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

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

#221

Post by johannesrexx »

Mr. Gruber was certainly one of the inventors of Markdown but has rested on the laurels ever since. Remember that the late Aaron Schwartz was the co-inventor of Markdown. So let's not give Mr. Gruber too much attention for his opinions on how Markdown has evolved because he's chosen not to participate in its development or adoption.

Indeed, he is far more likely to let loose a tirade of anti-Trump sentiment, and in that regard he comes across as a terribly damaged individual. His opinions are many, and so we cannot give them too much weight.

We must have balance in The Force.

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

#222

Post by SebastianKra »

modernerd wrote: post #105

He's right: Markdown was built for web editing in an era where physical keyboards outnumbered virtual ones. It doesn't really make sense for Notes outside of export. There's little benefit to it as an input system on iOS/iPadOS (likely the dominant platforms for Notes) where formatting menus are just as close as `#` and `_` characters. Several Markdown rules wouldn't make sense in the context of Notes. e.g. "end a li…

Keyboard-accessibility isn't the only advantage of formatting characters. The most frustrating, throw-my-device-at-the-wall issue with 90% of WYSIWYG text editors, is the insane handling of invisible input states.

- If you begin writing a bold word, but want to delete the first character, the style is reset.

- If you’re writing a list and you want to exit out of it, every editor has a different weird convention of doing that.

- I can’t even begin to describe the amount of broken behavior that is entering code in MS Teams (does Microsoft use Slack internally?)

There are some innovative ideas to solve this, like Bike [^1], but nobody goes to the effort of implementing them. So the easiest, most compatible and most intuitive solution are formatting characters like in Markdown.

[^1]: https://www.hogbaysoftware.com/posts/bike-rich-text/

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

#223

Post by throw0101c »

dotdi wrote: post #41

When Gruber mentions that he never uses Markdown outside of his blog, and hinting at the fact that it was not intended for text editors (and other apps), there's one important point I want to make. Yes, Markdown has disadvantages, and a few rough edges for uses as the format for editors et al, but there are two very big advantages and/or sideffects of it's widespread use: (1) it's cleartext and therefore very good as…

> (1) it's cleartext and therefore very good as a measure against vendor lock-in and (2) it has, to some extent, dampened the rampant "not-invented-here"-esqe tendency to use proprietary formats.

Also covered by AsciiDoc.

"Compare AsciiDoc and Markdown": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27744509

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

#224

Post by whatarethembits »

DavidPiper wrote: post #162
astrange wrote: post #103

Why do all these people like taking notes? I recommend a very simple process, which is to delete them and just remember everything.

Not sure if you're serious, but you made me laugh, so have an upvote. I'm one of those people who went pretty hard into the whole "Second Brain" movement (using Apple Notes first, then Obsidian). ~6000 notes later and I've started finding the whole thing overwhelming and pointless at the same time. The vast majority of notes I have don't need to be noted down. At most they could have been a journal entry rather than…

With (most) note taking systems, you’re supposed to periodically “clean house/review”, which among other things, avoids the problem you’re describing. I don’t do it often myself tbf.

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

#225

Post by ericio »

JSR_FDED wrote: post #186

Why is there no way in Notes to insert the current date easily? So often I need to go back to a note, and add some time stamped update at the end. Am I the only one?

One of the very first tools I install on a new Mac is the free WordService [1] tool from DEVONTechnologies (no affiliation). It adds a bunch of little text tools to the Services menu, including several for inserting the current date and time in various formats. They also provide a direct download version [2].

- [1] [WordService](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wordservice/id899972312?mt=12 - [2] [WordService Download](https://www.devontechnologies.com/support/download)

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

#227

Post by rajnathani »

A side: Apple Notes needs to get the ability to export all notes at once, without having to export each note 1-by-1 as a PDF. We have so much important text information on the notes app on our phones (whether iPhone or Android), and the ability to easily export this out (we're not even talking multimedia MP4 data, etc.) easily should be one of the most core features.

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

#229

Post by astrange »

actuallyalys wrote: post #168
astrange wrote: post #103

Why do all these people like taking notes? I recommend a very simple process, which is to delete them and just remember everything.

I sort of understand the mindset that elaborate notetaking systems are a waste of time because 95 percent or more never gets used but the value of something like Apple Notes for tiny details that are both necessary and relatively tough to remember seems hard to dispute. Do you memorize things like part numbers, confirmation numbers, and dimensions? (If this is a joke, well, I salute your dry humor.)

I do use it to keep things like packing lists or trip reminders, but usually not notes in the sense of "taking notes in class".

Although I definitely should take more, because I can never remember what I've done when it's performance review season.

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