The biggest flaw I see in this (and in several alternatives suggested below) is that it doesn't support native browser spell check because it uses Ace (and in the case of alternatives, they do text rendering that isn't native and isn't detected as text). I use Markdown for taking outline based notes - and one of the biggest stopgaps is that I can spell check my work to make sure I'm not screwing up my own notes as I type during a lecture.
In that regard, the only thing I've found that meets this criteria isn't a Markdown editor, it's Writebox -- https://write-box.appspot.com/
Also, the save/download buttons (the first thing I look for in an app like this) are hidden behind a sliding panel. Move them front and center!
I'm gonna look into your setup though. I'm definitely all about being on the terminal, does your setup work well with VIM as well?
Congrats to the creator of StackEdit, it seems very well done. It also seems to work really well while offline, which is nice. The biggest blocker for me is that when I need to create or edit a markdown file, it's usually a local file in a git repo. In my case, it is simply more convenient to use a native app.
For an example check out http://mangomarkdown.com/ (which powers foldingtext).
There are a few projects that do this, but not open source, that I can find! It might not be that hard to change the current ones that go side by side to do this.
(I am planning to work on one, but have not gotten around to doing much, and will probably take a different approach to it than this)
I'm not hiding markup like Mango, except for latex formulas which I'm replacing with mathjax rendering - but they turn back into source the moment the cursor enters them. It's inspired by emacs' auctex and more directly by https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jamesmc.wr... (gratis but closed).
I'm also surprised almost nobody is taking the syntax-highlight-IS-the-preview approach to markdown editing. I've heard the "plain markdown lets me focus on content and ignore formatting" idea, but I don't see how e.g. bigger font for headings is undesirable. It's not that variable fonts are hard to implement - CodeMirror already solved this: http://codemirror.net/demo/variableheight.html (Variable fonts are not a pure win. They screw up indentation => I'm planning to use monospace for all leading spaces, as well as list bullets/numbers.)
Looks similar to mangomarkdown, and it's open source. I'm using it in a project I'm working on and loving it.
Edit: actually, I think I like the mango style even better. Didn't realize this before, but the markdown tags are hidden after you type - pretty neat. (My initial test was a few heading tags, which still display the '#' in the margin).
edit: Ya, I still like mongo and how they make the header kinda fade out, have support for checkboxes (well folding text does), and when you are on a unordered list and press enter it automatically makes a new one. Mango has just made a codemirror mode to handle this it looks like.
Getting everything nice in up to date desktop browsers is relatively simple (contenteditable div, little bit of javascript, easy). Try to introduce iOS into the mix and things get very messy, very quickly.
That turns out to be quite a challenge
For example Mango fails with any combination of bold and italic
The frustrating part is not seeing how it's going to be formatted while I'm actually taking the notes. This app could solve that problem. I'll give it a try this week.
Some questions/comments:
1. What are you using for the popover tour that appears the first time someone visits the page?
2. The logo looks very much like the Stack Overflow logo[1]. Are you associated with that group? If not I'd consider changing it.
3. I'm familiar with but haven't used Epic Editor[2] by Oscar Godson and friends[3]. Have you checked it out by any chance?
Again, great work and I'll be giving this a try over the next week or so.
[1] http://blog.moovweb.com/content/uploads/2013/09/stackoverflo...
Would love to see it integrated with Etherpad somehow so that several people could colaborate on the same document.
We're often using Etherpad to collect notes during meetings. Converting them to a nice formatting in real time would be nice for those who are only following the document.
Synchronization with ownclowd would be nice as well.
On the other hand Medium's approach is tied to their visual style and design, it does not support many things I'd wish it would. Still, I'm rooting for WYSIWYG in the future.
[edit] Sorry, forgot to add that nevertheless this Markdown editor is impressive.
This is motivated by multiple blog platform changes etc. that all have left me doing messy filtering of exported data to be able to import it properly when moving my sites.
That's the appeal of Markdown for me. I'd rather add some custom filters to let me use some additional stuff in my own Markdown (which works ok since my additional markup worst case is just treated as plain text, and I can easily enough commit the code to turn it into "vanilla" markdown in the same repository as the content) than get tied into yet another format that messes with my content.
I only use WYSIWYG editors of any kind for content I expect to throw away now. E.g. reports at work that will have a lifespan of days to month is fine. Articles I want to keep an archive of for years to come, not so much.
The source is on GitHub: https://github.com/pioul/MinimalistOnlineMarkdownEditor
Sort of related: Is there a library or editor that could be used to create both markup for the web as well as export to LaTeX syntax? My use case: Software documentation where I'd like to have both a Wiki as well as creating a professional looking PDF document (or even print it for the old fashioned folks). That sort of functionality would be worth paying for in my case.
1. Item one
2. Item two
a. Subitem a
b. Subitem bMarkdown will ignore the actual value of the digits. (1,2,3) or (1,1,1) will both be rendered as (1,2,3). This is a result of the way that HTML & CSS deal with lists. The HTML has no way to specify the value to a list item. However, you can use CSS to specify the way each list nesting level is styled. So you can have a list that has Roman Numeral -> Uppercase Letter -> Arabic Numeral -> lowercase letter
Some enhanced version of Markdown may get you closer to what you want. I use MultiMarkdown and check it, but it doesn't support directly using (a,b,c) notation either.
The "value" attribute of the HTML "li" element does exactly this, but setting the value isn't really what you need for what GP was asking for; setting the kind of marker is. This can, as you note, be done through CSS, but it can also be done through HTML (using the "type" attribute of the "ol" element.)
In the context of conversion of legal documents, where the marker type is intended for reference, it would be semantically correct to do this in HTML, so it would probably be desirable for markdown to support all the marker types supported by HTML for ordered list as markers for ordered lists, and set the type attribute correctly.
So, using a number should result in the current behavior, using a lowercase letter (other than one which might be a lowercase roman numeral, like "i"!) should result in lowercase-alpha markers, etc.
1. Item one
1. Item two
1. Subitem a
1. Subitem b
(I replaced a, b and 2 by 1 to force the automatic numbering)
-bowerbird
Great work, the editor is pretty impressing even without that feature.