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Apple Notes Will Gain Markdown Export at WWDC, and, I Have Thoughts

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191–200 of 229 posts

Re: Apple Notes Will Gain Markdown Export at WWDC, and, I Have Thoughts

#191

I cannot understand how Apple notes works sometimes. For instance, sometimes after indenting a line I cannot un-indent on future lines. Just fighting the tool. Stuff like this really makes me dislike it. I find syntax highlighting with markdown preferable than a WYSIWYG rich text editor. I get why people who don't know markdown prefer it, but the advantages diminish significantly if you know markdown.

> For instance, sometimes after indenting a line I cannot un-indent on future lines I feel like this is why a lot of us use Markdown/Org, because this is the most annoying issue in Word to me since 2003. Why are the indentation rules so arbitrary?

I don’t use word processors often (less than once a year in general), and did something comparatively advanced in LibreOffice Writer a few months ago, involving mixing English and an Indian language, and trying to use styles and such (equivalent to tacking on a stylesheet in HTML). I learned that the toolbar button for lists creates a list with hard-coded inline styles for bullet appearance, indent amounts, &c. If you want to change it, you can’t use that button any more, and have to make your own style with the appropriate properties (not easy) and apply them to each list item.

Part of the mess is that it doesn’t seem to actually model lists, just paragraphs which might have a list level associated with them. I have no idea why this was ever deemed acceptable: it precludes multiple markers on one line:

  1. a) Sorry, but you can’t do this.
     b) It’s not expressible.
  2. You need a paragraph first.
     a) Then it can be done.
My guess is that LibreOffice inherited this limitation from Word. No idea if Word is so affected.

Re: Apple Notes Will Gain Markdown Export at WWDC, and, I Have Thoughts

#192
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teams and Slack as well, though they use an odd variant markdown (where single asterisk indicates bold instead of italics).

What things like Slack and WhatsApp use are not variants of Markdown, but entirely unrelated lightweight markup languages https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_markup_language >. As for Teams, it looks like it’s much closer to Markdown (uses the same idiosyncratic/stupid link syntax), but still significantly incompatible even if they call it that. And my guess (as a non-user) is that it’s just an input method i…

Technically speaking, Slack's markup language is mrkdwn.

Re: Apple Notes Will Gain Markdown Export at WWDC, and, I Have Thoughts

#193
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What things like Slack and WhatsApp use are not variants of Markdown, but entirely unrelated lightweight markup languages https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_markup_language >. As for Teams, it looks like it’s much closer to Markdown (uses the same idiosyncratic/stupid link syntax), but still significantly incompatible even if they call it that. And my guess (as a non-user) is that it’s just an input method i…

Technically speaking, Slack's markup language is mrkdwn.

That’s not technically, that’s marketingly (sure, it was presumably developers that named it, but it’s still marketing). mrkdwn is a horribly misleading name and they should feel guilty. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=chrismorgan+mrkdwn&type=commen...

Re: Apple Notes Will Gain Markdown Export at WWDC, and, I Have Thoughts

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hacked up something like this for Apple Notes. It’s far from perfect, but at least it lets me type Markdown-style punctuation and get the expect results. Think of it like a crummy Vim mode sort of thing. https://honeypot.net/2024/01/17/making-notes-look.html

This is useful, thanks!

Glad it's helpful! I didn't go super far with it, but maybe it can inspire someone else to dig in and flesh it out.

Re: Apple Notes Will Gain Markdown Export at WWDC, and, I Have Thoughts

#195
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teams and Slack as well, though they use an odd variant markdown (where single asterisk indicates bold instead of italics).

What things like Slack and WhatsApp use are not variants of Markdown, but entirely unrelated lightweight markup languages https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_markup_language >. As for Teams, it looks like it’s much closer to Markdown (uses the same idiosyncratic/stupid link syntax), but still significantly incompatible even if they call it that. And my guess (as a non-user) is that it’s just an input method i…

My least favorite Teams markdown idiosyncrasy is using (foobar) for emoji search instead of :foobar:

Re: Apple Notes Will Gain Markdown Export at WWDC, and, I Have Thoughts

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but that’s the tension. There’s no free lunch. On the flip, that user wants the complex features of the platform, and exposing them to a markup language takes elegant markdown and turns it into html or ooxml.

[flagged]

Please don't do this here. If a comment seems unfit for HN, please flag it and email us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can have a look.

Re: Apple Notes Will Gain Markdown Export at WWDC, and, I Have Thoughts

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Markdown is like the new WordPerfect for some people, who want expressive written paths to format text. Like with WordPerfect, there are people who get great utility (attorneys in WP, developers with Markdown), but 80-95% of people don’t get anything out of it. It’s also one of those things where the constraints are an advantage. Markdown is great for internet facing text content, while many aspects of the mainstream…

Former lawyer here. That most commercial contract work is done in Word is a source of major frustration and wasted time for many lawyers. Others are simply unaware that there are any authoring/editing paradigms that allow one to separate the drudgery of getting document formatting just-so, from the actual value-additive work. Unfortunately there’s no realistic solution to the lock-in, so wrestling with broken paragra…

What's the problem with Word documents if you open them in Word?

Re: Apple Notes Will Gain Markdown Export at WWDC, and, I Have Thoughts

#198
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notably, Github's superset: https://github.github.com/gfm/

Given Github's owner, it's right out of their Embrace, Extend ... playbook.

GFM predates microsoft’s acquisition of github by one year as a formal spec and six years as an informal one - but ms hardly has a monopoly on embrace-extend-extinguish.

Re: Apple Notes Will Gain Markdown Export at WWDC, and, I Have Thoughts

#199

I'd love to see Markdown support in MS OneNote...

I was a heavy user of MS OneNote. It got slower and slower as I added more notes. And some notes got long. And then I discovered Obsidian with Markdown support. Now the idea of using OneNote sends shivers down my spine.

I have some big notes and tbh I find it totally fine (on macOS)

The two things that would make a world of difference to me are:

- having a 'code block' style, preferably accessed via familiar single and triple-backticks markdown syntax - for the Android app to have a "magnifying cursor" like mobile apps are all supposed to have... trying to edit a note and drag the cursor around with your finger without having the little magnifying popup is a complete pain

Re: Apple Notes Will Gain Markdown Export at WWDC, and, I Have Thoughts

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former lawyer here. That most commercial contract work is done in Word is a source of major frustration and wasted time for many lawyers. Others are simply unaware that there are any authoring/editing paradigms that allow one to separate the drudgery of getting document formatting just-so, from the actual value-additive work. Unfortunately there’s no realistic solution to the lock-in, so wrestling with broken paragra…

I never have those issues, but I'm the only one editing my stuff. I use styles religiously when I use Word for professional documents. It takes a little more time and effort but pays out over the long haul.

But very few people do that.

I was on a project and complained heavily that we were not using styles,. The complaints got my manager to state that another person would do all the formatting. Of course the other person left befor the end and I had to do all the formatting.

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