7 MB of 73.4 MB.

I was going to try it on a Win7 Pro, 64-bit system. Anyone had better luck?

P.S. It's kind of a big file for what it is, compared to 824KB of SmartDown 1.0 zip...

P.S. It's kind of a big file for what it is, compared to 824KB of
SmartDown 1.0 zip...

That's because it's basically a web app but includes a full Chrome installation as a workaround to make it a desktop app.

shatteredmindofbob wrote:

>P.S. It's kind of a big file for what it is, compared to 824KB of
>SmartDown 1.0 zip...
That's because it's basically a web app but includes a full Chrome
installation as a workaround to make it a desktop app.

I see... Have you managed to download it and try it? I don't have any more time this weekend to play with it, but I could try the 32-bit version next.

I have downloaded it. It's okay.

The mixture of markup and live preview, as opposed to having the preview in separate pane is kinda neat. It has decent support for tables. It also loads pretty quickly.

It's missing a few things, though. No word count, no footnotes and it doesn't render sextet headings properly.

Might be alright for dashing off a quick blog post, but I can't see using it for any serious project, or really, any writing task I'd even refer to as a "project."

shatteredmindofbob wrote:

It's missing a few things, though. No word count, no footnotes and it
doesn't render sextet headings properly.

Might be alright for dashing off a quick blog post, but I can't see
using it for any serious project, or really, any writing task I'd even
refer to as a "project."

Managed to download it in the end. The headings worked fine here.

I could live without word count (have an AutoHotkey script for that) and I don't use footnotes, and I'm even fine without "project" features (I don't use WriteMonkey or SmartDown for managing an entire project either, I just use them for writing chapter-sized texts).

But I still couldn't find a compelling reason to use Abricotine instead of WriteMonkey or SmartDown. The main issue for me is the white background and the lack of ease to customise the look. I found a .CSS file in its directory but I don't want to have to fiddle with individual bits of code to customise the style.

This is one big reason I prefer WriteMonkey even over SmartDown: it's just so easy to change the styling of the workspace with just a few clicks, or even set up multiple themes and profiles and switch between them easily.

One advantage of Abricotine over SmartDown is that it has an optional Table of Contents view. But it lacks folding, which SmartDown does have.

In any case, it's nice to have Abricotine around as another Markdown editor. While it seems to focus more on writing for the web, I could see it becoming a nice distraction-free writing tool if some of the aforementioned issues were addressed.

Hello, I don't think I may be able to reply, not or maybe just not timely... But I would just like to comment about LightPaper. I remember when LightPaper was for Android... Text Editor, the link now points to the Mac version. They have have one other app which I don't remember by name that has a sort of mandala chart for viewing your file system and it's allocattions. It worked on Windows, too, back then. This was a few years ago. Anyway, I just would like to say it is, when I tried it, Lightpaper, a very nice app, there was a free version and I think there was a paid version, I can't remember though, this was sometime back. Just want to to fill you in about the Android app of LightPaper that existed back then, though...

I'm just commenting, but don't think I may be able to carry on a conversation, anyway, thanks all for being so nice in the forum, here, and letting me share what I wanted to share with you all...

...jperlman

Dr Andus wrote:

This is one big reason I prefer WriteMonkey even over SmartDown: it's
just so easy to change the styling of the workspace with just a few
clicks, or even set up multiple themes and profiles and switch between
them easily.

Having said that, it looks like SmartDown 2.0 is going to make it a lot easier to customise its appearance:

http://www.aflava.com/smartdown-configuration-options/

All this talk of LightPaper has reignited my interest - I confess I've been using Ulysses and LetterSpace (much) more frequently in the recent past.

Well! Imagine my surprise, upon visiting the website (http://lightpaper.42squares.in to discover that LightPaper is maturing into a truly sensational app.

The latest version (1.2) includes:
- a full folder navigator, where you can put your favourite folders, star favourites and so on
- scratch notes from a mini-notepad in the menu bar (scratch notes also appear in the navigator)
- "shadow" notes, allowing you to make notes for specific apps, website and certain documents - notes that are automatically associated with those apps/websites/documents
- quick open feature (like the one in Ulysses and LetterSpace)
- open API for JavaScript and AppleScript
- a powerful Preview feature that will also allow you to preview blog/website posts as they will appear. Dunno how that one works, but I'm looking forward to trying it out
- multiple flavours of Markdown, including MultiMarkdown and GitHub-Flavoured Markdown (GFM); also math rendering (using external JS plugins)
- for real techies, support for Mermaid and Jekyll
- tabs
- custom styles, with online library of user-contributed ones (like Ulysses)
- distraction-free mode for the serious writers among us
- sense of humour (one of the reviews quoted on the website: "...really? Another Markdown editor?" - Anonymous Coward on Reddit). Well, I thought it was funny!

plus a free trial and a very reasonable price. Wow! I've fallen in love again!

But, no folding. Shame. I suppose if I were very enterprising, I'd write my own folding code (or nick somebody else's JavaScript). But that way lies madness...

Cheers!
Bill

yet another (Win and Linux)...

Ghostwriter

http://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter/

And another one: Typora http://www.typora.io/

It's quite nice, but unfortunately, there's a major issue with input lag on my computer.

Here is another browser-based online/offline Markdown editor: Classeur, from Ireland, I believe.

This might be the most sophisticated one I've seen so far (or at least up there with Calmly Writer):

https://app.classeur.io/

I happened to run across this searching for Calmly Writer in the archives. Classeur, which does look pretty good, is shutting down on May 31, 2018.