Markdown
Latest
Typed brings a touch of Zen to a minimalist Markdown editor
This seems to be the week for great new text editors. First, we had Desk (US$29.99), a new minimalist Mac writing environment that works great with many blogging platforms including WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, Facebook,and more. I liked its totally distraction-free UI, the ability to use Markdown and some built-in text ornamentation tools interchangeably, and one-click quick publishing to WordPress. Today Realmac Software launched Typed ($19.99), a very similar Mac app with some features that may be more attractive to some writers and bloggers than Desk. As with Desk, launching Typed opens a minimalist interface - essentially a blank piece of paper onto which you can type. That piece of paper comes with an inspirational quote about writing on it that disappears once you've started typing. On the left side of the "paper" window are three buttons that only appear when you hover over them. The topmost button looks like a capital T and allows you to select your paper color - white, sepia, or black - the typeface, and whether or not you want a responsive layout (i.e., have the layout and text size respond to being slimmed down to iPhone or iPad width). The middle button, a pair of glasses, gives you a preview how your text will look in a web browser. Links appear underlined and are active, headings are in the correct size, and strong/emphasized text looks the way it should. A left arrow takes you back to the editor when clicked. I found the typography of Typed to be quite nice, although it really only makes a difference in the editor; previews always appear to be in the same set of fonts. Finally, the bottom button is a share button. Clicking it brings up a list of things you can do with your document - copying it as HTML, sending it via Mail, sending it via Messages, zapping it to another Mac or iOS 8 device via AirDrop, or even using it in different apps via Extensions. At the top of your document is the title, and of course a way to save the current document. iCloud Drive is supported in Typed, and the app creates a folder especially for Typed. Other than that, Typed provides a running word count for statistics - click on it, and you can see how many characters you've used as well. Typed makes more use of menus than does Desk, although you can pretty much use the default settings and be set. Preferences are pretty minimal - you can select from one of eight interfaces, each of which has its own UI sound effects and music associated with it. That music only appears when you're in "Zen mode". That's turned on with a menu selection or by typing Command-Y, and puts the app into full-screen mode. You can have transparency turned on (just slightly) to see your Mac's wallpaper if you wish, and there's also a soundtrack that will play as you type (it can also be toggled off to work in complete silence). Unlike with Desk, which has a built-in way to work with many content management systems (CMS), Typed pretty much just lets you save in a native Markdown format or export as HTML or RTF. This can be handy when using a CMS that accepts either Markdown or HTML as formatted input. Just copy what you've entered into Typed to paste as Markdown, export as HTML if that's the way you swing, or copy as HTML if that's what your CMS wants to see. Like Desk, Typed is very minimalist and quite nice if you don't want distractions while writing. Typed is $10 less expensive than Desk, but doesn't include the very useful one-click publishing feature. If you want calming sounds during writing (I don't), they're available in Typed. Desk's pop-up menu for selected text makes it easy to add ornamentation or links without the need to either remember a Markdown shortcut or use the menu bar -- that's something that is missing from Typed. Also missing is the ability to drag and drop an image onto Typed to publish it to a content management system, another handy feature of Desk. Here, you're going to need to upload the image separately and then add an image reference link. The bottom line? Typed is a really well done Markdown text editor that's perfect if you need Markdown or HTML output with a minimum of fuss. If you want to publish directly to your favorite blog with one click, spend the extra ten bucks for Desk.
Alfred, Dropbox, Hazel, and Markdown? All in a day's work
"How does a geek-pastor use a computer?" is a question that I assume a lot of people ask themselves, although they probably don't. But if they did, this would be one answer: I need to make a list of the readings and sermon titles for the church secretary and choir director, so one can make the weekly worship guide, and the other can plan the music. I put my schedule up as a web page, like this: The reading is linked to the text so that everyone involved can easily access the text (I'll need it for sermon preparation, and the choir director will need it to see what the text is about so she can try to match it to potential hymns/anthems). Which reminds me: I have an Alfred shortcut for looking up Bible passages from the NRSV: A month year of Sundays Today the church secretary reminded me that I needed to update the list, as I had gone through all of the previous weeks that I had scheduled (oops). I decided that it was a good time to make a list of all of the Sundays between now and the end of 2015; that way I could start to fill in the dates of special events, vacation, etc. So... how would a sane person make a list of Sundays? Maybe look at a calendar? Try to figure them out in your head? Not me. I wrote a shell script: Actually I made my loop a little more complex, in order to give me the Markdown formatting that I wanted for the list: That gave me a nice, clean "unordered list" in HTML. The first line under the date will be the Scripture Reading. The second line will be the sermon title. The third line (if any) will be any notes about that particular Sunday. Fortunately I didn't have to include all of that in the output because I could use CSS' "generated content" feature to automatically add it for me: Markdown Markdown is a simple way of writing plain text which can be automatically translated into HTML (the language of web pages). But I don't want to have to remember to manually update the HTML page every time I edit the plain text Markdown file. So I have Hazel do that for me: Translation: Any time the file worship.mmd in the folder worship.luo.ma is updated, run that script on it, which will automatically convert it from Markdown to HTML and save it as the file index.html. The ~/Sites/worship.luo.ma/ folder is linked to my Dropbox, so I can edit that file on any of my Macs (or on my iPad or iPhone), and every time I press "Save" the website version will update, usually in less than a minute (the amount of time it takes Dropbox to sync and Hazel to notice the file has changed). (Have I mentioned how much I love having a MacMiniColo server? Because I do. A lot.) You can see the result for yourself at http://worship.luo.ma, or view the Markdown file at http://worship.luo.ma/worship.mmd. Now... if only I could get Hazel to clean up my actual desktop.
Marked 2 for OS X arrives from the mind of Brett Terpstra
When he's not working behind the scenes at AOL to make sites like Engadget, TUAW and Joystiq look great, Brett Terpstra spends his time writing books and developing amazing apps. Today Brett announced the availability of Marked 2 (US$11.99), the latest iteration of his Markdown preview application for OS X. To start with, here's what Marked is all about: if you use a text editor to write formatted documents in Markdown, Marked provides a real-time preview of how that formatting will look once your document is posted online or printed. The original version of the app is still supported and available on the App Store for $3.99, but longtime users of Marked will definitely want to point themselves in the direction of the Marked 2 website and get the new version with all of its many features: Built-in MultiMarkdown 4.2, including in-line footnotes Support for Fountain and CriticMarkup Improved search features, including case-sensitive and whole-word options Live highlighting of common or overused phrases Additional export file types, including DOC, DOCX, ODT, RTF, RTFD with included images, and paginated PDF The full feature set is included in the PR blast below. TUAW will have a full review of Marked 2 in the near future. Show full PR text Marked 2 released for Mac OS X - Published on 09/26/13 Brett Terpstra today releases Marked 2 for OS X. Marked allows you to preview your Markdown as you write in your favorite text editor. It tracks your file changes & updates the preview as you go, automatically scrolling to the point in the file where you're currently working. Marked 2 brings a new level of high-quality writing tools to the best Markdown previewer in the world. In addition to Scrivener support, it now supports everything from clipboard previews to MarsEdit blog post previews. Winona, Minnesota - Independent developer, author and blogger, Brett Terpstra today is pleased to announce the release of Marked 2 for OS X. Marked is an app which allows you to preview your Markdown (in any flavor) as you write in your favorite text editor. It tracks your file changes and updates the preview as you go, even automatically scrolling to the point in the file where you're currently working. Marked 2 expands the feature set greatly. Marked 2 ($11.99) includes a rewrite of the file watching system for speed and accuracy. It speeds up just about every part of the app, making it even easier to get your work done without worrying about how it's going to look or waiting for your preview to update. In addition to Scrivener support, Marked now supports everything from clipboard previews to MarsEdit blog post previews. It has a fast search, keyword highlighting and much more. Here's a taste: * MultiMarkdown 4.2 built in, including inline footnotes * Alternative "Discount" parser built in * Fountain support * CriticMarkup support * Advanced document statistics with reading time and readability indexes * Custom processor, pre-processor and additional arguments fields * Collapse/expand sections by headlines for fast navigation New and improved search features: * Case sensitive option * Whole word option * Regular expressions * CSS selector searching * Keyword highlighting: * Live highlighting of common/overused phrases * Regex/wildcard search for keyword/phrase highlighting * Keyword drawer with match counter to easily add temporary keywords for highlighting while previewing HTML preview improvements: * Detect images in Markdown and HTML and watch for changes * Detect php include('file')s and watch for changes * Detect JS and CSS in HTML files and add them to the watch list More ways to incorporate Marked into your workflow: * MarsEdit preview * VoodooPad preview of current page * Preview clipboard * Watch any folder and preview the most recently changed file within it Export palette/Export additional file types: * Export DOC, DOCX or ODT * Export RTF, or RTFD with included images * Paginated PDF export option Pricing and Availability: Marked 2 is available exclusively through Paddle for $11.99 (USD). For a limited time, Marked is available as part of the "Cheaper By The Dozen" bundle from Paddle. For $34.99 you can get a wide variety of quality Mac apps, including Marked 2, Raskin, Habits and many more. For a detailed overview of Marked 2 features, please take a look at the documentation online. Marked 2: http://marked2app.com Documentation: http://marked2app.com/help/ Cheaper By The Dozen Mac Bundle: https://www.paddle.com/bundle/cheaper-by-the-dozen-mac-bundle Download Trial: http://marked2app.com/download/Marked.zip Screenshot: http://marked2app.com/img/hedimg-marked.jpg App Icon: http://marked2app.com/img/Marked-512.png Brett Terpstra is an independent developer, author and blogger living in Minnesota, US. Copyright (C) 2012 Brett Terpstra. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, and Macintosh are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.
Drafts 3.0 adds draft and action management, much more
Drafts, the iOS note-taker from Agile Tortoise, has been updated to version 3.0, and it's a big one. Drafts 3.0 is available now for the iPad (US$3.99) and iPhone ($2.99), and it's a free update for existing users. Much like Apple's own Notes, Drafts lets you quickly jot things down (we recently featured Drafts as a Daily iPhone App) But it's so much more than that. Use Drafts to create "actions" for moving your text into other apps, or sharing with family, friends or co-workers. You can even geek out and create complex workflows that interact with other apps. Drafts can be as simple or involved as you like. In both scenarios, it's fast and useful. There's a lot to like and play with in this release; so much so, in fact, that I'm going to pore over it a bit more for a full review soon. In the meantime, here's an overview of what to expect from Drafts 3.0. This update adds draft management and action management. The new action manager gives you four customizable panes of actions -- ways of interacting with other iOS apps or web services. You needn't scroll a long list to find the actions you want. You could, for example, have sharing actions on one pane (Twitter, ADN, Facebook or email), productivity actions on another (OmniFocus, Reminders and Fantastical) and writing-based actions on a third, like Markdown and send to Byword. Draft management works in a similar way. The scrolling list is replaced with an inbox, an archive and a list of pinned drafts. Swipe any draft to pin it, archive it or move it back to the inbox. It's a seemingly simple change but it goes a long way to keeping things organized. There's fun new geeky stuff, too. New Evernote actions let you create/append/prepend to notes in Evernote. It can process notes in Markdown now, too. Integration with Apple's Reminders has also been improved. You can now opt to import reminders right into Drafts, which is handy. You can also use an action to create new reminders or even start new lists in Reminders if a list does not yet exist. Super handy. Additionally, if you use TextExpander, your saved snippets can now be expanded when you run a custom Drafts action. The iPhone version of the app features an extended keyboard. There's a lot more in there -- this is a huge release. Drafts is a handy, useful tool for the iPhone and iPad. Version 3.0 makes it so much better. Keep an eye out for my in-depth review soon.
Ulysses strives and seeks to be a better text editor for Mac
Not long after I got my first personal Mac in 2004, I began looking for a robust writing program to replace Microsoft Word. There were a few good offerings that catered to what I wanted -- a word processor and a project manager. There was Circus Ponies' NoteBook, and I also used CopyWrite for a time. I also tried the initial version of Ulysses. Originally released in 2004, Ulysses was everything I wanted in a writing program. It was an organized text editor aimed at creative writers, but the big drawback was the extremely hefty price tag. At the time, a full license was around 80 Euros, a pricepoint that carried on for several more years. The price had dropped by the time version 2 rolled around in 2009, but years before, I was lured away by a little beta program called Scrivener Gold. This eventually became the Mac writing powerhouse Scrivener. Nearly nine years after I first looked at Ulysses, I'm taking a second look. This time, it's a keeper. UI Scrivener users will find that Ulysses looks familiar. The overhauled app resembles Scrivener now in its three-paned setup. The left pane identifies where files are stored, similar to Mail. You can see your entire library or drill it down to documents stored in iCloud (if enabled) or items stored locally. The middle pane features your documents, known as sheets. The right is your editing pane, and you can open a fourth pane that shows you basic keyboard and Markdown shortcuts, something I find extremely useful. You can organize sheets by assigning a header at the start of the document, then use bookmarks, subgroups, filters, and smart folders to further organize them. I really wish you could give sheets unique names without assigning it a header, just in case you forget to remove that header when exporting it. If you have a long document with multiple headers, you can leap from header to header using an option in the toolbar. However, this feature doesn't work if you are using bookmarks and headers in a sheet. Deleting bookmarks is also cumbersome. Tip: Double-click on the part of the bookmark that sticks outside the document to get rid of it. There are several view modes you can toggle among, and going into full screen provides true distraction-free writing. Use Unlike other members of the TUAW staff, I'm not a power coder, and my knowledge of Markdown is rudimentary. I managed to get Sublime Text 2 set up, but felt the $70 was far too pricey for my needs. I write comic scripts in Scrivener, but I want just a nice plain text editor for my work with TUAW and PennLive.com. If you've not explored text editors beyond TextEdit, or you're married to Microsoft Word, Ulysses is a good place to start. It visualizes links, images, headings, code and more. Typing the Markdown code for links and images brings up a popup box that allows you to paste in links or drag-and-drop an image to the file. Individual files are called sheets, and you can join them by highlighting two sheets and "glueing" them together. One thing I really like about Ulysses is the handy cheat sheet included for Markdown. As someone who is still getting used to writing in the language, it's nice to have those shortcuts at hand rather than toggle between windows when I forget a shortcut. The cheat sheet changes depending on if you're using basic Markdown, Markdown XL or Textile in your document. You can change what style you're using by hovering your mouse at the top of the sheet, no matter where you are in the document. You can also use this to add keywords and notes to your sheet. But you don't need to know Markdown to use Ulysses. There are keyboard functions for basic functions such as styling a text in bold or italics or adding a URL. It's the perfect marriage of a Markdown editor and the advantages of writing program such as Microsoft World. For Markdown fans, what few services are missing in Ulysses can be rectified by installing Markdown Service Tools, which can be used systemwide. Another of Ulysses' strengths is the Quick Export tool, which does one-click exporting of your file as Markdown, text, HTML or a PDF, copies the text to the clipboard or opens your file in a number of programs. You can preview your text in a variety of applications, and Brett Terpstra says that with its next update, Marked will provide integration with Ulysses (he says it's in review right now). Basic statistics are also available, including an estimated reading speed. Ulysses is also integrated with Daedalus Touch, an iOS text editor also by the Soulmen. You can sync among copies of Ulysses and Daedalus Touch with iCloud. I would like to see similar integration with non-Soulmen iOS text editors, such as Drafts, but can see why that would not be a priority. Sync worked well with iCloud. I started this review on my MacBook Air, then picked it up where I left off on my MacBook Pro. I suspect there might be an issue when Ulysses tries to sync with iCloud and you can't reach it. The only time the program crashed on me was when I had Wi-Fi turned off and was unable to sync with iCloud. You can add Dropbox as a source, something I didn't figure out until it was mentioned in the Stale Coffee review. Conclusion Programs such as Microsoft Word and Pages put an emphasis on making your text look good. Ulysses, however, makes your text work. No matter how you set your preferences, the exported result will be clean code that will make your web producer very happy if you write for any website. While Scrivener will always be my go-to for creative writing, Ulysses will be the program I use for reporting. Ulysses is on sale for US$19.99. But with a $39.99 regular pricepoint, there should be a demo version. There are just enough quirks with it that you need to try it before you spend nearly $40 on it.
Productivity Tip: Read the manual, or take a class
There was a time when Mac owners scoffed at their PC-loving counterparts, who had to pore over paper manuals to grok the essentials of a software program before they tried to use it. When graphical user interfaces were introduced, a lot of focus was on making software intuitive and easy to use. There were also hardware constraints -- not much CPU power or memory, minimal storage, low-resolution displays -- that forced applications to be simple by design. Modern applications, whether on the desktop or on mobile, have a lot more room to maneuver, and consequently may arrive with a much steeper learning curve While your average iOS app may seem simple enough, quite often there are bells and whistles you might not know about. iPad apps may use the increased screen real estate to add more (and more obscure) options, and Mac or web applications can be far more complex than anything available on mobile platforms. While it might seem like cheap advice to "read the manual," I find very few people actually do. There's an entire industry built around learning software tools, like the Take Control series, which I find immensely helpful. Granted, most software manuals are written in plodding, feature by feature style and not as entertaining "here's how you solve this problem" books, but even that dry documentation can be vital to your efficacy when using the software. When I started using iBank, shortly after its debut, I was lured in by its accessible design. "This seems simple enough," I said as I started entering transactions. Over time it became apparent that I had barely scratched the surface of iBank's functionality. I eventually gave up on the program -- only to return over a year later, armed with more clues. This time I read the manual, in no small part because almost every question I looked up on the IGG Software Knowledgebase had an answer in the manual. Another example: Productivity software. While applications like Things are simple enough, there's often a lot of functionality hidden in the manual. You may not understand how to tap into these features if you're just reading "This does that" in the documentation. This is where additional help may be required. In my case, for task management I use OmniFocus (after trying every other "to do" application under the sun). OmniFocus isn't a simple list maker; it is a powerful database which can help you sort through mountains of tasks to allow you to focus on what exactly needs to be done next. You could likely spend days reading the manual and still come away with the "what now?" feeling. You could buy a book, but sometimes books on niche products turn out more like dry manuals. There's another answer, however. For deeper, more powerful applications, I recommend paying for additional learning materials. I bought an excellent book on DEVONThink Pro from Take Control and I no longer feel overwhelmed by the powerful software. For OmniFocus, I knew I needed to use it better, so I upped the ante and bought into the Asian Efficiency series of posts on using OmniFocus. Take Control books are great, but (for me) sometimes the low cost can cause a lack of motivation. Asian Efficiency is more like an online course, and the cost is much higher than just a book. It's a powerful motivator to know you're wasting more than an evening of poker's amount of money with a course if you ignore it. This goes double for any app that's crucial to your business workflow; if you're earning your rent with Adobe's CS suite, don't stint on the training or courseware as you move from CS 5 to CS6. The hour you save searching for that missing dialog box or hidden feature might be billable. We're starting to see some really amazing ebooks arrive on the iBookstore, too. These leverage all the multimedia functions in iBooks and if you're a visual learner, they can be vastly more effective than reading text alone. A great example is Markdown by David Sparks and Eddie Smith (our review here). By using video and audio in addition to text, there's almost no chance you'll walk away scratching your head. The downside is these media-enabled iBooks will quickly fill up your iPad's storage. I also recommend going to focused conferences, or events like Macworld/iWorld, where there are sessions aplenty on various software packages and workflows (several TUAW folks have given talks at Macworld). Often these give you a bigger picture and show you how to integrate multiple tools into a consistent workflow. You'll also have the opportunity to ask questions of speakers and attendees, and this can often be the most helpful thing of all as you share tips and tricks and learn what matters most to you. Finally, don't be afraid to seek out a guru who knows the app backwards and forwards. Many app experts share their tips and training suggestions on Twitter, Facebook or Google Plus, or on application-specific forums hosted by the developer or third-parties. Be polite, show that you've done your legwork first (if the question could have been answered by a fifteen-second scan of the manual, it's not a good use of your time or the guru's wisdom), and you might be able to draw on some help from above. This is the first in a series of weekly productivity tips here on TUAW. If you have any of your own, send them in via our feedback page.
TUAW Bookshelf: Markdown by David Sparks & Eddie Smith
Markdown (US$9.99, iPad only) by David Sparks and Eddie Smith, offers a terrific introduction to the Markdown plain text-to-HTML conversion spec. Originally created to provide an easier way to produce web content, Markdown is now an indispensable tool for developers and bloggers. This intro text surveys Markdown and offers a reference and tutorial for both those who are new to the technology and those who want to improve their Markdown skills. The core subject is actually quite small, so the authors have wisely focused on the bigger picture -- how do you use Markdown on various platforms and tools. The book consists of text (130 pages) and screen casts (with over an hour and a half of video and an hour of audio interviews). Yes, the download is enormous -- 850 MB. The book is well-organized and clearly written. The videos were pertinent and helpful -- they felt as if I had taken home my own little personal tech conference. Markdown is not, in and of itself, a big topic. You can easily search for and find cheat sheets. If you're that kind of person, this isn't the book for you. What this field guide offers is a really pleasant introduction from experienced experts, who give you a warm and knowledgeable overview of the topic with a lot of depth. I don't think anyone will regret the purchase price of 10 bucks. The book is available in both OS X and PDF formats from the author website. I reviewed only the iBooks version.
MultiMarkdown Composer 2 is a powerful, flexible Markdown-based text editor
MultiMarkdown Composer 2 has just been released and is currently available for US$5. Long story short: if you like to write in Markdown, you should get this app. Why MultiMarkdown? Markdown has been around for almost a decade, and has not changed much since its initial release. It gives people a simple way to make readable documents which are easily converted into HTML. MultiMarkdown was created to add some frequently-requested features such as table support and footnotes, as well as working around some difficulties in Markdown itself, such as 'underscores in URLs' (or what I like to call "How do you solve a problem like Wikipedia links?") I find MultiMarkdown's footnote support to be hugely beneficial, and consider it fairly essential to any significant writing that I do. Why MultiMarkdown Composer? The biggest challenge facing people who write in Markdown these days is that there are a whole host of different variations of Markdown out there. Most of them either add some feature to Markdown or fix some problem. Some of them might say that they are using 'Markdown' but are actually using a variant. For example, Tumblr says that it supports Markdown, but it also automatically links URLs (which isn't what strict Markdown down) and adds support for MultiMarkdown-style footnotes. Now, I happen to think that MultiMarkdown is the most useful variant of Markdown because the changes and additions bring features that I like, but if you want strict Markdown syntax enforcement, MultiMarkdown Composer can help you too. Just choose Format > Markdown instead of Format > MultiMarkdown. However, I think a better option is to write locally in MultiMarkdown using MultiMarkdown Composer, and then have it generate the HTML that you will use to post into whatever blog or CMS that you are using. That way you will not be relying on someone else's interpretation or implementation of Markdown, and can still use all of the additions that MultiMarkdown has to offer. New Features in MultiMarkdown Composer version 2 Live Preview: One of my favorite features in MultiMarkdown Composer version 2 is the live-preview. While version 1 integrated very well with Marked, I often found it frustrating to have to switch to another app to see my document previewed. Actually I find it annoying to have to switch to another window. There are several 'Markdown editors' available, and several of them have offered a 'split screen' mode where the window is divided into two halves: left side for editing, right side for preview.[1] MultiMarkdown Composer version 2 supports this feature and lets you choose which side you want to use for preview. MultiMarkdown Composer comes with several 'CSS-like' stylesheets to customize how the preview and editor is displayed, and it is very easy to adapt them if you want to make your own. If you still want to use MultiMarkdown Composer with Marked, you can do that too, or you can just turn off the preview window altogether if you want to focus on writing. There are three 'modes' which you can use: Typewriter Mode, which keeps the current line centered on the screen as you type Focus Mode which blurs the top and bottom of the current document. There is also a preference setting to allow you to control the 'Focus Mask Height' which determines how much of the document will be shown or hidden when in Focus Mode. Auto Zoom which will automatically resize the editor as you resize the window. Auto-zoom is a bit hard to explain, but very cool to see in practice. If you are writing on a small screen and want to simply focus on what you are writing, I suggest turning off the preview, turn on Auto Zoom, and make the MultiMarkdown Composer window full-screen. Inspectors: MultiMarkdown Composer now also has three floating inspectors: Info, References, and Table Of Contents (TOC). Each of the inspectors can be toggled using a keyboard shortcut for easy access when you need them, or to hide them when you don't. The Info panel contains a running count for words, characters, and lines. The Reference panel keeps a handy list of your reference links, and makes it easy to insert them again if you need to use them in more than once place. The Table Of Contents panel not only lets you see the entire outline of your document, but it allows you to drag and drop different sections and rearrange your Markdown document. That's incredibly cool and useful, especially if you are writing a longer document and need to reorganize it. Built in Cheat Sheet: I wrote a quick primer for Markdown, but MultiMarkdown Composer now has something even better: a built-in syntax guide which you can open (and close) using the keyboard shortcut ⌘ + / (or use the "Help" menu). This will give you fast access not only to the basics of Markdown, but also the special syntax additions available in MultiMarkdown. Elastic Tabstops: I have to admit that I had never heard of Elastic Tabstops before, but for those of you who don't write everything in 12pt Inconsolata-g with real tabs, I could see how this would be useful. (MultiMarkdown Composer also has a feature to change tabs to spaces or vice versa.) 'Old' features in MultiMarkdown Composer which are very handy: MultiMarkdown Composer has features to clean up metadata, lists, and tables which is very handy. It also does a very good job of determining when you are creating a list and continuing it automatically. There's also a 'Toggle List Type' option (which may be new or maybe I just missed it before) which will change an ordered (numbered) list into an unordered (bulleted) list. Pricing You probably know the drill by now: Apple doesn't give developers any way to offer 'upgrade pricing' so when new versions of apps are released, developers generally offer the app for a reduced price for a limited time. That allows existing users to buy the new version for a reduced price, but also allows new users to get it for that price too. While I think this is sort of a raw deal for developers who are losing a significant amount of profit for new users, it doesn't appear that Apple is going to change this policy any time soon. If you are reading this after the introductory price has expired, don't worry, you will still be buying a great app which is well worth the asking price. Use Markdown? Use MultiMarkdown Composer. I have been writing in Markdown for as long as I can remember, and have been writing in MultiMarkdown since I learned of it. For me it's a simple decision, I've tried several different 'markdown text editors' and I keep coming back to MultiMarkdown Composer. If you have been thinking about learning Markdown or MultiMarkdown, MultiMarkdown Composer makes it very easy to do. You can find out more about MultiMarkdown Composer at http://multimarkdown.com or learn more about MultiMarkdown Syntax to see why it's a better alternative. Mou might not have been the first app to offer it, but it was the first that I saw. ↩
Tumblr updates its app with iPad support and Explore tab, ends day of Android envy
More than a month after launching its native iOS app and a day after releasing a tablet-friendly layout on Android, blog network Tumblr has updated its app to support Apple's tablets. It's also added markdown support and a new Explore tab, but the big bonus for iPad owners is sharing Community GIFs and other memes without having to slog through that silly 2x zoom of an iPhone menu. The free app is in iTunes now, check for the latest update or just hit the link below to try it out yourself.
Nice roundup of Markdown-ready Mac apps
Markdown can be a huge time saver, once you figure out how to use the lightweight markup language. Learning it, though, can be daunting to those with little or no prior knowledge of HTML. To help get you started, Appstorm recently published a list of over 35 different OS X apps that support the language. The list is broken down into preview apps, regular editors, distraction-free editors, editors for the programmer and other text-based apps like the journal Day One that integrate Markdown. You can check out the full list on Appstorm's website and then read our Markdown primer, which contains the basic syntax to help get you started.
VoodooPad 5: wiki magic
For those of us who nerd out about things like desktop wikis, VoodooPad 5 (from the creator of Acorn) is an exciting release. It brings new capabilities so powerful that they should come with a "for good, not evil" warning. If you're not familiar with VoodooPad, it's a desktop wiki with media embedding capabilities, a scriptable interface and a lot of power under the hood. Whether you want to use it for note-taking, project management or even maintaining documentation and live websites, it's a powerhouse. We may have mentioned it once or twice before. What's so great about version 5? First, Dropbox sync is greatly improved. You can even share docs with multiple people and see who edited what, when. For those of us of the Markdown persuasion, there's a new page type specifically for Markdown, with editing features and syntax highlighting. If you build large documents -- say, a documentation project for your software -- you can publish the entire document as a PDF or ePub book. There's a new feature called "Collections" that lets you create tables of contents and determine page order, which makes the export features much more useful for more linear output formats. We've always been able to do fun things like write event scripts that search for certain @tags and compile them, but the new To-Dos palette offers a faster, customizable solution for this. There are more flexible event scripts, new scripting language support (including the ability to write scripts in JavaScript). There are even "scriptlets," your own small scripts that can be embedded directly within a page. There's plenty more, as you can see in the release notes. VoodooPad 5 is available in the Mac App Store for US$24.99 (limited time price), or directly from Flying Meat's store (same price).
Byword for iOS released
Those who know me know that Byword has become my favorite writing tool. I've been keeping my mouth shut about this release during the beta testing period, but I'm really excited to announce it's arrival: Byword for iOS. The iOS version includes the Markdown-editing features that I love on the Mac, and has full iCloud and Dropbox sync between devices. There's an update to the Desktop version as well, enabling iCloud support for the multi-device sync. You can start typing on your Mac, pick up your iPhone and walk away, then continue typing wherever you end up. Your text is ready and waiting for you. Byword for iOS is a universal app, and one price gets you editing bliss on your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch (or whatever combination you happen to have). The price is starting at US $2.99, and will start going up by $1 every three days until it reaches its standard price of US $4.99. Byword for Mac is available on the Mac App Store for $9.99. Even without the new iOS companion app, it's an excellent writing tool. Portability just makes it that much more useful to me. If you write on a Mac, and especially if you write in Markdown (see the TUAW Markdown Primer) Byword is a gorgeous and elegant environment to do it in. The feature set looks sparse; everything just works. You don't need to see a bunch of buttons, you can just type. Features such as automatic list continuation, selection wrapping, and unobtrusive word count just happen, and additional requirements are filled by keyboard shortcuts. It's worth every penny to me.
Daily Mac App: WriteRoom
It seems every writer, coder or GTD aficionado has a favorite plain text editor on the Mac these days. For everyone who starts each day with a screenful of untitled TextEdit windows full of different short notes (that would describe my dear spouse, for the record) there's a TextMate guru, an Elements fan, a Scrivener loyalist. It's a golden age for the .txt file. One of the strongest contenders in the "distraction free writing" category is Hog Bay Software's WriteRoom, which comes in both Mac and iOS flavors. The Mac version saw an update to version 3.0 on Halloween, adding a NaNoWriMo-essential feature: dynamic word counts. Each file now shows a running count, and with a new session tracking engine you can easily track your output to a .csv spreadsheet file. The new build also adds themed display options, better handling of long documents and Lion-friendly Versions and full screen mode support, in addition to the "classic" blackout approach that hides other active apps. You might not need the full anti-ADHD power of a single-window UI for your writing, so WriteRoom works just fine with traditional document windows. WriteRoom for Mac is $9.99 whether you pick it up in the Mac App Store or directly from the Hog Bay site. Those who bought it within the last year are entitled to a free upgrade; older licenses (including those received in a previous MacHeist software bundle) are entitled to a half-off discount; you can upgrade for $4.99. Note that WriteRoom 3.0 is 10.7-only, so if you're still on Snow Leopard you'll want to stick with the older versions. The iOS version of WriteRoom, which of course cooperates nicely with its Mac cousin via Dropbox sync, is available on the iOS App Store for $4.99; it's a superset of Hog Bay's ad-supported PlainText app, with more visual control and other advanced features (disabling autocorrect, extended keyboards, etc.). One compatibility note: the iOS version does not edit .rtf rich text files, but the Mac version can. If you intend to work on your magnum opus from your iPad, stick with basic plain text files. For myself, I haven't quite found the perfect iPad writing app yet. I love Elements' scratchpad for side notes, while I crave the research power, inboard browser and speedy Markdown formatting of Writing Kit -- but the unchangeable paper background gives me itchy eyes. WriteRoom iOS is among the most comfortable and aesthetically pleasant editors I've tried, though, and for narrative work without a lot of links or Markdown syntax, it's a winner.
Daily iPad App: Elements 2
Elements is one of many text editors available in the App Store. It supports Dropbox, Markdown and TextExpander which makes it popular among iOS users. It's available for the iPhone, iPod touch and the iPad, but the iPad version really shines as a text editor. Version 2 was just released and adds several notable features for editing and exporting documents. The iPad version uses the entire screen and the large onscreen keyboard, which makes it easy to create a text document or markdown file from scratch or edit an existing one on the fly. I don't have a Bluetooth keyboard and was unable to test this functionality in the latest version of the app. All documents can be uploaded to your Dropbox account and synced across devices. Even when you are offline, the file changes will be saved and uploaded when you connect. Elements uploads files to a default /Dropbox/Elements/ folder and you still can't change that location. Variety is the spice of life and Elements has a bunch of export options that let you save your file as an HTML or PDF document. You can export the document to Tumblr, Facebook, Dropbox, Evernote, iTunes, and email. The editor UI has also been tweaked with a new dealt font of Museo Sans, a new Markdown preview view and appearance settings that are now available from the within the app. Elements 2 also removed the ability to change the background color setting, a change that users of the earlier version may find annoying. Elements is a very capable text editor for the writer or coder that uses their iPad regularly. It's a universal app available for US$4.99 from the App Store.
TUAW's Daily Mac App: Byword
To a writer a decent text editor is worth its weight in gold. Unlike Word or Pages, Byword is a text editor that gives you just enough to get the job done, while getting out of your way. In its most basic form it's a plain text editor, but it can also produce and edit rich-text files and MultiMarkdown support, meaning that for the most part, you can get almost any sort of creative writing done within its minimalist writing interface. When windowed, Byword gives you a svelte borderless writing experience, but when full-screen it removes all distractions with a blank off-white background that fills the screen with just a single column of text with some great typography in the center. Various tools like a file type indicator or word and character counters are available at the bottom of the screen in faint text, while search and full-screen buttons are hidden in the top right hand corner. The font size, color, column width and typography can all be customized, even allowing white text on a black background if required. Byword also includes a "focus" mode, which highlights a portion of the text (shown above), fading out the rest. You can choose from one to nine lines or just one paragraph to include in the highlight, which allows you to concentrate on just the text needed at the time. For US$9.99 Byword is a great text editor, providing just enough functionality while getting out of your way.
Paragraft gets iOS Markdown editing right
I just discovered Paragraft, a text editor for iPad and iPhone that boasts some ingenious Markdown features (if I've lost you already, check out the TUAW Markdown Primer for a crash course). The good parts of Paragraft blew me away enough that I'm able to overlook an ugly icon and some bad interface decisions to deliver a fairly glowing endorsement: this is the first app I've found that has really allowed Markdown on iOS to make sense. There's no shortage of Markdown-enabled apps on any Apple platform right now, and I love that. I love Markdown, and while it's far superior to writing HTML or dealing with Rich Text in an iOS environment, I always miss the Markdown speed I can achieve in TextMate and other text editors on the Mac. Nebulous Notes has the flexibility to start getting there, but you have to build all the macros yourself. Other apps handle auto-continuing lists, maybe adding bold and italics, but still leave you digging through multiple levels of iOS keyboards to get to some symbols. TextExpander Touch can help quite a bit, too, but none of these really tap the capabilities of the iPhone and iPad. Paragraft has made me begin to rethink the possibilities.
Byword 1.2, now with Markdown support
Byword is a full-screen, "distraction-free" word processor that has an interesting twist: it focuses on just the text around your cursor (or even just the current line), dimming the rest of your composition so that even that can't distract you. Byword (and its predecessors) are based on the idea that you'll be at the top of your writing game if there's nothing else on your screen. Whether you subscribe to that theory or not, it's becoming an increasingly crowded field. Thankfully, there's more to Byword than just a blank screen and blinking caret. Byword, which can also run in a windowed (non-fullscreen) mode, brings great typography along with its minimalist interface. Some of its brethren, like OmmWriter Dana, have done this as well, but if you add in excellent keyboard navigation, hyphenation support and its unique focus mode, Byword begins to stand on its own. Oh, one more thing. While I don't personally subscribe to the distraction-free idea, Byword has added one thing that always gets my attention in any writing environment: Markdown support. MultiMarkdown support, actually, with footnotes, tables and other fun stuff. Wondering what I'm talking about? Have a look at TUAW's Markdown Primer and the MultiMarkdown documentation for more advanced features. Use Markdown syntax while you're writing, then flip over to the Markdown Preview to see your rendered text. The preview mode has buttons for copying HTML source (great for pasting into blogs) and for exporting the HTML to a file (optionally including the Byword visual styling). Markdown is a great move for Byword. I'm seeing increasing support for this popular format across the board, which I think is a great thing. I do wish for a few things, including my usual plea for advanced editing tools, such as auto-pairing of brackets and automatic list continuation. I would also love to see an option for printing the rendered document directly from Byword. You could print straight to PDF that way, too. If you want a good-looking editor for plain text or minimal rich text and don't want all of the extra buttons and formatting options, this is worth a peek. There's a free trial available on the Byword homepage, and you can pick up Byword on the Mac App Store for US $9.99.
Markdown Primer
Many of the TUAW writers (and readers!) are fans of John Gruber's Markdown, so we tend to review both iOS and Mac apps that support Markdown. If you don't know what Markdown is or how to use it, those articles will probably leave you scratching your head (at best) or angry/frustrated wondering why we're talking about Markdown again. What is Markdown? Markdown is a way to write plain text files that can easily be converted into another format. Most often Markdown is converted to HTML to write web pages, but it's also possible to use it to create other formats such as PDF, RTF, LaTeX and much more. Why use Markdown? Markdown offers a few basic features. "Plain txt 4eva!" Plain text will live forever. OK, maybe not forever, but if you look back over the history of computers, it's clear that popular file formats come and go. If you go back into my personal file archives, you'll find a bunch of files that are all stored in WordPerfect files. Of course when I switched to Mac, I stopped using WordPerfect and switched to MSWord (.doc) and then to Pages. The problem with each of those formats (not to mention all of the others I could mention) is that they change, and many are not natively supported by different computers. Plain text files, on the other hand, work everywhere. Other than some differences in the way file endings are encoded, you can open a plain text file without issue on Mac, Windows and Linux computers, no matter how old or new your computer or operating system is. Easier to read HTML source is messy to read, and doesn't mean much if you don't know HTML and if it isn't laid out nicely. Since Markdown works off some basic formatting principles, reading "raw" Markdown should make sense even the people who don't "know" Markdown. Easier to write HTML isn't all that difficult to write by hand for basic formatting and text markup, but Markdown is easier. Writing <b>bold</b> isn't hard, but **bold** is easier. Using *italics* is easier than <i>italics</i>, and ***bold and italics*** is much easier than <strong><em>bold and italics</em></strong>. Links are also easier. A standard Markdown link begins with the link text in [ ] followed by the URL in ( ), so This is a link to [TUAW](http://tuaw.com) gives you "This is a link to TUAW." Mix with HTML when needed One of the biggest boons to using Markdown for writing HTML is that you don't have to choose between using "just HTML" or "just Markdown" for any given document. If you want to use some of Markdown's features mixed with HTML, go right ahead. They are designed to work together. Markdown For Beginners Showing emphasis: *italic* **bold** ***bold and italic*** (You can use _ in place of * in those examples. I tend to use underscores for italics and asterisks for bold or bold and italics together) Links and Paragraphs For links, the words you want to show go in [ ] and the URL goes in ( ) So [this is a link to TUAW](http://tuaw.com). And if you just want to include a URL and have it "clickable," just put angle brackets around it <http://tuaw.com>. Use blank lines for paragraphs breaks <p>. Use three spaces at the end of a line to force a linebreak <br> without a blank line. Lists and Blocks Start a line with a number followed by a period (.) to make a numbered list (OL), such as "1. This is the first item in a list." Note: If you don't want Markdown to take over numbering your lists, use ")" instead of "." For example, "1) This is the first item in a list which won't be automatically changed by Markdown." Start a line with an (*) for an unordered/bulleted list (UL) Start a line with right angle bracket (>) to blockquote. Increase the number of > to increase blockquote levels. Start a line with a TAB to make a code block. Wrap text in backticks (`) to make it inline code. Headers Start a line with a hash mark (#) to make an H1 (i.e. # This is a Header). Start a line with a double-hash (##) to make an H2 (i.e. ## This is a secondary header). When using # to start a line, you can put # at the end of the line also, but you don't have to, and some Markdown parsers seem to fail on realizing that the # at the end of the line is an option, so I've stopped using it. Markdown for Intermediate users The above covers probably 90 percent of what I use Markdown for, but there is more. Reference Style Links What Johh Gruber calls "reference-style links" in the Markdown Basics and syntax pages allows you to mark links in the text and then put the URLs somewhere else. For example, instead of [This is a link to TUAW][http://tuaw.com] I could write [This is a link to TUAW][TUAW] where the first part [This is a link to TUAW] is the link text and the second part [TUAW] tells Markdown to look for the URL elsewhere. Then you would put a reference link somewhere else, usually at the bottom of the document, like this: [TUAW]: http://tuaw.com That's not bad, but I much prefer using "implicit link names" where you leave the second set of brackets empty. For example: This is a link to [TUAW][] which says to Markdown "use whatever text is in the first set of brackets for the reference link. It would still match to [TUAW]: http://tuaw.com elsewhere. Images There is also a syntax for images:  I tend not to use that very often, because the image is just dropped into the text, without any width or height, which may lead to the page reflowing/jumping around. If you want to float an image over to the right of your paragraph (like most of the images at the beginning of TUAW articles), you'll need to use HTML, not Markdown. You can, however, use HTML combined with Markdown, so if you know the tags, feel free to drop an actual <img> in with styles or classes applied. Other Versions Of Markdown There are a few more features that I haven't mentioned, which you can find on the official Markdown page, but there are also other "implementations" of Markdown, including the extremely popular MultiMarkdown and PHP Markdown Extra, which add extra features onto Markdown's syntax. There are other "Markdown, but also with..." implementations out there. Each one seems to come about when someone has been using Markdown for a while and then decides that they need some additional feature that isn't a part of the official Markdown specification, such as footnotes. Sometimes you might not even realize that you're using one of these "Markdown+" services. For example, Tumblr uses Markdown, but they also will automatically make URLs clickable even if they are not wrapped in angle brackets, and Tumblr also supports MultiMarkdown's format for footnotes, but they just list it as "Markdown." The danger, of course, is that if you get used to using one of these "Markdown+" formats, you may later find that it isn't interoperable with a different app that supports Markdown. So if you are, for example, writing a book using Scrivener with MultiMarkdown, obviously you hope that your footnotes are going to work in 2015. But the point is that even if all of the Markdown parsers in the world are gone in 2015, you will still be able to read your text in Markdown format in any text editor, which will work much better than trying to read one of my old WordPerfect files (which is just text) in a text editor: My thanks to Doc Rock for reminding me of the Markdown cheat sheet I wrote a few months ago.
Notational Velocity ALT adds Markdown support and widescreen view
The runaway success of the iPad has provoked significant demand amongst people who want to seamlessly edit cloud-synced files across their iOS devices and their computers. We've seen a lot of apps vying to be the iOS part of that solution (such as SimpleNote, Elements, WriteRoom, Edito and a whole lot more), but that's only part of the puzzle -- people need something on the desktop end, too. One popular tool for this is Notational Velocity, an open source program by Zachary Schneirov. However, many people aren't entirely satisfied by Notational Velocity's UI and feature set. Because it is open source, developers are free to take the source code, modify it and distribute their changed version -- this is generally called forking in the open source world. We've seen a number of Notational Velocity forks over the years (for example, this one by Steven Frank of Panic or this one by "elasticthreads"). Two days ago, a new edition appeared: from TUAW's own Brett Terpstra comes Notational Velocity ALT (nvALT). nvALT adds several new features to the baseline Notational Velocity app.
Trunk Notes: a Markdown-based wiki, to go
I know, I went and used "wiki" and "Markdown" in the headline and scared off all of the non-nerds. Nerds, welcome. If you're a non-nerd who kept reading, well, keep reading. Markdown is an easy way to create HTML, and wikis are a powerful means of connecting and organizing your notes. Your mobile note-taking deserves a peek at this. Trunk Notes is a note-taking app with a built-in wiki (similar to VoodooPad). It works for both iPad and iPhone and provides great tools for editing (and rendering) Markdown. It also syncs with Dropbox and sends emails in Markdown or rich text (HTML). The wiki feature allows you to create automatic links between pages using WikiWord syntax. It's an extremely fast way to create linked notes with rich formatting. If you don't know Markdown, take my word for it: it's easy. There is some great documentation included in the app, and you'll catch on quickly. Read on for a dive into Trunk Notes.
