[HN Gopher] Panwriter - Distraction-free Markdown editor with pa...
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Panwriter - Distraction-free Markdown editor with pandoc
integration
Author : amai
Score : 81 points
Date : 2022-01-26 16:07 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (panwriter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (panwriter.com)
| omarhaneef wrote:
| Both these statements are true:
|
| -- There are ("too"?) many Markdown editors
|
| -- This is exactly what we need.
|
| I like composing drafts in Markdown but I have to export them (to
| PDF to view and mark up in Remarkable, to Word to share with some
| people and so) quite often, and going into pandoc and remembering
| the commands adds extra layers.
|
| This is a huge contribution.
|
| p.s. because this is Hacker News, I hope some smart person is
| going to point out an even more efficient way to switch contexts.
| I am here for it if it doesn't involve trying to learn emacs for
| the 87th time.
| tombert wrote:
| I would recommend finding out how to execute a shell command in
| whatever editor you use, and then write a script that does the
| exporting with the settings you care about. Then bind a command
| in the editor to that renderer.
|
| Not emacs but not that different either; I personally use tmux
| with Vim on the top pane, and a split with the command line on
| the bottom, and a workspace split with Apple Preview on the
| left. Here is a sample of it: https://i.imgur.com/oqss6SO.png
|
| It's not for everyone, but I can't think in anything but Vim
| now.
| xalava wrote:
| Most editors have a plugin that does that:
|
| - https://github.com/OliverBalfour/obsidian-pandoc
|
| - https://packagecontrol.io/packages/Pandoc
|
| -
| https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=DougFink...
| luckyorlame wrote:
| oh well
|
| Uncaught Exception: Error: write EPIPE at
| WriteWrap.onWriteComplete [as oncomplete]
| (node:internal/stream_base_commons:98:16)
| wanderingmind wrote:
| Vscode or even Emacs has Markdown editing and view. Am I missing
| something in them that are being satisfied by these other
| editors?
| loudmax wrote:
| Since this is based on Pandoc, it should be able edit many
| miscellaneous formats including MS Word docs.
| andix wrote:
| I wouldn't consider a split screen MD editor distraction free.
|
| My markdown editor needs to be just one combined edit/preview
| window. Either with Typora like WYSIWYG or some syntax
| highlighting.
| riidom wrote:
| Don't like displaying the same content twice either. It gets a
| bit old mentioning Obsidian _all the time_ , but their source
| code view is very close to the rendered view. This, and Typoras
| approach, are two good solutions to avoid split screen.
|
| I wonder if there are more ways to solve that problem.
| andrewshadura wrote:
| Mark Text also does this, and is free software.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Have you tried it? You ca switch views between edit, preview,
| and split.
|
| But I think you mean combined edit/preview like Zettlr has,
| where it's a hybrid.
| sigzero wrote:
| I prefer the split screen so I would ascribe "distraction free"
| to it. It's a matter of taste.
| tombert wrote:
| Personally I hate when editors try and make my markdown look
| like anything but plain text. Syntax highlighting is fine, but
| I don't want you to make my font bigger when I type # and I
| don't want my text to be italicized when I type an asterisk,
| etc. Plain text has a purity and simplicity to it, and if I
| wanted those features I would probably just use MS Word or
| Pages or something.
|
| I don't personally find the preview to be distracting, and I
| like seeing the rendered product with a distinct separation
| from the code that generates it.
|
| I don't think I'll swap to this since I'm relatively happy with
| just having MacOS preview and a terminal in a workspace split,
| but I could totally see why someone would like this.
| turnsout wrote:
| I was so crushed to see that this is an Electron app. I'm a
| longtime iA Writer craving built-in Pandoc export, and this is
| basically my dream app. I just can't get behind running all of
| Chromium to support a minimalist text editor.
| [deleted]
| brewdad wrote:
| OTOH, being an electron app means there is Windows support from
| day one. Windows is sorely lacking in Markdown support relative
| to what's available on Mac.
| Merg wrote:
| More likely, it can actually render all of Markdown, which
| allows HTML within. For that you at least need some kind of
| HTML renderer.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Markdown by design allows arbitrary HTML, so every markdown
| viewer at a minimum needs to support the entire HTML, CSS, etc.
| DOM. It's easiest (and likely more secure) to use something
| like Chromium.
| turnsout wrote:
| I get that, and I'm not disagreeing. However, two points:
|
| 1. I think writing-focused Markdown editors should not feel
| obligated to render arbitrary HTML in their previews. The
| format may support it, but the editor doesn't need to--one of
| the great things about Markdown is that your editor can be
| anything from vi to VSCode.
|
| 2. On the Mac, there is an extremely easy API to display a
| WebView (WKWebView), which would cut the size of this
| executable to roughly 1/100th of its current size, drop the
| memory usage, and reduce energy consumption. You can even
| keep most of the business logic in JavaScript if you want.
| mxuribe wrote:
| This is neat looking! I don't have loads of experience using
| markdown editors, but the 2 features which i think really attract
| me to wanting to use it are:
|
| 1. Exporting into soooo many formats (thanks to pandoc).
|
| 2. Importing into this app from other formats. The associated
| website briefly talks about importing a Word doc (working on it
| distraction-free, and then re-exporting as a doc file format),
| which seems a little bit of an edge case *for my workflows* but
| the fact that it is possible i think is/could be really handy!
|
| I think i'll give this a try. Kudos for releasing this!
| heckelson wrote:
| I've been using Zettlr for the last few days, and I've fallen in
| love with it. The best feature that it has for lecture note
| taking is that you can paste in screenshots and it automatically
| handles it for you, putting a file in the right place and linking
| to it.
| neitsab wrote:
| The "distraction-free" bit reminded me of a similar tool I used a
| couple of years ago, Ghostwriter [0]. Differences between the two
| AFAICT:
|
| - use of Pandoc as a converter is only optional in Ghostwriter,
| and I don't know how well it is integrated
|
| - semi-official MacOS support: Ghostwriter requires you to build
| the app from source (maybe its authors didn't want to notarize
| the app?) and it has a few quirks apparently[1].
|
| - more features for the more mature Ghostwriter.
|
| In any case good to see more choices in this space, cross-
| platform Markdown word processors with Pandoc support were a rare
| occurrences a couple of years ago!
|
| [0] https://github.com/wereturtle/ghostwriter
|
| [1] https://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter/download.html#macos
|
| edit: formatting
| account-5 wrote:
| I'm glad you mentioned this. I always mIention it in the
| markdown editor threads. I use ghostwriter, its my go to editor
| for markdown.
|
| I would like a markdown editor that supports pandoc in full. I
| think sciter would be a better option than electron though.
| porcoda wrote:
| Why do we see so many markdown editors? Is there some library or
| widget out there that everyone starts from to parse and render
| markdown, and then it just turns into a simple exercise of
| putting a UI in front of it and adding a tiny number of novel
| features? I can't understand why so many people keep producing
| basically the same application with tiny variations to edit and
| view what is a relatively simple structured text format. I sort
| of remember from the 80s the quick and dirty app that you could
| find many of variants of for Commodore, Apple, and PC systems was
| a recipe database, largely because it was an easy exercise. Is
| the markdown editor todays version of that?
| elcapitan wrote:
| For a while it was todo-apps, now it's markdown editors.
| orangea wrote:
| There are a lot of features which a markdown editor can have
| which are somewhat difficult to implement and get right, such
| as WYSIWYG with css theming, support for latex equations,
| support for nonstandard features like Pandoc markdown, plugins,
| support for the textbundle format... Nothing exists that
| implement these perfectly and so I think people make attempts
| at making something that at least works for their specific use
| case but no one can make the one true editor that does
| everything because it would be a huge amount of work.
| ReleaseCandidat wrote:
| Markdown-it.
|
| https://markdown-it.github.io/ https://github.com/markdown-
| it/markdown-it
|
| Using Haskell, you could of course use Pandoc directly ;)
|
| https://hackage.haskell.org/package/pandoc-2.17.0.1/docs/Tex...
|
| https://hackage.haskell.org/package/pandoc-2.17.0.1/docs/Tex...
| riidom wrote:
| I believe that markdown editors belong into a certain group of
| software, which are seemingly simple, but people are for some
| reason pretty picky about features, UI, and so on.
|
| Other members of this group are music/media players, simple
| organization tools (e.g. time-tracking, to-do), and of course
| coding-related text editors. I think I had one or two more
| examples, but don't remember right now.
|
| And this leads to a lot of tools being very similar on surface.
| atoav wrote:
| I use _two_ markdown editors. One is for quick notes, the
| other is for writing focused stuff without distractions.
|
| It works better that way for me.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| My distraction-free Markdown editor is vim. No UI clutter, not an
| electron app, loads ginormous files super quickly, is powerful
| when you need it to be and simple when you don't.
|
| I use Goyo for the minor convenience of limiting the column
| width, but really it's all I need.
| DerArzt wrote:
| Same, but replace vim with Emacs.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Same but replace Emacs with Emacs.
| rPlayer6554 wrote:
| :%s/emacs/vim/g
| ysleepy wrote:
| Looks good.
|
| Pulls in two pretty huge dependencies though, electron and
| pandoc.
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(page generated 2022-01-26 23:00 UTC)