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Show HN: Fiddle.md – a collaborative writing tool by Swipe

fiddle.md

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Re: Show HN: Fiddle.md – a collaborative writing tool by Swipe

#51

Post by bambax »

hkeide wrote: post #36
bambax wrote: post #19

As soon as the content is over a page long, the "preview" doesn't really work, since what is supposed to be previewed is out of bounds. I had developed a few years ago a markdown editor with live preview, with a mechanism that synchronized the source and the preview, scroll-wise, so the preview would always display the part that was being edited. It didn't take off (at all) so I let it go, but I wish there would be a…

It should be possible to scroll in the preview section, and then keep typing for more than one page length without any problems. Which browser are you using? What is the bahaviour you're seeing? Does the preview "reset" to the top scrolling position? Glad you like it :)

> It should be possible to scroll in the preview section, and then keep typing...

Yes of course, that works, but you have to scroll manually.

Maybe I don't write the way other people do, and that's why I need automatic sync and most people don't: I don't write linearly, I write "all over the place".

I constantly go up and down a document when I'm writing something: what's getting written at the bottom impacts what was written at the top. Also I think of better ways of saying something once I've written it, and once I do I need to make changes.

If, every time I change sections, I need to scroll the preview, it's incredibly distracting/annoying (or, useless: but then it's better to have no preview at all).

Also, once a document is of any serious length (say, over 3 pages), finding the part where you are in the preview can get a little difficult.

Re: Show HN: Fiddle.md – a collaborative writing tool by Swipe

#53

Post by ggordan »

yellowbkpk wrote: post #32

I'm confused how this is collaborative. If a friend sends me a fiddle.md link and I change the content of the document, how do they become aware of my changes? Do I send them my link back?

We tried to approach collaboration in a very simple way that doesn't require accounts and heavy realtime Google Docs-style co-editing. Our collaboration relies on versions and links. Every refresh creates a new version, so as soon as you pass a link to someone, they create a new version automatically. This way you're never editing the same version, even though you're editing the same "document". So it definitely is based on passing links around but making sure there are no conflicts. We're definitely looking into simple ways to notify you that there's a new version created by someone else so it runs even smoother.

You can think of it a bit like a tree system, where you start on the stem and as you share it with others you build independent branches. Hope it makes sense, we're definitely going to work more on that part in the future.

Re: Show HN: Fiddle.md – a collaborative writing tool by Swipe

#55

Post by ci5er »

bambax wrote: post #19

As soon as the content is over a page long, the "preview" doesn't really work, since what is supposed to be previewed is out of bounds. I had developed a few years ago a markdown editor with live preview, with a mechanism that synchronized the source and the preview, scroll-wise, so the preview would always display the part that was being edited. It didn't take off (at all) so I let it go, but I wish there would be a…

stackedit.io handles this part of it pretty well.

Looking at this, I was wondering why this team didn't just fork that for their intended collaboration use-case (which is neat!).

Re: Show HN: Fiddle.md – a collaborative writing tool by Swipe

#56

Post by quinndupont »

As an academic that writes in Markdown (usually solo, offline), this ticks so many boxes for me. I love that for once I may be able to convince my co-authors to collaborate in Markdown instead of Google Docs. Integration with Dropbox is crucial to accomplish this (most academics use Dropbox), but it is missing one step: IMPORT!

It's great to see that I can export to Dropbox, but then how do I roundtrip? Rather than remembering the URL (or copy and pasting from a desktop app), it would be great to be able to load up an existing document from Dropbox, send off a collaboration link, and then have the ability to send the completed (collaboratively written) text back to Dropbox.

Re: Show HN: Fiddle.md – a collaborative writing tool by Swipe

#58

Post by scrollaway »

halosghost wrote: post #49
scrollaway wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense and all (I'm a huge python guy) but... why? RST is a pretty god damn awful format. Markdown lacks a proper standard but that's really the only problem with it... I wish the python community would just adopt Markdown for good and stop trying so hard with rst.

Actually, I completely disagree. Rst can do things that markdown will never be able to do (at least, not any of the common dialects). E.g., you can create your own directives to do special formatting however you'd like. You also have a ton more functionality built-in (e.g., a directive for LaTeX-style math) that is also incredibly uncommon in markdown. Furthermore, the document structure in rst is far more powerful (…

It doesn't matter how much you can do with RST if the syntax is horrible.

The syntax is horrible.

Re: Show HN: Fiddle.md – a collaborative writing tool by Swipe

#59

Post by halosghost »

scrollaway wrote: post #58
halosghost wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I completely disagree. Rst can do things that markdown will never be able to do (at least, not any of the common dialects). E.g., you can create your own directives to do special formatting however you'd like. You also have a ton more functionality built-in (e.g., a directive for LaTeX-style math) that is also incredibly uncommon in markdown. Furthermore, the document structure in rst is far more powerful (…

It doesn't matter how much you can do with RST if the syntax is horrible. The syntax is horrible.

I can see how you might feel that way about some of it. But I actually do not really find that to generally be the case. And plenty of it is far nicer than Mdown.

However, this is jumping into completely subjective territory; you, of course, do not have to like rst, just as I do not have to like mdown. So, I will stick with my original sentiment of wishing these services would support the thing I like :)

Re: Show HN: Fiddle.md – a collaborative writing tool by Swipe

#60

Post by scrollaway »

halosghost wrote: post #59
scrollaway wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter how much you can do with RST if the syntax is horrible. The syntax is horrible.

I can see how you might feel that way about some of it. But I actually do not really find that to generally be the case. And plenty of it is far nicer than Mdown. However, this is jumping into completely subjective territory; you, of course, do not have to like rst, just as I do not have to like mdown. So, I will stick with my original sentiment of wishing these services would support the thing I like :)

My syntax comment was a bit abstract, apologies about this. I'm referring to RST's strictness and how painful it is to deal with, for example, something as simple as links. I don't really care which way you bold or italicize words, really...
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