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Syntax obfuscation, Markdown engine, Demo and lot of others.

A topic by Manukineko created Aug 17, 2021 Views: 205 Replies: 2
Viewing posts 1 to 2
(3 edits)

Hello,

I have several feature resquest in mind and I guess none of them are trivial to do.

Syntaxe Obfuscation (or styling)

Not everyone's cup of tea but it would allow to merge the preview windows with the editor itself.

  1. Obfuscation would hide the markdown syntax completely and render its effect in realtime. The complexity would come from image, diagrams and Co. Some other editor add a little clickable icon or a popup window when the user click on the item, to modify the code.
  2. Styling would ... well ... style the syntax in a discrete way while rendering its effect in realtime. The complexity around images and other special items would be the same than obfuscation, though,

Markdown Engine

I don't know what parser you use for Deepdwn, if it's one of the common one (parsedown, commonmark, etc) or if you've build your own but I wonder if it would be possible to select or install differents parser, like Ghostwriter do it.

The idea behind this feature is that a lot of Markdown editor on iOS and Mac use MultiMarkdown, a long time Apple-plateform only parser, but now available on windows.

Allowing users to install another parser would be good for compatibility **but** not for fonctionnalities as each parser have their own way to support this or that features (markdown became quite a mess XD).

Web Publication / FTP

Usually, it means Wordpress and Ghost API integration as Markdown Editor are mostly use for web publication and those plateform are the most popular. But, some just needs only the raw .md file to be uloaded on a server and done (that's my case because I like static CMS the most)

So in addition to those API integration, Deepdwn could have a *simple* built-in FTP client.

Image viewer / explorer

For now, if there's a folder containing images, those don't show up in Deepdown's explorer. It would be great is Deepdown could show images, display a preview and able to rename them.

Image alternate URL/Path at export

This one is a feature taken from Ulysse and one I like a lot.

It allows to set an alternate path or Url when exporting a file. For exemple :

  • I put an image in my file. The path is `assets/image.jpg`
  • This file will be uploaded on my website and my images are located in `https://mysite/blog/assets/`
  • I can set up this URL as the alternative export URL for that image in Deepdown
  • When I export (and that means to be able to export in ... markdown as well XD) I can tell Deepdown to use the alternative URL for the images.
  • I'll then have to upload the images at the same location on my server.

This feature could be also useful to export a file to another location on your HDD, using another  hierarchy.

Of course it implies quite a headache for you with absolute or relative links management, auto folder creation and others things.

Absolute link for URL, and relative Path for local export, maybe. Images management have always been a pain with markdown XD

Demo

I talk about Deepdwn around me but a lot of returns I got is they would like to test the editor before buying.

I don't know what kind of business model you could go for in that case, though. A feature-strip down model won't give justice to the amazing work you did and a time constraint one implies some infrastructure to setup on your side.

Maybe something like zRythm (save and load are locked, unlocked binaries are charged) or ... open source it : free if you compile the soft yourself, paid if you want a binaries ?

Export format

I'd love to see some other format like :

  • textbundle
  • Zip
  • epub
  • Jpeg

And I'd add without a Pandoc installation would be better XD

Themes

But that has already been requested :D

Aaaaand that wrap it.

---

Pretty long, huh. Of course, I have no doubt you know what you are doing and I'd understand perfectly if none of those features won't make it.

The way you handle tables in the last update, thinking how will behave non-latin characters just blow me off and I was like "ok, they know what they are doing".

Keep up the good work.

(1 edit) (+1)

Thank you for the feedback and kind words!

Some of these are (obviously) easier than others, but I can see why they’d be useful.

Syntax obfuscation

This one is a lot of work! I understand the desire, but it does mean adding lot of wysiwyg toolbars, or having displaying your text as markdown when your cursor moves near it. I find that behavior really distracting, and makes cursor movement really unpredictable.

It’s probably the only way to make a markdown editor useful to non-markdown folks though.

Markdown engine

Like most editors, Deepdwn uses a superset of markdown. What features are you expecting from MultiMarkdown’s implementation that don’t exist in Deepdwn?

Web publication

API integration is out of scope for Deepdwn right now. I’m trying to make it as independent from third party services as possible, mostly for maintenance reasons.

Similarly, a built-in FTP client is not currently planned.

Image previewing

Showing all images in the explorer would be nice, but obviously the UI isn’t set up for it (at all) currently. It might be possible in the future if that changes. I’ll keep it in mind.

Image paths

I agree. This is a limitation in exporting right now. I’d like to improve it for sure, but I think it will require pretty complicated UI to do it right, for example having some kind of path export preferences on a per-folder basis. :(

Demo

I’ve thought about this a lot, but haven’t settled on a good way of doing it. If Deepdwn was subscription based, it would be easier, but selling a DRM-free application adds some challenges. Stripping features is no fun.

A no save/no load version might work, but would be easy to circumvent, and wouldn’t be a great experience for users who are interested.

Export format

  • Textbundle - great idea
  • Zip - Sure, though I guess you could zip these yourself. I think the problem here is if you refer to images in relative paths above the markdown file. I could rewrite those paths, but that can cause collisions with other files… it’s tricky :D
  • epub - Would be nice, but would require Deepdwn to act as a full featured document publisher. I think this will be better left to dedicated tools.
  • Jpeg - Already planned!

I really appreciate the feedback, and I hope that I can get you at least some of these in the future :D

thanks for your answer :D

Syntax Obfuscation

I totally understand it !
So what about styling ? It's similar to how Deepdwn handle it now : color-coded line per syntax types. The improvement would be to add font and size styling to sintax tag elements, like for example, H1 tag with a bigger size than H2 size or simpler, a lighter color than the line the tag apply to (purple for the title, light purple for the tag). Something like this ?

Markdown engine

Oh, let me stress test that when I'll be home.
Actually, mat be not that much XD

Web Publication

I can totally hear it, and that was just a QoL feature anyway.
And it's not like it's difficult to use any FTP client.

Image preview

To be precise, I though of a thumbnail next to the name.
But well that means generating thumbnails AND caching them somewhere.

Maybe to "just" have Deepdown to grab the images filename and list them in the explorer like they are regular text file, and then double-clicking it to display a preview window would be enough for the time being ?


Image Path

Yeah, it fall down to have a kind of a hidden internal database of some sort, to store that kind of data.
I was more on the per-file kind of system, though and it would be relevant only if the image preview window is implemented because you could set this alternate path with it (two bird, one stone).


Export Format

Textbundle is a kind of zip is I'm not mistaken.
Regarding zip itself, I'll go the simple way : create a dedicate root folder for images (e.g assets), create a hierarchy of folders base on each images path, rewrite links in the exported file to point to their new location.
Like :
I have "../dogs/dog.jpg" and "cats/black/cat.jpg" in my file.
At export, I would have this hierarchy created inside the zip :
- file.md
- assets
    |_ dogs
    |    |_ dog.jpg
    |_ cats
        |_ white
            |_ cat.jpg

and in the file, link rewrote as "assets/dogs/dog.jpg"
"assets/cats/white/cat.jog"

Of course, if the image path feature would make it, the user could overwrite the default rewriting which would use the alternate path/url the user has provided for each images.

epub - Oh didn't though about that. You're right.


Anyway, please, don't stress yourself, you clearly know what you are doing, in my opinion.

Deepdwn is already plenty useful for my usecase.