Markdown editor with live preview built in C++ | Hacker News Reader

Markdown editor with live preview built in C++

github.com

10 pointsBBones_6 comments

I’ve created (with a lot of help from AI) an editor similar to Obsidian: please give a warm welcome to Emerald! It’s a native Markdown editor with a live preview, built in C++ with as few dependencies as possible, designed to be simple and effective (at least for my needs). It still needs a few tweaks to be perfect, but check it out if you’re curious!

It's visually pleasing. Appreciate the effort!

I realize that my comment might come off as condescending but it's far from it.

Thanks! Even though I'm happy with the result, I'm open to any suggestions on how to improve it. Let me know if you have any advice

Nice work! On quick testing:

A. It is much more performant as compared to Electron-type applications.

B. It remembers the toggle state for the sidebar upon restarting, which is great! Just now many apps get this miss on this is pitiful.

C. Line spacing setting is great to have.

Some feedback:

1. Allow changing sort order for the notes. Currently only alphabetical. I need reverse-chronological so that most recently added/edited notes appear on the top. This one is a must-have for me.

2. Ability to directly open .md files from Files/Explorer would be great! I tend to use file systems themselves to organize my files across thousands of directories.

3. Support for rendering equations seems there, but is not working for all of them. Perhaps the syntax of my existing .md files is not correct (copy-pasted from AI responses).

4. Having an explicit Save button would be very nice.

5. It would be nice to see support for front matter, including automatic adjustment of creation/modification time stamps, and ability to show/hide the front matter.

6. It should also remember the last window position and size.

7. More toolbar buttons. Creating a new note requires right-clicking on one of the notes. Alternatively, allow right-clicking on the vault name.

8. For the note itself, allow using full width available from the window size. Currently fixed width (albeit the width is changeable from settings).

9. Vertical scroll bar for the note seems set up such that the bottommost point shows blank lines. The bottom most point should not scroll below the actual length of the note. The scroll bar length then also correctly indicates how long the note is.

10. Ability to change theme settings will be nice.

11. Mobile app would be great too! I am currently using HelixNotes (https://helixnotes.com/) on Android and Tolaria (https://tolaria.md/) on Windows 11.

Thanks!

Thank you for reviewing all of this :) I’ll add points #1, #2, #3, #5, #6, #8, and #10 to my development list.

As for points #4 and #7, I think auto-save (and Ctrl + S) and the Ctrl + N shortcuts are fine for now.

I specifically wanted the editor to behave this way (#9); being able to position each line of the note anywhere on the screen makes it easier for me to read, since it lets me see the last part of the note at the top of the screen.

#11 I intended to develop one, but there’s still a long way to go; let’s see how this project evolves!

Sounds like you have implemented some of the features (e.g., sorting for the notes list). Thanks!

Another one I have observed is that it is leaving newlines in between paragraphs of text where for the same .md files, other apps are showing none.

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