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Comment by fsargent | Hacker News Reader

Is it really easier to use markdown than bolding things using a keyboard shortcut?

And tables are downright awful in markdown (or anything barring a full spreadsheet editor). When would you want to do this by hand?

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> Is it really easier to use markdown than bolding things using a keyboard shortcut?

Yes, it absolutely is easier to type a few asterisks in running text rather than selecting text, hitting a keyboard shortcut or clicking a button, and then going back to typing more text.

Most rich text editors allow bolding running text. "Ctrl+B" vs. "shift-8" are equal.

(Most rich text editors are poorly implemented and suffer from hidden state, but that's a separate problem.)

I use Ctrl+B in my browser to open the bookmarks side-panel though.

In my opinion, it is about the same, maybe easier to not use markdown. If we count keystrokes, it’s less.

If already typed, it’s less keystrokes to select with Shift+Ctrl then press Ctrl+B.

If it’s not typed, it’s less keystrokes to Ctrl+B at he start and end.

For italics, the keystrokes are about the same with and without markdown.

Perfectly reasonable to have both available: type markdown along the way, map keyboard shortcuts to insert the appropriate formatting characters whether used statefully or with text selected.

I seem to remember that typora works that way.

Hmmm. To be fair you could also use ctrl+b instead of the markdown sequence.

That's an interesting flow but I couldn't imagine typing like that, formatting while I typed would totally interrupt the thought process/message I'm trying to get out.

My flow is to type first just to get the thoughts out then I format last while I proofread.

I do occasionally go back and add formatting, especially when writing a longer article. I also often add links later, or write [link text]() and fill in the URL later so I don't have to stop and find a reference I know exists. But I add certain types of formatting immediately, in much the same way that when speaking I emphasize certain words in a sentence.

I've used it for general composition (headings, bold text, etc), but its killer feature is for when you want to include a block of highlighted code. Markdown Here has fantastic support for GFM fenced code blocks.

I wish I could use it in Jira. :-(

I ran into the same issue and found https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/markdown-to-jira/j...

That converts markdown to Jira-markdown and back again. It's been fantastic for me.

I find tables far easier in md than anywhere else. You can distill them down to:

    Head | Head
    ---|---
    Row | row
    Row | row

Etc.

Markdown tables are reasonably lightweight and are very easy to generate with regex substitution off a delimited datastream. Say, tabs:

    s/^/| /; s/\t/ | /; s/^/ |/

Add your header and alignment block and you're set.

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