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Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

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Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#181

Post by sitharus »

dingaling wrote: post #141
nextos wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be my Emacs bias, but I find Org much nicer as a format. For instance, timestamps and todo items make it trivial to use Org as a planner. This would be great to have in applications such as Apple Notes.

Which is what frustrates me with the invention of Markdown. A ten minute web search would have revealed it was already a solved problem, instead of splintering and inventing a new 'standard'. But that was somehow too much effort.

Markdown was never created as a standard, it was created to fit one person's workflow and how they liked to format documents. It just so happened that it's pretty similar to how many others like to format documents.

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#182

Post by eviks »

derefr wrote: post #22
marbletiles wrote: post #2

> Instead of tapping buttons to bold text or create headers, users could type *bold* or # Header directly into their notes. Which will be more keystrokes, not fewer – it's faster to get to the formatting buttons than it is the punctuation keyboard on iOS, and even on Mac the shortcut commands are often faster too. Notes was a fanastic example of a rich-text environment, but if Markdown input helps the die-hards that…

But formatting already-typed text on iOS is incredibly fiddly (as you have to select a text span first, and iOS fights you every step of the way when you do this — especially if the span starts or stops at something iOS doesn't consider a "whole token.") Meanwhile, inserting punctuation representing formatting into already-typed text, merely requires placing the insertion caret, which is much less fiddly.

> iOS fights you every step of the way when you do this

oh, indeed, that's true even for simple movements: you tap somewhere, the cursors jumps there momentarily and then jumps back. You tap again, same thing. So the system knows what you want, but just "competently" engineered in a way to ignore you...

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#183

Post by eviks »

ninkendo wrote: post #75
derefr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But formatting already-typed text on iOS is incredibly fiddly (as you have to select a text span first, and iOS fights you every step of the way when you do this — especially if the span starts or stops at something iOS doesn't consider a "whole token.") Meanwhile, inserting punctuation representing formatting into already-typed text, merely requires placing the insertion caret, which is much less fiddly.

I was just typing a reply to gush about how much I agree with you and how awful iOS text editing is (I’m on my iPhone at the moment) and decided to play with editing text to get some example complaints, when I had an epiphany: iOS lets you double tap to start a text selection now. I don’t know when this started. I’m 99% sure I used to long-press to start a text selection, and that it would start highlighting the word…

How can you be 99% sure when long press in *edited text* like when writing notes doesn't select, but instead moves the caret with a magnifying glass?

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#184

Post by dismalaf »

DidYaWipe wrote: post #176
dismalaf wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Editors are for, gasp , writing or editing source code like Markdown. Some people write source code and aren't just users... That's what documentation generators are for, to render all the docs and search them if you're just a user.

And read-me files are for, , READING. Not writing. I have no need to EDIT any Markdown files... pretty much ever. Nor do I need to clutter my IDE with tabs devoted to reference material, much less an extra pane to "preview" it in its intended rendering. Your pretension that most programming involves writing Markdown "source code" is absurd. I neither want nor need Markdown in any of my source-code editors, ever. Not…

Someone writes the README... And WYSIWYG? Who uses those?

And how often are you even reading READMEs? For me it's usually once, when I first use a library, because it typically gives an outline of the project and/or instructions on how to install it. So I'm reading it in a browser.

Meanwhile I'm updating my own READMEs often, usually using them as a sort of to-do list and then outlining existing functionality.

Like, are you really using so many libraries as glue that reading READMEs is such a common task that you specifically want it in your IDE? Is that the current state of programming?

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#185

Post by michelb »

ornornor wrote: post #164
pvo50555 wrote: post #145

I am consistently shocked at how bad Apple Notes is. I like the features it has and I like the iCloud sync between devices... I use it daily. But it's so damn buggy. It's a notes app! Why do new lines on a moderately-long note cause half the text to disappear until I hit the carriage return a few times? I also wish it simply converted copied text to plaintext by default rather than trying to preserve formatting.

I think apple cares a lot less than it used to and it’s been like that for a while. There are long standing bugs or missing features on iOS that are just there and have been for years. I guess they don’t have to try as hard anymore, so they don’t.

It feels like they are spread way too thin, and individual teams are not allowed to improve their app/services/parts on their own. If I had to work on Apple Notes I would have several suggestions, not all worthy of work of-course, but letting a lot of apps go stagnant is something else entirely.

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#186

Post by ornornor »

michelb wrote: post #185
ornornor wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think apple cares a lot less than it used to and it’s been like that for a while. There are long standing bugs or missing features on iOS that are just there and have been for years. I guess they don’t have to try as hard anymore, so they don’t.

It feels like they are spread way too thin, and individual teams are not allowed to improve their app/services/parts on their own. If I had to work on Apple Notes I would have several suggestions, not all worthy of work of-course, but letting a lot of apps go stagnant is something else entirely.

> spread too thin

It’s a choice though, it’s not like they aren’t the richest company in the world.

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#187

Post by nicce »

lurk2 wrote: post #4

I would not recommend investing in the iOS Notes ecosystem. There is no way to export these notes with their metadata and media intact without using iCloud. If you need a note-taking app, go with Joplin instead; it supports Markdown, has both iOS and desktop clients, and supports self-hosted syncing.

Just a sidenote: you can use Git in iOS as well if you are brave enough.

E.g. with Obsidian your notes are stored into specific directory and it stores files as Markdown in hierarchical way. Then mount this app-specific directory to iSH and use git. Downside is that automatic syncing can be difficult since there is limited amount of time iSH can run in the background.

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#188

Post by mistercheph »

DidYaWipe wrote: post #171
Kwpolska wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitHub renders Markdown if you click on a file in the Web repo view.

Thanks, but when I check something out, I'm working with it on my computer. I don't want to go back to Github every time I want to read something.

the nicest thing about markdown is that it’s entirely legible in plaintext mode, I don’t need it to be rendered, unlike other markup languages

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#189

Post by nik736 »

pvo50555 wrote: post #145

I am consistently shocked at how bad Apple Notes is. I like the features it has and I like the iCloud sync between devices... I use it daily. But it's so damn buggy. It's a notes app! Why do new lines on a moderately-long note cause half the text to disappear until I hit the carriage return a few times? I also wish it simply converted copied text to plaintext by default rather than trying to preserve formatting.

I absolutely agree. I use it daily but it's so buggy and the search is the worst thing about it!

Re: Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

#190

Post by al_borland »

fhd2 wrote: post #143
bqmjjx0kac wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love org-mode, but if I were king, it would accept freakin' back-quotes for monospaced text. Instead, it takes ~tilde~ or =equals=, and I will never remember the difference no matter how many times I look it up.

I switch between Markdown and Org Mode a lot, the syntactic differences don't bother me too much, but I guess I like Markdown's a bit more. But what I really miss in Markdown: 1. Collapsible headlines and headline search. 2. Executable source code blocks (for notebook style work). 3. TODO states. 4. Time tracking and clock tables. 5. Table formulas. 6. Inline LaTeX and document generation in general. Now 1 is just an…

I’ve seen a lot of apps extend markdown to support various additional features. Obsidian, for example, has an extensive number of community plugins which offer a ton of features.

This of course ends up being editor specific, but if org has the same limitation, by being tied to emacs, is it really any different? I think what emacs has going for it in this case is that it’s been around for decades, and we can assume it will continue to be around for decades into the future. The markdown editor de jour may not be.

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