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Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26

macrumors.com

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

#191

Post by al_borland »

MonkeyClub wrote: post #167
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is funny because it’s really an incomplete spec that originated from a blog post. But it won anyway because both machines and humans can use it with relative ease, which is apparently quite a difficult thing to achieve in a markup language

> ... it’s really an incomplete spec ... . But it won anyway It's the new classic example of "worse is better". Other markups may be more well thought out and more complete, but Markdown beats them hands down on usability. Consider the comparison between MD and RST, for example...

Markdown handles complexity by allowing html to be freely put into the doc. The basics are really easy, and if you need to do something more advanced html exists. Though this can sometimes make readability drop to 0. I ended up doing this for a complex table I wanted in a readme file, and kind of regret it. I have to explain to people on my team how to use preview mode in their editor, or to view it in the repo online. Although that view online does look nice.

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

#192

Post by al_borland »

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.

Many modern editors, including VS Code, have a button which opens a preview pane to see rendered Markdown. It’s a single button click (the page with the magnifying glass on it in the upper right), no one is installing pandoc to read readme files.

The preview is really only needed if there is advanced formatting or HTML in there. A basic markdown doc should be easy to read in plain text.

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

#193

Post by kevhito »

nextos wrote: post #115
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.

=string= leads to the text being transcribed verbatim. A good hint is to recall that the equals sign kinda implies verbatim.

Ironic then that [0] (the first hit when I search "emacs org mode tutorial") says:

    You can make words *bold*, /italic/, _underlined_, =code= and ~verbatim~, and, if you must, +strike-through+.
[0]: https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org4beginners.html

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

#194

Post by al_borland »

DidYaWipe wrote: post #173
epistasis wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Markdown is plain text, so using Markdown is using plain text. What is your alternative to Markdown here?

That's just playing dumb. It's only "plain text" in that it's non-binary. It contains formatting codes that aren't part of the informative content. If everyone's just using a plain-text reader to view these files, then why clutter them up with formatting codes?

Those formatting codes are informative content. They tell the reader (even in plain text) that something is a section heading, bullet, code, etc.

This is information people often want in a plain text file, and having a common way to signal those things is beneficial when working on teams or sharing with others.

What’s the alternative? Everyone makes up their own bespoke way of formatting their text file that works for them, then has a key to explain it in their doc?

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

#195

Post by al_borland »

vunderba wrote: post #119
DidYaWipe wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except of course that almost nobody makes a READER for Markdown. WTF? It's mystifying. You find readme documents in Markdown in every open-source repo, but why? What are you supposed to read them with? After much searching I finally ended up with Marked, on the Mac. A paid app. But that's about it for options. And no, I'm not talking about text editors that offer a "preview" pane that you can optionally invoke. I'm t…

For a second there I thought you were referring to a hardware solution. It would be pretty neat if I could drop straight markdown files into my Kindle and have them rendered in an aesthetically pleasing fashion.

It would likely be trivial for Amazon or other ereader companies to add a feature like this.

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

#196

Post by al_borland »

idk-92 wrote: post #49
krackers wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They must be doing version numbers based on marketing. From OS X, to macOS 11...15, and now macOS 26.

what do you mean by marketing? it's based on the year the version is pushed now. Which makes alot more sense at the end of the day and helps to know which version came when

I’m a fan of year based versioning, but this change is likely a response to Samsung doing this, which makes their Galaxy S25 sound newer and more advanced than the iPhone 16.

It’s a silly game to play. Firefox did something similar. Their versioning moved famously slow, then all the sudden they started releasing major versions every other week until their version numbering was compatible to Chrome’s version.

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

#197

Post by michelb »

ornornor wrote: post #186
michelb wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Still need people to press buttons though. But I feel too many decisions have to go through a tiny set of people. But I have no insights into the org. I do wish they would do more smaller releases. Like update Notes without a full OS update.

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

#198

Post by al_borland »

keyboardJones wrote: post #81

I made a feature request for this very thing within the latest version cycle. I imagine others have as well. Maybe they listened, maybe they didn’t, but here’s hoping! Edit: I fell for the headline. This is only to export in markdown, not directly write in markdown. So close, yet so far.

Apple Shortcuts already has a Rich Text to Markdown converter out of the box. It was already a quick jump to Markdown using only built-in Apple tools, but maybe this will be a cleaner export.

I’ve been converting from Apple Notes to Obsidian and it’s been pretty painful. Everything is just slightly off, in inconsistent ways, where I need to clean up every note manually. I’m deep enough into it that adding the feature now won’t do me much good, but might be helpful if I want to use notes for quick capture and then maybe export to Obsidian if I want to save it.

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

#199

Post by al_borland »

jonhohle wrote: post #96
keyboardJones wrote: post #81

I made a feature request for this very thing within the latest version cycle. I imagine others have as well. Maybe they listened, maybe they didn’t, but here’s hoping! Edit: I fell for the headline. This is only to export in markdown, not directly write in markdown. So close, yet so far.

I should probably go back to Notational Velocity, but am spoiled by iCloud. It’s effectively the perfect scratch pad notes app. Markdown for all content, search is also document creation, great key bindings, sorting by all relevant fields, and fast.

I was just thinking about Notational Velocity last week. I went and looked and it seems the latest release is from 2011.

It mentions it’s a universal binary, but considering it mentions support for OS X 10.4 - 10.7, I have a feeling it is PPC/Intel universal, not Intel/ARM.

I see the GitHub has some more recent updates, but still 5 years old.

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

#200

Post by al_borland »

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.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but it feels like it’s gotten more fiddly with time. Either that or I notice it more, because I’m using the thing more as time goes on.

I can’t understand people who use an iPad full time. My dad does this and I don’t know how he does drive himself mad with all the taps required to do basic things.

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