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Looking for a markdown editor that shows either the markdown text, or the (configurable) rendered version. (lemmy.radio)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by vk6flab@lemmy.radio to c/linux@lemmy.world
27 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I use gedit for most of my text editing, but markdown support is very limited.

Things I've tried:

  • vscode, too heavy and intrusive
  • Google docs, only renders, doesn't show the plain text, need to manually export to see markdown
  • Eclipse, haven't actually tried markdown, but I have no doubt that it's supported, but heavier than anything else
  • atom, no longer developed last time I checked
  • online editor, don't want to share my text and functionality is poor
  • type markdown, save it and render with pandoc, lots of effort, but the results are good

Over to you.

Edit: Had some issues with my Lemmy client, moved to Voyager and hopefully I can fix things.

I was asked what functionality I require, which to be fair, I hadn't considered because I use my editor for pretty much everything.

Ideally I'd be able to use it to either see the raw markdown or the rendered version of whatever I'm writing, code in a dozen languages, articles, websites, legal documents, books, all of which I do pretty regularly.

The side-by-side view doesn't do it for me, I'd more likely than not have multiple windows open with different documents instead.

It should do autocomplete, syntax highlighting, bracket closing, live spell checking in a variety of languages, launch quickly, be rock solid when faced with a massive log file and allow me to add menu-items to run bash scripts that do things like calculate the time it would take me to read out the text at my normal podcast reading voice or covert weird characters into html-entities.

There have been many wonderful suggestions, most of them do the preview side-by-side which pretty much eliminates them as a candidate.

There are many suggestions to use a vscode floss version, but the biggest issue with vscode is its weight and I'm not sure if it changes by moving to the floss version. I note that my search for that tool brought me many AI features, which is why I did a hard pass and why I can't remember its name ATM. (Edit: Codium)

I've been using Debian since 1999 and still struggle with remembering the vi control codes, so emacs is unlikely to get in the door.

So, with that in mind, whadayagot?

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[-] dbkblk@lemmy.world 14 points 5 months ago

Obsidian, it's not open-source, but it's not locking you down, and it's exceptionnally well written.

[-] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 5 months ago

There are a few good ones I can recommend, depending on what experience are you looking for (programmer, writer, simple note-taking).

Apostrophe would be the first, better for freestyle writing IMO; and then in no particular order I'd recommend Formiko which seems to work wonders for technical / programming-related writing, Remarkable and Ghostwriter for that no items, text only, final desktop kind of experience. Most or all of these should be findable in software stores like Flatpak, too.

[-] highball@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago

Too bad you are not a fan of vim. Helix is a good alternative. But, Helix and frogmouth in tmux is a good combo. Maybe nano instead of helix or vim?. https://github.com/Textualize/frogmouth

[-] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 2 points 5 months ago

I want to be friends with vi, but I cannot get my head around it, between the regex for sed, grep, awk, vi and even languages like bash, python, PHP, and Perl something has gotta give.

[-] highball@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

I hear you. the vi family, even helix (which is an IDE where the vi-like editors are not) takes quite of bit of use for things to just be natural. If I knew a terminal editor like nano but as powerful as VSCode that would be a great option for you. I'm sure it's out there, I just don't know what it is. But frogmouth is what you want to review the rendered markdown. tmux with helix and frogmouth is such a simple combo. I'm sure there is a hx/vi-like/vscode alternative out there. I mean, it's the internet, guaranteed somebody else wanted that too.

Another tip though, since I think most people have never heard of it. Xonsh instead of bash shell. It's a shell done in python. Then you can drop bash, php, and perl. Just stick with python. xonsh also has a wrapper for running bash scripts too, so you don't have to redo old work. It's worth a look to see if xonsh can simplify some things for you.

[-] Bravebellows@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 5 months ago

Take a look at Obsidian over at obsidian.md

[-] CrayonRosary@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Since you mentioned VSCode. I wanted to bring up VSCodium. It's a fork of VSCode with no telemetry. Yes, it's a full fledged IDE, and probably too much if you just want to markdown editor, but I use it for much more than that, and I think it's great.

[-] babybus@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Yes, it’s a full fledged IDE, and probably too much if you just want to markdown editor, but I use it for much more than that, and I think it’s great.

It is a full fledged IDE if you install a lot of extensions. Without them, it is rather lightweight. I'm unsure what OP finds heavy about it.

[-] CrayonRosary@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

Me too, honestly.

[-] dangling_cat 3 points 5 months ago

There is also Zed Rust based code editor that ofc supports markdown

[-] 7uWqKj@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

QOwnNotes does both at the same time in a nice way.

[-] 97xBang@feddit.online 2 points 5 months ago

I like Apostrophe

https://world.pages.gitlab.gnome.org/apostrophe/

[-] thevoidzero@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

You said you can type in markdown, convert it to PDF with pandoc and you like the results.

Now all you need is an editor that can open two file side by side (anything works here, I use emacs), and needs to auto reload PDF on file change. And a tool that can run your configured command each time markdown file changes (I have my own program for this, but it's a simple bash script as well if you want to write).

Now with those two all you do is write in markdown and every time you save it the command will run, get the pdf and it'll reload the pdf. Even if you don't have the same program to open text and PDF you can just use two with split screen.

[-] bitjunkie@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

I really like Typora on macOS but haven't tried the Linux version.

[-] mortalic@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

Codium with a markdown plugin gives both edit and preview with syntax highlighting. Add in Genie extension with a chatgpt api key and you can really do some cool stuff

[-] jamesbunagna@discuss.online 2 points 5 months ago

My all-time personal favorite is probably MarkText. I'm actually surprised no one else has mentioned it; knowing it has garnered almost 50k stars on GitHub.

I really like it for its realtime preview and support for mathematical expressions. Though, it's wonderfully feature-rich; so please check out its README for the full list.

Unfortunately, it (currently) doesn't enjoy as much development as it previouslu did. Which has ultimately led me to pivot to ghostwriter more recently.

[-] mhzawadi@lemmy.horwood.cloud 2 points 5 months ago

I use pulsar edit, the successor to atom. Also on the terminal, have a look at glow.

[-] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 1 points 5 months ago

Had a quick look for glow but couldn't find it. I didn't know about pulsar. Is it more stable than atom, which managed to fall over when ever I looked at it sideways, a bit like the ZX80 keyboard which would cause a reboot if you dared to think about touching it, that said, reboot was much faster than atom starting up. Does pulsar take the same absurd amount of time?

[-] mhzawadi@lemmy.horwood.cloud 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Oh, not sure where I got glow from. Will have a look.

Pulsar is a fork of atom and is in active development, it can still be a little slow sometimes. But is now getting updates to make it run better

Edit: this https://github.com/charmbracelet/glow

[-] nesc@lemmy.cafe 1 points 5 months ago

kate works for me.

[-] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 1 points 5 months ago

I have no idea what that's a screenshot of.

What do other headings, tables and footnotes look like?

If it's just more colours, that doesn't help me.

[-] nesc@lemmy.cafe 3 points 5 months ago

Name of the app is kate. It only does light formating and syntax highlight. Are you looking specifically for markdown editor that just doesn't hide markup? From the list you gave my understanding was that you are looking for higlight and that's +- it. There are multiple markdown specific editors that do it like ghostwriter, retext, or even emacs with markdown-mode (iirc it does rendering without hiding markup, auto-formats tables, makes links clickable, etc.)

[-] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I tried editing my post to add this, but ~~Pachli~~ Connect doesn't want to play at the moment.

Ideally I'd be able to use it to either see the raw markdown or the rendered version of whatever I'm writing, code in a dozen languages, articles, websites, legal documents, books, all of which I do pretty regularly.

The side-by-side view doesn't do it for me, I'd more likely than not have multiple windows open with different documents instead.

It should do autocomplete, syntax highlighting, bracket closing, live spell checking in a variety of languages, launch quickly, be rock solid when faced with a massive log file and allow me to add menu-items to run bash scripts that do things like calculate the time it would take me to read out the text at my normal podcast reading voice or covert weird characters into html-entities.

Edit: Changed Lemmy client to Voyager and can now fix things again. I'll leave this comment here and also include it in my post body.

[-] nesc@lemmy.cafe 1 points 5 months ago

Unless you are planning to go with emacs route, you have a chance to make it yourself from scratch.

[-] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 1 points 5 months ago

Yeah, I hear you. There are a few other projects in the pipeline.

[-] 97xBang@feddit.online 2 points 5 months ago

First, lol

Second, that looks like Kate. It's the stock text editor on KDE.

[-] sicco@feddit.nl 1 points 5 months ago

Nextcloud Notes can show your notes as raw text and as formatted markdown. You do need a Nextcloud server to connect to though.

(There is an issue for an accountless mode)

this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2025
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