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Comment by msoloviev | Hacker News Reader

I've been working on one (https://github.com/blackhole89/notekit) for a while now (which, unlike the aforementioned, also is not built on Chrome/Electron). Unfortunately it seems to be pretty hard to get the word out, or at least I haven't found any better strategy than to pounce, as I am doing now, whenever I see a HN thread about markdown editors (which invariably wind up having some comment thread lamenting the lack of WYSIWYG and/or non-Electron editors).

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I mean the following as feedback to help you find more users, not as critique; I understand where you’re coming from and this is just how I would personally approach it:

What I immediately noticed looking at the README, is that the communication is centered around you and your values, rather than on the end-user:

You mention why you created it, not what it enables the user to do. You use Linux-lingo, like “free (speech and beer)” which many users are unfamiliar with and don’t know why they should care. Your installation instructions make it hard for users to pick which one they should choose. There are no Mac binaries, but Macs are wide-spread among developers. Windows binaries mention “x64”, which is very technical and might scare users away.

The Ubuntu screenshots make it look like “Linux only”. You could replace it with a Windows or Mac screenshot, to get people to understand it works on their platform.

You could still keep this technical (and potentially alienating) language in your documentation, but simplifying the README to make it easier for the 90% of your potential audience could make it more popular.

You mentioned in this thread that some people don’t want Electron. That’s true, and it’s a great USP for those that require it, but personally I would avoid assuming that it’s the USP that convinces the masses.

Thanks for the feedback! I can certainly try to improve the structure of the README, though I'm not sure if I agree with some of your points about giving more priority to non-Linux users. The thing is, at least in my eyes, Gtk generally feels terrible on platforms where it is not native (I would in fact even avoid using it in a Qt-based Linux desktop setup, just as I avoid Qt-based applications as far as possible in my Gtk-based one), and at any rate the ports are often lacking even in features (for instance, last I checked, Windows Gtk would not allow me to read tablet pressure information). If you are using Windows, and don't care for "free (speech and beer)", why would you even want to use anything other than OneNote? I'm somewhat wary of repeating the mistakes of Firefox (and GNOME) of snubbing a likely target demographic to court an unlikely one.

(Regarding Mac, I unfortunately don't have a Mac and neither does anyone who I know well enough to ask to borrow theirs, though someone did in fact contribute homebrew-based build scripts that supposedly work at some point. I just have no idea how to package the result to make it easy to install.)

You say:

- You don't want to give more priority to non-Linux users

- GTK feels terrible on those other platforms

- You don't believe those who care about licensing issues would use it

- You cannot build releases or installers for Mac

The first thing that comes to mind on reading your response is that the non-Linux users are a market you are not really interested in - and even if they were they are not a market you can effectively serve (installers, updates, issues).

You should consider formally abandoning official support for non-Linux, as in reality you don't currently have actual support for them anyway. Be honest, cut your losses, and choose your customers. Cross-platform is not a benefit if it is unsustainable.

Well, it's not exactly unsustainable - the Github CI continues producing those builds without me having to do anything for it (it in fact didn't break even once in the past year, compared to several breakages on the "backwards-compatible" Ubuntu 18.04 deb which happened whenever Github changed something about the package bundle available to that image). If someone reports a bug on Windows, I will look into it, and/or spend some time walking them through a workaround (since I do in fact have access to Windows setups). As I see it, in the most natural sense of support, I do have support for Windows, even though it is what I guess you would call Tier 2 support.

To nitpick a little, I also didn't say I don't think that those who care about licensing issues would use [the Windows build]; rather, I think that those who don't care about licensing issues and are on Windows would not use it, because there is a Windows-only product that is closed-source which I am unlikely to be able to compete with on that ground.

I'm not really advertising Mac support beyond having some files merged from people who did get it to work (https://github.com/blackhole89/notekit/blob/master/screensho...).

Reasonable response. I think as a passing potential user I'd stand by my original comment, but I can see your point.

> The Ubuntu screenshots make it look like “Linux only”. You could replace it with a Windows or Mac screenshot, to get people to understand it works on their platform.

Replace? I'm not Linux user but this sounds strange to me. He did native GTK app and he should not be considering Linux users?

Regarding screenshots, just crop the window borders. That way no one platform feels like "the main one".

This looks interesting, and is actually the first of these kinds editors that I'll be trying in a very long time. I got kind of jaded with the Electron experience and always go back to nvim. Of course, the WYSIWYG experience isn't as nice in nvim, but that's not that high of a priority for me.

In regard to getting the word out, it depends on the kind of person you want to reach. If you really want to reach a "general" public, the sibling's comments sound useful, in particular binary availability.

In particular for Windows. I've clicked on the link, ended up on the GH workflows page, looked around quickly, didn't see where to grab the binary and went on my way being happy that I'm on Arch Linux and there's a package in the AUR.

Yeah, the way Windows builds are made available at the moment is honestly pretty bad, and I should improve on that. There is the problem that you need to be logged in to download that particular type of CI artifact, and more generally that the archive is somewhat bloated because the build scripts have no notion of what parts of Gtk actually need to be bundled (and so they wind up including an excess of random icons and what-not).

I don't know if I want to reach what you would call the "general public" (at least not until the program is quite a bit more polished than it is now), but I'd certainly want to reach typical Linux-using HN posters who are interested in Markdown notetaking, and the circumstance that this subthread played out as it did implies I haven't yet done so.

Man that's exactly the type of markdown editor i dreamed about, thank you!

I have to tell you that your approach is the only one I can work with: change the display of text based on the semantic level (title, emphasis, etc) _but_ keep the formatting visible so you can easily edit it. If it's not there, no markdown editor makes it easy to e.g change a level 1 title to a level 2 title, apart from having to reach to the mouse.

Hope your approach gets more widespread !

At this age, it's hard to use something that can't sync the content between cross platform devices and the GH issue for mobile support is lingering for 3 years.

Who's good to only write stuff on a computer and on that alone?

Best solution to me so far is to just use Wiki.js.

Wow. That looks really lovely!

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