Show HN: Write.md – a shareable distraction-free Markdown editor
writemd.xyz
writemd.xyz
They have real time collaboration and a long list of additional plugins [3] that allow all kinds of nice collaboration use cases. For example it is possible to convert some bullet points into a presentation with minimal effort.
What does Write.md provide compared to HackMD? Not affiliated with HackMD, just a happy user and always curious about alternatives.
[1] https://github.com/hackmdio/codimd [2] https://hackmd.io/new [3] https://hackmd.io/features
WriteMD doesn't look like it can compete with CodiMD, which is free software and can be hosted locally — two huge advantages. Perhaps it'll improve though. Always good to know of alternatives.
* Edit: I misread the output of wc. The novel is ~70k words, ~400k characters. Leaving the 400k figure above because of the discussion that follows, because it should still be a reasonable use case, and because it makes even more surprising that most editors fail this even more basic test.
Modern editors are fairly complex. Splitting a bitbuffer and showing ascii line by line is simple. But modern editors have to deal with unicode, where some characters (surrogates) are two chars long, and can be followed by modifiers such as skin color of emojis. Then some characters are wider then others. So a modern editor must first parse the string encoding, then parse the language (markdown) for further formatting and coloring or building a WYSIWYG, usually on every key stroke. The expensive part is showing the text on the screen, generating the fonts, where old editors didnt have fonts.
I get the parsing difficulties. Generally, at least for markdown, pressing a character should affect only the line (paragraph) that contains it, so worst case scenario, you need to parse the entire paragraph. Worst case scenario, you need to re-render whatever fits on the screen. I refuse to believe it's not possible to do this efficiently with 2020 hardware, and I have proof, in the form of editors that work.
If it's 2020, I try to append a character to a 400k file I have open, and this takes multiple seconds, it's because someone implemented Schlemiel the Painter's Algorithm, not because the hardware is slow or the file is too big.
Same reason why we do not put programs in a single source file.
You can do all that instantly in Vim too (... and I just checked to make sure). A megabyte of text is just not a lot of text for a good editor.
https://blog.fostergrant.co.uk/2017/08/03/word-counts-popula...
Though, to be fair, an author organizing a work of that size in a single markdown document has bigger problems than key lag.
Yes, you can. The "Programming Perl" book by Larry Wall was famously written entirely in "POD" format, which is just like markdown. I don't know if it was split into several files.
Still, why wouldn't I want to edit it as a single file?
> ...without slowing down to a crawl (i.e. a 5-10 second lag between a keypress and a change)?
I think you answered your own question. :P
Also, you can edit chapter 53 without having to scroll down to line 130,465. Basically, the same reasons bills are split up
I disagree! We're having the following conversation:
Me: "I want to edit this as a single file, but I can't, because it's slow due to inefficient data structures"
You: "Why would you want to edit it as a single file?"
Me: "Why wouldn't I?"
You: "Because it's slow due to inefficient data structures!"
My point is, I want to edit it as a single text file for creative / process reasons, and there are algorithms and data structures that make this possible, as evidenced by the editors that do let me do it in real time, so there's no real reason not to.
Things like:
+ Changing the age of a character
+ Changing the argument order for a particular function
Those aren't simple find/replace solutions that you can run across files.
You can do the same thing with multiple files, but it's slower and can be harder to hold a context in your head.
I've found that the process of breaking a book up into "chunks" to be a useful one to me. If I can't chunk it, there's probably something wrong with the structure.
But hell, if what you have works for you, go for it. I'm currently using the LeanPub build system which seems to be just enough structure without getting in the way.
(Me? I'd use Emacs..)
Typora does this nicely; I type an asterisk, it looks like an asterisk, but when I close the asterisk, the text in between goes italic. The asterisks are hidden unless the cursor is within the italic part. I can double-click to select a word, press cmd-I, and the word goes italic (by adding the asterisks). Etc.
Please don't be a jerk in comments here.
MacDown (a native MarkDown editor for macOS) opens it in a snap, has no lag editing, and even the rendered preview (which scrolls with the editor side) has no lag. Memory usage was about 150MB.
For shits and giggles I then pasted that content into the OP's linked tool.. The Safari process for that tab is still sitting at 100% CPU a minute or so later, and is unresponsive.
Is this example a bit ridiculous? Sure. But it demonstrates the difference between a native app - oh, and the process for that tab just disappeared because Safari killed it - and trying to make an app in a web browser.
AsciiDoc is a standardized format that's just as simple as MD. But far more features.
Have been looking for something that lets us author asciidoc documents, but markdown (with varying standards) seems far more popular. some of these end up as not being Github compatible or whatever.
FYI - asciidoc (.adoc) files are rendered by Github. https://github.com/asciidoctor/asciidoctor/blob/master/READM...
Extensions also available for major browsers.