What are some alternatives to word processing with Markdown?
- by Hassan
I've used MS Word-style editors for a long time, but I never got used to how unintuitive and cumbersome they are. I'm not talking specifically about MS Word, but also other editors that seem to mimic Word, like OpenOffice, NeoOffice, etc.
I've found myself preferring to write in Markdown (much like on this site). I've found a few good Markdown editors, and I like using them a lot more than using Word-style editors. Here is what they generally look like:
As you can see, it works much differently than a Word-style editor. This is a generally cleaner way of writing, since formatting is done right in the text, and is extremely simple to use (no highlighting some text, then clicking a button in some menu you have to find).
Although editing text this way is great, I've realized that the syntax can only be used for very specific needs (bullets, numbered lists, headings and sub-headings, bold, italic, and some other common ones). However, many features are missing. Here are some features that would be nice in a word processor:
Tables.
Indenting paragraphs.
Good image support (you can link to images, but not add them, since Markdown is just text).
More simple to use than Word and its cronies.
Cross-platform.
Some of these can be fixed with in-line HTML, but nobody wants to do that.
It seems Markdown was designed for editing text on the internet. Is there a similar setup that works better for desktop word processors?
