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Yet another Markdown editor...
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Posted by MadaboutDana
Nov 21, 2014 at 07:16 PM
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? ;-)
Posted by Paul Korm
Nov 21, 2014 at 09:24 PM
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?
Posted by MadaboutDana
Nov 22, 2014 at 09:37 AM
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.
Posted by Hugh
Nov 22, 2014 at 09:48 AM
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.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Nov 22, 2014 at 11:37 AM
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