Discussion regarding Markdown, a lightweight markup syntax, and related software. ()

John Laudun | 2 Feb 16:21

Re: Mac markdown editor that saves as .txt

I love BBEdit and Textmate as much as the next person, but those aren't answers to the poster's question. MMD
Composer is close to what the poster is asking about, but, Fletcher, you have to type in the `txt` extension
over the proffered `md` at the save prompt. Have you considered making that a possible preference for
user's to select? There are actually a couple of iOS apps that don't recognize the `md` extension, and so I
could see this affecting more than the current poster. I use PlainText, and I don't think I've encountered
this problem -- I can't remember now, however, if I had to re-set some of its preferences.

While we're on the topic of MMD Composer, and I bring it up here because this might prove an interesting
conversation more generally, I'd like to point out that in the Preferences, the question of applying
italics is posed as an either/or radio button. Luckily, in actual use the program formats both, no matter
which is checked, as italics. This is perfectly acceptable behavior for me. I actually use the two
differently: I use asterisks for emphasis, as in marking the use of a word as a term, and I reserve
underlines the titles of works. 

This makes it possible for me to use a microformat later in an adapted version of MD/MMD. I am "rolling my
own", but has any distro of MD pursued a similar logic?

headers

Nicole C | 2 Feb 19:49

Re: Mac markdown editor that saves as .txt

I'm going to respond to several of you here in one email, since I unfortunately subscribed with the digest option at first:

Chris: Yes, my issue is primarily caused by the lack of Android apps to open/edit .md or .markdown files. I'm really surprised there aren't any.

Fletcher: Your post was a mini-revelation for me! I had assumed that Composer (and similar apps) required the special markdown file extensions in order to utilize all of their features. I didn't realize that manually entering .txt instead of the default would work just fine. Thank you! This essentially solves my problem. I'll also experiment with customizing the syntax coloring.

I really do like MMD Composer and think the syntax coloring options are more attractive than most out there. The one thing I do like about ByWord's coloring that would be nice as an option in Composer (just an option, not default) is the immediate greying-out of the code marks while retaining the stylized text (bolded, italicized, etc.) It makes your text very readable for certain projects. But I think I could achieve much the same thing with some creative CSS editing, if I can manage it.

Lasar: Thanks for clarifying about the file extensions. You and Fletcher have helped me a lot!

jem: I'm going to try out TextWrangler, since BBedit is on the pricey side for my needs. But thanks!

Spencer: I'm curious about the markdown bundle for Textmate, but you're right, it's not a cheap program. What sort of neat things does the bundle do?

-Nicole

On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 5:21 AM, <markdown-discuss-request <at> six.pairlist.net> wrote:

Today's Topics:

1. Mac markdown editor that saves as .txt (Nicole C)
2. Re: Mac markdown editor that saves as .txt (Chris Lott)
3. Re: Mac markdown editor that saves as .txt (Fletcher Penney)
4. Re: Mac markdown editor that saves as .txt (Jan Erik Mostr?m)
5. Re: Mac markdown editor that saves as .txt (Lasar Liepins)
6. Re: Mac markdown editor that saves as .txt (Spencer Wysinger)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 18:48:43 -0500
From: Nicole C <ncat999 <at> gmail.com>
Subject: Mac markdown editor that saves as .txt
To: markdown-discuss <at> six.pairlist.net
Message-ID:
<CAJYUP8NQMP1qoMt+6aE1aERxq6h-euQoBwvLGe0nq=HGLLSQUg <at> mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Hi all,

I'm a newer user of markdown & MultiMarkdown, and I'm looking for the
perfect setup of software for my Mac and my Android phone. I'd like to
have my drafts editable from both.

What I want is an attractive Mac app for writing (primarily blog posts and
emails) that saves its files as .txt . Most of them save as .md or
.markdown instead, and since there doesn't seem to be a true markdown
editor for Android yet, using these programs isn't compatible with my
phone.

I know that I could use a text-editor that is meant for programmers, but
I'm not really the proper audience. I don't need the line counts, or even
the fully colored syntax, and these programs aren't meant to create an
aesthetically pleasing writing experience, which I'll admit is a priority
for me. In other words, ideally I want the equivalent of Byword or
Macchiato with the option to save as .txt.

So, are there any markdown editors for the Mac that do all the "pretty"
things (receding the code, stylizing your text, etc) but that DON'T save as
.md or .markdown files? Am I correct that Macchiato only saves in markdown
format? I'd even take something like MMD Composer, with its colorized &
stylized text, if it saved in plain text format.

Are there any other Mac/Android users? What are you doing to get around
this problem?

Thanks for any help or suggestions,
-Nicole

FYI, I have Marked, Byword, MultiMarkdown Composer, Mou, Tincta, and Clean
Writer Pro. I'm loving Epistle for my phone, since it saves to Dropbox and
has a clean interface. I'm trying a trial of MarkMyWords next...
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Message: 2
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 15:02:27 -0900
From: Chris Lott <chris <at> chrislott.org>
Subject: Re: Mac markdown editor that saves as .txt
To: "Discussion related to Markdown."
<markdown-discuss <at> six.pairlist.net>
Message-ID:
<CAHJRaA5SUp1fodAb1j4BpD7uK96a=Cdd4h28iUN59evGDF7Hog <at> mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 2:48 PM, Nicole C <ncat999 <at> gmail.com> wrote:
>
> What I want is an attractive Mac app for writing (primarily blog posts and
> emails) that saves its files as .txt . Most of them save as .md or .markdown
> instead, and since there doesn't seem to be a true markdown editor for
> Android yet, using these programs isn't compatible with my phone.

Is this just an issue that the Android app can't be told to open files
with different extensions?

It annoys me that so many Markdown editors won't allow for arbitrary
file extensions, though a few had come around last I looked.

c
--
Chris Lott <chris <at> chrislott.org>

------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 19:46:51 -0500
From: Fletcher Penney <fletcher <at> fletcherpenney.net>
Subject: Re: Mac markdown editor that saves as .txt
To: "Discussion related to Markdown."
<markdown-discuss <at> six.pairlist.net>
Message-ID: <9E04ACA3-331B-4CF4-BEC2-15D222B815D8 <at> fletcherpenney.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Not sure I follow - Composer saves files in plain text, and you can use whatever file extension you like.

And you don't have to use the default theme with solarized colors if you want a less colorful editor window.

What does it not do in this regard that you are looking for?

Fletcher

--
Fletcher T. Penney
fletcher <at> fletcherpenney.net

On Feb 1, 2012, at 6:48 PM, Nicole C wrote:

> So, are there any markdown editors for the Mac that do all the "pretty" things (receding the code, stylizing your text, etc) but that DON'T save as .md or .markdown files? Am I correct that Macchiato only saves in markdown format? I'd even take something like MMD Composer, with its colorized & stylized text, if it saved in plain text format.
>

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Message: 4
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2012 10:19:28 +0100
From: Jan Erik Mostr?m <lists <at> mostrom.pp.se>
Subject: Re: Mac markdown editor that saves as .txt
To: "Discussion related to Markdown."
<markdown-discuss <at> six.pairlist.net>
Message-ID:
<CALGRW_xyCkUBLQ_Ynpqm5nD=CrU=mookYbPy16UY4Zzx3JE94A <at> mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

If you use BBEdit you can set it to use Markdown for the default
language for txt-files (and md and markdown and ...)

- jem

------------------------------

Message: 5
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2012 10:29:14 +0100
From: Lasar Liepins <lasar <at> liepins.net>
Subject: Re: Mac markdown editor that saves as .txt
To: "Discussion related to Markdown."
<markdown-discuss <at> six.pairlist.net>
Message-ID: <65814B60-717D-4AFC-BE3E-E1F3490AA416 <at> liepins.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Hi,

ByWord, iA Writer and probably most of the other apps you mentioned
will by default save to .md or .mdown files, but that is just the
file suffix. These files ARE plain text.

It's just a way to distinguish between "normal" plain text files and
markdown-formatted plain text files.

Rename your file.md to file.txt and it will work just as well. When saving
a new document the apps should prompt you for a file name that ends in
.md as well (unless you have that "hide suffix" checkbox checked), you
can replace it with .txt right away.

Greetings,

_Lasar

On 2012-02-02, at 01:02, Chris Lott wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 2:48 PM, Nicole C <ncat999 <at> gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> What I want is an attractive Mac app for writing (primarily blog posts and
>> emails) that saves its files as .txt . Most of them save as .md or .markdown
>> instead, and since there doesn't seem to be a true markdown editor for
>> Android yet, using these programs isn't compatible with my phone.
>
> Is this just an issue that the Android app can't be told to open files
> with different extensions?
>
> It annoys me that so many Markdown editors won't allow for arbitrary
> file extensions, though a few had come around last I looked.
>
> c
> --
> Chris Lott <chris <at> chrislott.org>
> _______________________________________________
> Markdown-Discuss mailing list
> Markdown-Discuss <at> six.pairlist.net
> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
>

--
_Lasar Liepins
lasar <at> liepins.net
http://liepins.net/
http://10110101.net/

------------------------------

Message: 6
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2012 02:21:29 -0800
From: Spencer Wysinger <swysinger <at> tivo.com>
Subject: Re: Mac markdown editor that saves as .txt
To: "Discussion related to Markdown."
<markdown-discuss <at> six.pairlist.net>
Message-ID: <2F1872DA-8137-466E-9B19-58800EA31EF1 <at> tivo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Let's also give some love to TextMate, one of the best Mac editors around (tho it costs money). They have a Markdown bundle that does lots of neat things and, as dictated by the name, it works exclusively with plain text files.

Spencer

On Feb 2, 2012, at 1:29 AM, Lasar Liepins wrote:

> Hi,
>
> ByWord, iA Writer and probably most of the other apps you mentioned
> will by default save to .md or .mdown files, but that is just the
> file suffix. These files ARE plain text.
>
> It's just a way to distinguish between "normal" plain text files and
> markdown-formatted plain text files.
>
> Rename your file.md to file.txt and it will work just as well. When saving
> a new document the apps should prompt you for a file name that ends in
> .md as well (unless you have that "hide suffix" checkbox checked), you
> can replace it with .txt right away.
>
> Greetings,
>
> _Lasar
>
> On 2012-02-02, at 01:02, Chris Lott wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 2:48 PM, Nicole C <ncat999 <at> gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> What I want is an attractive Mac app for writing (primarily blog posts and
>>> emails) that saves its files as .txt . Most of them save as .md or .markdown
>>> instead, and since there doesn't seem to be a true markdown editor for
>>> Android yet, using these programs isn't compatible with my phone.
>>
>> Is this just an issue that the Android app can't be told to open files
>> with different extensions?
>>
>> It annoys me that so many Markdown editors won't allow for arbitrary
>> file extensions, though a few had come around last I looked.
>>
>> c
>> --
>> Chris Lott <chris <at> chrislott.org>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Markdown-Discuss mailing list
>> Markdown-Discuss <at> six.pairlist.net
>> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
>>
>
>
>
> --
> _Lasar Liepins
> lasar <at> liepins.net
> http://liepins.net/
> http://10110101.net/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Markdown-Discuss mailing list
> Markdown-Discuss <at> six.pairlist.net
> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss

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Fletcher Penney | 2 Feb 19:55

Re: Mac markdown editor that saves as .txt

On Feb 2, 2012, at 1:49 PM, Nicole C wrote:

> Fletcher:  Your post was a mini-revelation for me!  I had assumed that Composer (and similar apps) required
the special markdown file extensions in order to utilize all of their features.  I didn't realize that
manually entering .txt instead of the default would work just fine.  Thank you!  This essentially solves my
problem.  I'll also experiment with customizing the syntax coloring.  

Glad that helped - it is a few extra keystrokes to enter the ".txt", but it's available right away.  I'll look
into a user preference for file extension, but that might take a little while for me to get to.

> I really do like MMD Composer and think the syntax coloring options are more attractive than most out
there.  The one thing I do like about ByWord's coloring that would be nice as an option in Composer (just an
option, not default) is the immediate greying-out of the code marks while retaining the stylized text
(bolded, italicized, etc.)  It makes your text very readable for certain projects.  But I think I could
achieve much the same thing with some creative CSS editing, if I can manage it.

I have thought about the option to "dim" code marks, as you call them.  It would require rewriting much of the
PEG for the highlighter, but it's not impossible.  It's not first on my list of priorities, however, so I
can't promise if/when it will be completed.  I'm actually trying to come up with a totally different
approach to the underlying code, which might offer additional flexibility and performance (I hope.).

> Spencer: I'm curious about the markdown bundle for Textmate, but you're right, it's not a cheap program. 
What sort of neat things does the bundle do?

There is a MultiMarkdown derivative of the Markdown bundle for TextMate that adds some MMD related
features.  Because of my work on Composer, it's no longer under active development by me, but it's still on
GitHub and available for hacking away on.  

F-

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Nicole C | 2 Feb 19:52

Re: Mac markdown editor that saves as .txt (John Laudun)

John, you've hit the nail on the head here. I finally know I can manually change my files to the .txt extension (thanks to helpful suggestions here), but it would be excellent if MMD Composer:

a) had an option in the drop-down to save with the .txt extension, and

b) had a preference the user could set to choose the default file extension for all files.

It would increase ease of compatibility for people like myself who don't have mobile or tablet apps that can read the markdown extensions. And I may not be the only person in the world (especially if they are writer-users vs. programmer-users) not to realize that one could manually make the change to .txt without losing functionality.

-Nicole

P.S. I don't have much to add to your discussion about the various italics options since I wouldn't know how to set up my own MD/MMD version to do such microformatting, but I like your logic and see why it's useful!

On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 12:00 PM, <markdown-discuss-request <at> six.pairlist.net> wrote:

Today's Topics:

1. Re: Mac markdown editor that saves as .txt (John Laudun)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2012 09:21:52 -0600
From: John Laudun <johnlaudun <at> gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Mac markdown editor that saves as .txt
To: markdown-discuss <at> six.pairlist.net
Message-ID: <8E3F40E5-55EB-431D-B431-EBEF707D0EAB <at> gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

I love BBEdit and Textmate as much as the next person, but those aren't answers to the poster's question. MMD Composer is close to what the poster is asking about, but, Fletcher, you have to type in the `txt` extension over the proffered `md` at the save prompt. Have you considered making that a possible preference for user's to select? There are actually a couple of iOS apps that don't recognize the `md` extension, and so I could see this affecting more than the current poster. I use PlainText, and I don't think I've encountered this problem -- I can't remember now, however, if I had to re-set some of its preferences.

While we're on the topic of MMD Composer, and I bring it up here because this might prove an interesting conversation more generally, I'd like to point out that in the Preferences, the question of applying italics is posed as an either/or radio button. Luckily, in actual use the program formats both, no matter which is checked, as italics. This is perfectly acceptable behavior for me. I actually use the two differently: I use asterisks for emphasis, as in marking the use of a word as a term, and I reserve underlines the titles of works.

This makes it possible for me to use a microformat later in an adapted version of MD/MMD. I am "rolling my own", but has any distro of MD pursued a similar logic?

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Fletcher Penney | 2 Feb 19:57

Re: Mac markdown editor that saves as .txt (John Laudun)

On Feb 2, 2012, at 1:52 PM, Nicole C wrote:

> John, you've hit the nail on the head here.  I finally know I can manually change my files to the .txt
extension (thanks to helpful suggestions here), but it would be excellent if MMD Composer:
> 
> a) had an option in the drop-down to save with the .txt extension, and
> 
> b) had a preference the user could set to choose the default file extension for all files.

I replied in another thread that I would like to implement option b at some point.  But keep in mind that typing
".txt" after your file name is probably faster than option a.  And it works right now.  I probably won't
implement option a.

F-

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Nicole C | 2 Feb 20:05

Re: Mac markdown editor that saves as .txt (John Laudun)

Yes, you have a point about the efficiency of just typing .txt vs option a. It would be nice to one day have option b just to prevent an accidental save with the wrong file type (leading to inaccessibility via mobile). Thanks for adding it to your long list of potential future features!

Thanks again for all the help, everyone.

-Nicole

On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 1:57 PM, Fletcher Penney <fletcher <at> fletcherpenney.net> wrote:

On Feb 2, 2012, at 1:52 PM, Nicole C wrote:

> John, you've hit the nail on the head here. I finally know I can manually change my files to the .txt extension (thanks to helpful suggestions here), but it would be excellent if MMD Composer:
>
> a) had an option in the drop-down to save with the .txt extension, and
>
> b) had a preference the user could set to choose the default file extension for all files.

I replied in another thread that I would like to implement option b at some point. But keep in mind that typing ".txt" after your file name is probably faster than option a. And it works right now. I probably won't implement option a.

F-
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