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Comment by deafpolygon | Hacker News Reader

This might be an unpopular take, but I'm tired of all these Markdown text editors. It almost feels like a cop-out at this point. Ever since text editors started supporting Markdown, we've gotten away from all of these great rich-text editors. Apple Notes is an example of a notetaking application "done right", albeit with fewer features. It's enjoyable to use and offers good UI for attaching files. It certainly is not without its flaws, however. Obsidian gets really close. I bet the devs could go all the way.

I want something WYSIWYG-like, without dealing with the underlying mechanisms... give me rich-text on the front and save the file in Markdown behind the scenes. I hardly care, as long as there is a robust export option built-in.

</end rant>

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I can understand that. There're so many Markdown editors, choice paralysis easily kicks in.

Markdown ist basically a must have for me though, because I know most applications will be outlived by my notes, and I want to be able to move on to a different editor. To try a new one, or even use multiple at the same time (say, on my phone and on my computer), it's unacceptable for me if I have to export and import all my notes first and risking diverging branches.

In general I think taking notes is a very personal thing many people do every day and they're looking for an app fitting their exact workflow. That's why there are so many options. I was considering writing my own one several times already, although it's probably not worth the time.

The one thing that annoys me is that Markdown is not highly standardized. Seems like every implementation is its own dialect and feature support varies quite a bit.

Yeah that's what happens when you come up with a "standard" and then forget about it for two decades.

> because I know most applications will be outlived by my notes

A robust export option is what we're all looking for here.

> taking notes is a very personal thing

I agree with that.

Bear with "hide Markdown" checked pretty much gets you there, if only on Apple devices.

Markdown vs. Rich Text to me is less about the editing experience and more about do you want your files aligned to a file system or not. The options are either:

- rich text editor with files that only make sense to a single application. - rich text editor with no files but (hopefully) some way to export them to (hopefully) compatible formats. - text files in a folder than can be read / edited by almost anything, with the editing experience tied to your application of choice.

Does Bear let me set where I want the files stored?

Obsidian's WYSIWYG editor is excellent and amazingly featureful. I use it for hours every day, only ever in "edit" mode w/ "live preview", just a couple plugins enabled, and it's by far the best interface to markdown I've encountered.

I agree, which is why I use it. But there are a few quirks that rely on on reading mode.

Joplin supports editing in WYSIWYG with formatting tools and saving markdown on the backend, or swapping to the markdown editor whenever you want to edit that way.

You might want to give Notesnook [0] a try.

[0]: https://notesnook.com/

> It's enjoyable to use and offers good UI for attaching files

Oh, wow! I didn't know it handled files this well. It'll even play video. What's keeping you from using Notes all the time? The lack of export options? What sort of export options are you looking for?

Cross-platform support, sadly.

Apple Notes is the greatest note taking app of all time.

I literally don't need anything else.

For folks who buy into the Apple eco-system perhaps --- I'd consider it if it were possible to view/edit notes made in it on my MacBook using a Wacom One screen on my Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ --- bonus would be if they could get Amazon to put it on the Kindle Scribe.

Apple notes has been lagging and crashing a lot. So annoying since it is my most used app.

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