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Show HN: Writebin, an inline markdown editor

writebin.io

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Re: Show HN: Writebin, an inline markdown editor

#41

Post by j_m_b »

It seems every time I have a dream for something, it appears on HN the next day!

In academic writing, everyone I know uses MS Word. My fantasy is to use a markdown editor that could take the generated html and produce pdf's. If this editor had a way to generate insertable references along with nicely formatted tables, it could easily be a replacement for such a thing.

It would also be nice if something like this had a git backend to it that would allow a version control of the document that allowed multiple authors to contribute. Also, author notes would be nice. Anyhow, that is my wish list. Awesome project.. really dig the simplicity!

Re: Show HN: Writebin, an inline markdown editor

#42

Post by thauburger »

j_m_b wrote: post #41

It seems every time I have a dream for something, it appears on HN the next day! In academic writing, everyone I know uses MS Word. My fantasy is to use a markdown editor that could take the generated html and produce pdf's. If this editor had a way to generate insertable references along with nicely formatted tables, it could easily be a replacement for such a thing. It would also be nice if something like this had…

That's a great use case that we'd love to support. I like the versioning suggestion as well. Thanks for the great feedback!

Re: Show HN: Writebin, an inline markdown editor

#43

Post by thauburger »

daGrevis wrote: post #34

This is really cool and I'm really a big supporter for this type of editors! Some suggestions: * There should be an option “demo page“, * Paragraphs should be drag-n-droppable, * Arrow keys should take me to the previous/next paragraph, * There should be “a plus icon“ above and below each paragraph, * Inline editor should contain buttons for “bold“, “italic“ etc.., * Pressing “the bold button“ when there's a highligh…

@daGrevis thanks for the kind words and feature suggestions. Based on the feedback, it looks like we'll be focusing on better inline navigation support very soon. We haven't talked about the open source route, as we wanted to get a base editor up and running first. We'd love for you to beta test though, as blogging is definitely a use case we'd love to make better.

Re: Show HN: Writebin, an inline markdown editor

#44

Post by thauburger »

roryokane wrote: post #40
daGrevis wrote: post #34

This is really cool and I'm really a big supporter for this type of editors! Some suggestions: * There should be an option “demo page“, * Paragraphs should be drag-n-droppable, * Arrow keys should take me to the previous/next paragraph, * There should be “a plus icon“ above and below each paragraph, * Inline editor should contain buttons for “bold“, “italic“ etc.., * Pressing “the bold button“ when there's a highligh…

The buttons for surrounding text with one or two asterisks/underscores should not be “bold” and “italic”, but rather “strong” and “emphasized”. Those are the HTML tags they generate, which need not look bold and italic. To generate actual and HTML tags in Markdown, you have to write them inline; there is no syntax shortcut. Also, to add on to your suggestion that buttons should interact with highlighted words, the li…

Great point regarding link insertion. We'll definitely add that to our todos. Thanks!

Re: Show HN: Writebin, an inline markdown editor

#45

Post by thauburger »

flavor8 wrote: post #38

I'm bothered by the overuse of the word "beautiful". Please reconsider using that to describe your product. It's 2013's "epic". Also, you need much better keyboard support. Jumping between sections shouldn't require using the mouse.

I think that's totally fair feedback regarding the product description. Any suggestions? Also, we agree on the inline navigation. There's some complexities based on the limited information textarea exposes regarding caret positions, but we'll be working on an alternative solution.

Re: Show HN: Writebin, an inline markdown editor

#46

Post by thauburger »

agumonkey wrote: post #39

For a reason, new documents show an empty page under: Chromium Version 32.0.1700.107 (248368) console shows: GET http://writebin.io/f/js/logger.js 2ZNsPsJy:21 Uncaught ReferenceError: _Logger is not defined toolbar.js:1 GET http://www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js 2ZNsPsJy:29 Uncaught TypeError: Property 'ToolbarView' of object [object Object] is not a function app.js:1

Thanks for pointing this out, we'll take a look.

Re: Show HN: Writebin, an inline markdown editor

#47

Post by flavor8 »

thauburger wrote: post #45
flavor8 wrote: post #38

I'm bothered by the overuse of the word "beautiful". Please reconsider using that to describe your product. It's 2013's "epic". Also, you need much better keyboard support. Jumping between sections shouldn't require using the mouse.

I think that's totally fair feedback regarding the product description. Any suggestions? Also, we agree on the inline navigation. There's some complexities based on the limited information textarea exposes regarding caret positions, but we'll be working on an alternative solution.

I'm not convinced that you need an adjective to describe the documents. Describe the process/tool instead.

Something like: "An elegant markdown editor for..."?

Re: Show HN: Writebin, an inline markdown editor

#50

Post by bowerbird »

i am polishing an app that's "highly similar", (a.k.a., nearly identical), so... first of all, let me compliment you on your excellent insight. :+)

your website says "accounts coming soon". and i'm curious what that means. whatever it is, i should probably inform you that my app is javascript that works exclusively client-side, saving where you like, including your own site. (with a "last-resort" option to save on my site) and i will be encouraging people to _take_it_, for free (as in beer and speech), which means there might not be much money in this arena...

-bowerbird

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