Show HN: Notably – minimalist markdown content editor | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Notably – minimalist markdown content editor

13 pointschris14095713 comments

Hi, I just launched Notably: https://notably.cc

Notably is a free markdown based tool for creating and sharing beautiful content using markdown syntax.

You can use notably to create notes, text snippets and blog posts which can then be shared publicly with seo-friendly urls or kept as private notes

Notably is completely free to use

Thanks Chris

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From the web site:

> Notably is completely free!

That's a bit misleading, freedom means different things to different people. You explain that later as "free of charge", which is good, but the first impression is still bad.

Not sure I agree with that. What else could free mean in the context?

Well, there's not much context... the website presents a software, and that's it.

But software freedom is an established concept, at least as much as much as freeware is. There's no clear idea what definition is in use when someone looks just at the headings.

To the average consumer, free means free of charge rather than free as in liberty. Very few people would think the latter when talking about the word "free" in the context of a product, of which the majority are developers, and even still, developers who are acquainted with the free software movement which is some fraction of that majority.

The copy on the page is clear to most people and is therefore good enough without needing to introduce consumers to the concept of software liberty, which would be more confusing and drive less conversion than just using the word "free."

> and drive less conversion than just using the word "free."

I'm addressing the issue of being unclear. Sure, you can drive even more conversion by being outright misleading, but I'm hoping that's not the author's goal.

Here's another one https://trynocturnal.com/

I'll be honest, there's a LOT of markdown editors out there. What's your USP for Notably?

I'm aware of that, but I'm yet to find one that I like personally. I made this primarily for my own benefit. Appreciate it's still a work in progress, however

but how is it different from others? Did you try a bunch of them, and decided to make your own, or just wanted to make something, so why not md editor for yourself?

I think the choice of this sort of app is largely a question of personal preference. What I'm trying to replace for myself is evernote, which is what I've always fallen back to when I've tried other offerings, but it doesn't support markdown, is largely dependant on a mobile/desktop app download and to my eye, has a distracting/unattractive interface/output. I know evernote, like other apps, have a lot more features than Notably, but ultimately at the moment all I'm trying to do is validate the basic premise to see if this is something other people like, too

thanks, for the answer.

I personalty don't use web apps for such things, i've made a little app for myself that helps me to write markdown in vim with sideview preview, so i just use vim on laptop/pc and markdown editors on mobiles(can't say which one is better, don't really write in them)

Attempting to sign in with google gave me a 500 Server Error

I just saw it pop up in the logs. Apparently Google doesn't have your last name, which confuses it. Will take a look in the morning

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