Morning all,
I just wanted to do a quick and short write up of a markdown editor I recently discovered for Windows 10. Windows 10 you say? Yup! Sadly, I have been using Windows more as of late for school and other tasks. Which I may do a write up about this another time. But to stay on topic, I have fallen in love with using markdown editors for my writing needs, even school papers! I haven't had a markdown editor in about a month since I been using Windows, but, a quick Google search led me to Typora. Which I must say has been super pleasant to use! It has a really clean and minimal interface, including a focus mode, which blurs all the paragraphs of your document except for the one you are currently typing. I find that kind of nifty, though I'm not sure how much I will actually use it.
Besides the focus mode Typora has several themes to style your editor and fonts. Yes, it even has the beloved dark mode if that is your thing. I'm personally a light mode fan, especially since I let the dreaded sunlight flood into my office and onto my poor screens. Possibly the best is the live, on the fly rendering of your markdown in the area you are typing. What you type and what you see is what you get; no second tab or splitting of the UI to render the final product in its own window. There are tons of formatting little goodies just a menu away in case you don't know the markdown syntax, allowing even me to effortlessly make something nice without relying on Google and markdown cheat sheets.
Seriously, there are several nice little features that make this software pleasant to use, but there are three things I find most helpful for me. One being the word count at the bottom right of the text area, because school assignments normally have to be xyz amount of words. I know it's normally not a big deal and almost every editor has it, but for reals, some editors don't. Like dude, every decent writing tool needs a word counter! The second most helpful feature is the ability to use Unix (LF) or Windows Line Endings (CRLF). Setting those line endings can help make life a little smoother. Finally, the real big thing I love the most, exporting options! Typora allows for exporting to a slew of formats, PDF, Docx, LaTex, RTF, OpenOffice, HTML, Epub, Media Wiki, and a few others. And to boot, those exports are all powered by pandoc, so pretty much what ever pandoc can export to Typora can as well. I think Typora did a good job on this feature, it's seamless and honestly you wouldn't know it was using pandoc in the background. But it goes without saying, you need to have pandoc installed for this feature to work. So, now I can use a markdown editor for my class assignments, export to the document type the tyrannical instructors want and everyone is a happy camper, problem solved.
Alright, enough of this, it's sounding like a dumb review or an advertisement for Typora, which it is not. I'm just simply sharing my discovery and a couple thoughts about the software.
Jordan