My Ideal Markdown Editor - Thoughts and Reviews Part 1
2018-05-14 16:25
Where I'm Headed
I've been meaning to blog about my ideal Mardown editor requirements, and which editors today get close to being my dream-editor-come-true.
I'll probably be editing this post, but it gives a good idea of what matters to me. In upcoming parts, I'll review some--not all--of the editors and announce a winner.
Spoiler!
My current Markdown editor is Markdown Monster, and I'm not expecting that to change. Still...we'll see!
Requirements
- Use a Git parser that at least supports GFM.
- Ideally, support MarkDig because it's fast and, itself, supports all MD flavors.
- Scripting/snippet support.
- Specifically, journal datetime, but I have other snippets I've become used to.
- Addin support.
- Want to be able to create/publish using my static site generator.
- Standard MD behaviors
- Standard Editor behaviors
- Including block editing
- Supported. Editors seem to come and go.
- Drag-and-drop image paths.
Extras I've Found I Like
- Preview window outside the editor.
- Automatic check-box bullets.
- And, auto-checking from the editor. See the Android app iA Writer.
- Open to end of document. Would love to do this per-document, so my journal opens to the end.
- YAML handling.
- Tabbed interface simultaneous with separate instances. I love being able to do my journal summary without changing settings.
- Using Ctrl-K (or whatever creates a link), automatically includes whatever's in the clipboard.'
- When pasting HTML, the ability to strip extras down to just the Markdown, instead of pasting the HTML styles, etc.
- When pasting a link, if it's just a link then automatically surround with
<>
.
Editors
Desktop
- Markdown Monster
- Markdown Edit
- Visual Studio Code
- Typora
- Haroopad
- Write!
- Caret
- Ghostwriter
- Markdown Pad 2 (no longer updated, but mention it)
- Texts
- WriteMonkey
- Markdown Plus
- Abricotine
- MarkText