MadAboutDana wrote (in the Ulyssses thread):

"Going back to the perfect Markdown editor, in no particular order:
- support for access to different folders, and ideally different synchronisation systems (Ulysses, LightPaper, TextNut; Quiver to some extent)
- shortcuts to favourite folders/groups of folders (Ulysses, LightPaper, TextNut, Quiver)
- sidebar with good navigation options (see above) (Ulysses, LightPaper, TextNut, Quiver, Scrivener)
- tagging, ideally with support for multiple tags per note (Ulysses, Letterspace, TextNut, Quiver)
- a really good Markdown editor, ideally supporting hybrid Markdown (i.e. indicating what codes are doing even in “edit” view) plus editable HTML preview (Ulysses, Letterspace, Quiver)
- support for the widest possible variety of Markdown variants (including e.g. GitHub-style tasks, Multimarkdown tables etc. etc.) (probably only TextNut, so far)
- support for grouping of notes (Keep Everything, Ulysses, Scrivener)
- folding! (Quiver - kind of, FoldingText; a good Markdown outliner is sorely needed. I can only think of one so far: CottonNotes on iOS, and that seems to have died)
- a toggle allowing you to default to “view” rather than “edit” mode when reading notes (rather than editing them). I don’t understand why more Markdown editors don’t have this, in fact, since Markdown per se is actually rather ugly, despite its convenience. Keep Everything is a good example of an editor that defaults to preview mode - you have to switch to edit mode to change something (I prefer this in any case, it’s just good discipline in my view)
- a good range of export options, including exporting of multiple notes or folders, into at the very least HTML, PDF, OPML
- cross-platform versions that all have more or less the same features (Letterspace, eventually also Ulysses, maybe also Scrivener, hopefully also Quiver)"

I would have laid that out as:

- consistent editing commands within the editor
- ability to work, in tabs, with more than one file
- robust search and replace within a file
- ability to search across files in a folder
- folding and navigation by structure
- spellcheck, word count
- definitely multiplatform
- definitely multiple export
- GitHub markdown, yes
- adherence to zenware guidelines: minimalist, quick, spare
- tags
- toggle between editor, view, side by side

I notice that many of these things do seem to fit into programming editors. I seem to be looking for a combination of WriteMonkey and and Worfklowy.

Others?

jaslar wrote:

I notice that many of these things do seem to fit into programming
editors.

I'm not convinced that there needs to be one perfect markdown editor, as people might want to use them for rather different purposes, which then necessitates different fuctionalities. For instance, many of the early markdown editors focused on the needs of people who write for blogs, and therefore the preview pane was important for them, and in some cases it was not even possible to hide the preview pane.

I use markdown mostly for pinning down some formatting decisions in long texts (headings, italics, bold, and block quotes), and so for me distraction-free writing is more important (and a permanent preview pane, changing as you type, is distracting). I have no need for inserting hyperlinks or images. Hence WriteMonkey is perfect for my purposes.

My other use is editing of long texts, where CriticMarkup is needed, and SmartDown seems to be the only one that can handle that (on Win at least).

So I'm suggesting that there might be a case for several types of Markdown editors: some for writing and editing blog posts, others for more heavy-duty programmer-type editing for web pages (such as text editors), and others for distraction-free writing and subsequent CriticMarkup editing.

What I'm saying is that I wouldn't like WriteMonkey and SmartDown to end up looking like programmer's text editors or your typical baked-in dual plane editors for blog writing, as they would undermine the writing experience in which the former excel.

Okay, while I wouldn't say it yet meets all jaslar's criteria for the perfect Markdown editor, it's made some substantial progress on its way there:

Textnut is back! And version 2.0 is awesome, because it supports import/export of external files (previously it was entirely isolated).

It's got by far the most sophisticated Markdown editor of any, in that it generates rich text as you're typing in your code (you can switch to a separate Markdown mode if you want to change something). So what you see in front of you is rich text rather than awkward Markdown. And it does it very fast and seamlessly, without stuttering or stumbling.

I believe it would make a great companion app for the very good but currently OS X-less 1Writer on iOS. I shall be trying that out!

The only thing it's really missing at the moment (okay, jaslar, apart from tabs) is a global search function. But Dapeng is a nice, responsive developer and you can contact him via the Textnut website at http://www.textnutwriter.com/ (there's a feedback form there).

Sorry! Forgot to say that currently, Textnut is Mac-only. Doh!

Bill, thanks for the notice about TextNut. I've already grabbed the trial.

@jaslar -- I would add support for tables (probably based on the "standard" multimarkdown table syntax). Granted, the syntax is clunky, but anything is better than nothing.

Worth mentioning that Dapeng (the developer) is working on an iPad version, too. And has Big Plans!

He's also the man behind the rather appealing GeniusWiki (one of the better examples of the wiki concept).

Thank you all for your (as usual) thoughtful comments. A few questions and comments:

- Dr. Andus. Yes, an all-in-one not only isn't likely, it probably isn't desirable. So many tools fall apart when they add one function too many. Writemonkey and SmartDown are, well, smart, to focus on what just what the authors (and users) think matter.

- MadAboutDana. Textnut (gotta love the name) doesn't do code folding, right? To tie this into my comments to Dr. Andus, I get that an app can't (or shouldn't) be all things to all people. But the point of this thread is to try to whittle things down to an essential list of functions. Code folding, for me, belongs in that short list. If an app does Markdown, but doesn't do outlining or code folding, it fails my core checklist of a *perfect* markdown editor.

- Paul Korn. Tables are (for me) right on the edge. Yes, I use them. Is it part of the core feature set, for me? Aargh. I'm sure this is the kind of thing that drives software developers crazy.

jaslar wrote:

Tables are (for me) right on the edge. Yes, I use them. Is
it part of the core feature set, for me? Aargh. I'm sure this is the
kind of thing that drives software developers crazy.

Actually, the work is already done. Fletcher Penny's MultiMarkdown code already includes tables, as do several other markdown flavors. The coding is not complex. It is open sourced on GitHub. There a numerous other open source markdown engines on Git and elsewhere. Any 101 developer can figure this out.

Hm, not sure. I know it does do code (you can set up your own templates for e.g. Python), and Dapeng is very responsive, so he might/might not regard code folding as trivially easy to implement. Certainly worth asking him – he will almost certainly reply and let you know how imminent such a feature is.

- MadAboutDana. Textnut (gotta love the name) doesn't do code folding,
right? To tie this into my comments to Dr. Andus, I get that an app
can't (or shouldn't) be all things to all people. But the point of this
thread is to try to whittle things down to an essential list of
functions. Code folding, for me, belongs in that short list. If an app
does Markdown, but doesn't do outlining or code folding, it fails my
core checklist of a *perfect* markdown editor.

Yes, of course. If the function is there, I wouldn't want to remove it. Pick a style of markdown (like Github) and you get the goodies that come with it, like Tasks. Good point. Although I admit I haven't messed with tabs in markdown yet.