
Typora – A cross platform markdown editor - algorithmsRcool
https://www.typora.io/
======
StavrosK
Having just installed SolveSpace, a parametric 3D CAD tool which includes a
solver in 1.9 MB, I can't help but feel a bit sad when a minimal Markdown
editor is a 34 MB file :(

I wonder if there's a better option for crossplatform apps than Electron.
Maybe Rust? Or Python+PyQT?

~~~
ovao
Still less than Google's site for the new Pixel [1] :)

[1]
[https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/ckhRCy/pixel.google.com](https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/ckhRCy/pixel.google.com)

~~~
truncate
I would like to see what is the size of this page in countries with slower
internet.

~~~
mzehrer
I would guess they don"t care. These countries are not exactly the target
market for such a expensive phone.

~~~
tvararu
It costs $2.60 to view the website in Canada with non-retina images.

Source:
[https://whatdoesmysitecost.com/test/161007_QR_78c23294113b6c...](https://whatdoesmysitecost.com/test/161007_QR_78c23294113b6c95811fd521859f820a)

------
cloverich
If creator reads this: I note that its currently free and in Beta. What is the
expected cost, and the transition from a beta client to the paid one? e.g. can
I just stay on beta forever and only pay if I want to upgrade to get the new
features? etc. Looks very nice so far!

------
jkmcf
For those who check comments first...

I use this daily on macOS and it is a fantastic user experience. The Markdown
editor doesn't have a separate preview window. It auto detects your blocks and
toggles between editing and rendering. Overall very polished. It has Mermaid
ASCII diagramming support, which I love, but I wonder whether the diagrams
should be imported images since you would need Typora in order to see it
rendered.

Reminder that it is still beta. I'm still hoping for a more unified Evernote-
ish side bar since right now it depends on using a file browser of some sort,
with no built-in search across notes.

~~~
dunham
FoldingText.app on OSX and "usecanvas.com" on the web work similarly.

I really like that editing model for markdown. (Hiding all the markup except
that which is surrounding or adjacent to the cursor.) I'd love to see someone
implement it on top of draft.js or something. (I haven't gotten around to yet
myself yet - too many projects, too little time.)

~~~
aviraldg
We're doing something similar on riot.im with our new editor.

------
bananabill
I think I may be missing the main usecase here but how come I see so many
different markdown editors on here all the time? Markdown is pretty simple and
easy to read in plaintext, or with simple highlighting so what's the point?

Or am I just being one of those weirdos that's like "WHO NEEDS SYNTAX
HIGHLIGHTING YOU SCRUBS!"?

~~~
spangry
Just wildly speculating here (with some wishful thinking thrown in): maybe the
intent is to indirectly encourage non-technical audiences to use git-based,
public version control for authoring public and frequently revised documents.

For instance: imagine if federal legislation, and amendments to federal
legislation, were published in this manner. You could examine diffs to see how
passed (or proposed) amendments altered (or will alter) the law. You could
even have a 'git blame' sort of feature that let you to see which members of
congress voted for or against particular amendments. It would definitely aid
political transparency, and make it easier for the public to participate in
the legislative process.

Eh, I guess that's mostly my wishful thinking...

~~~
fdgdasfadsf
Wouldn't it be easier to add stronger version control (think track changes) to
gui document editors?

~~~
spangry
Maybe. But I guess my hidden objective here would be to open up the
legislation making process to the public. At the moment (at least in
Australia), the best we can do in this regard is 'exposure draft'
consultation.

Basically a draft of the legislation is put on some consultation website, and
people can send in big long essays via email. The participants don't see each
others' comments, it's just a 1-1 type relationship between the government
department and the 'consultee'.

I'd like to see infrastructure that would allow:

(a) consultation participants to see and comment on each others' suggestions
(think Greenpeace commenting on Shell's submission regarding fuel tax credits,
and vice-versa); and

(b) for participants to be able to make pull-requests, forcing the government
department to answer in the positive of negative and give reasons.

On the second point, under the current system they can simply put your
submission through the shredder if they don't like your suggestions. By making
it very public, government departments will feel strong pressure to
acknowledge and respond in a reasoned way. Many government departments do a
big song and dance about 'transparency'. I think this provides a concrete and
actionable way to significantly increase this wonderful 'transparency' thing
that I hear so much about.

------
no_protocol
I read the page a few times through and I can't find answers to a couple
questions. If someone has already installed the app, can you clarify:

\- When I save the document, is it just plain markdown as text?

\- If I copy and paste it into an input element in my browser that expects
markdown, will it be copying just plaintext markdown?

\- What if I copy and paste it into something like Microsoft Word?

If the creator is listening, I have some comments for your site:

\- I tried clicking/typing on the opening page before realizing I had to
scroll down.

\- I eventually found that there were some clickable words that changed
displayed images, but it wasn't obvious.

\- After finding I could click some words, I expected to be able to click the
menu options under 'Accessibility' and found it a bit ironic that they weren't
clickable.

On the positive side:

\- The moving image showing a user typing markdown in and the text
transforming is _awesome_ and looks great.

This looks pretty but I can't see myself using it much, I'm usually writing
markdown in vim.

Anyone know of a vim plugin to split the window to a live preview for
markdown? It is pretty much readable as plain text, but it would be nice to
see a preview to know if I've made an error in the markup.

~~~
algorithmsRcool
\- Saving is as plain markdown. But you can export to a variety of formats
(they use pandoc)

\- There is a setting for copy/paste to use markdown vs plain text

\- Pasting into word would be as HTML since word is rich text

~~~
no_protocol
> \- There is a setting for copy/paste to use markdown vs plain text

Do you mean markdown vs rich text? Or can it paste markdown, plain text, and
rich text?

~~~
algorithmsRcool
No, the setting is Preferences > Editor > Default copy behavior

When i turn it off (default) and copy/paste into notepad it only pastes plain
text with no markdown.

When i turn it on and copy paste into notepad it retains the markdown
formatting characters (*'s, ```'s and etc...)

Pasting into MS Word (a rich text editor) always pastes as rich text
regardless of the setting

~~~
pron
Shift-[Cmd/Ctrl]-C seems to always copy markdown plaintext.

------
baldfat
NOT CROSS PLATFORM

Linux User Here. (I am actually an OpenSUE and Arch user) when you think
providing an Ubuntu solution
[https://www.typora.io/#linux](https://www.typora.io/#linux) and have

sudo add-apt-repository 'deb [https://typora.io](https://typora.io) linux/'

this does not make this a Linux platform solution. Currently I think

1) Provide a RPM and a DEB

2) Provide a tar ball of the source so it can be compiled

3) Using a Linux application installer like flatpak, appimage or snap would
also make it acceptable to me instead of RPM/DEB

Thank you for your work but being on Linux isn't simple and I don't think it
is accurate to say cross compatible on Linux when all we got is a deb. Hope
that in the next 3 years it gets easier.

The best solution I believe for providing packages for multiple of
distribution is SUSE Build Services
[https://build.opensuse.org/](https://build.opensuse.org/). It provides the
ability to build once and SUSE build solution will make packages for other
distros. So it will make a deb, rpm and you could even have a package for
Arch.

[https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Build_Service_Tutorial](https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Build_Service_Tutorial)

~~~
creshal
FWIW, electron-builder even offers to generate Debian, RPM, Arch and plain tar
packages simultaneously. So there's really no reason not to offer all.

~~~
baldfat
So then the ability to provide all three is even simpler?

~~~
creshal
Assuming typora uses electron-builder (which most electron projects do), then
it's just a config setting for their build pipeline, yes.

------
captainmuon
Very pretty. I like how it hides the markup, but still feels like you are
editing markdown (e.g. <Backspace> removes the hidden formatting characters).

Unfortunately, there is quite some input lag for me (Windows 10, reasonably
fast laptop, HighDpi (Yoga Pro 2). I have this in many Electron apps, some
less (Simplenote is very snappy, VS Code is OK), some much more (Atom), but it
almost alway feels wierd.

------
yason
Looks nice but isn't the point of markdown pretty much that you can still do
your typing in clear, explicit plaintext and then merely generate properly
formatted html/pdf/whatnot from it, effectively avoiding any wysiwyg editing?

That's what different mark-up languages such as SGML (HTML/XML), LaTeX, even
Org mode, etc generally try to achieve: to separate content and presentation.
That is, to write the meat of the text explicitly and not even able to worry
about how it will look.

~~~
wodenokoto
Yes and no. The point of markdown is that it is human readable both plaintext
and rendered.

Writing in a rendered environment looks nice, which to some people foster
writing.

Writing in a rendered environment ensures your markup is correct ( as it
wouldn't render, if it wasn't)

For me, those two things ensures that I don't have to worry about how things
look when I write.

------
the_duke
No plain download for Linux available.

Just a Debian repo.

Not open source, apparently.

Looks quite nice though. I'd try it out if I could install it on Arch...

~~~
Jiig
There's a page[1] detailing how to get get the .deb file without apt, and then
use dpkg for arch [2] to install it if you wanted to. Of course you'd have to
manually update, and pacman won't know about it.

[1] [http://support.typora.io/Typora-on-
Linux/](http://support.typora.io/Typora-on-Linux/) [2]
[https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/dpkg](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/dpkg)

EDIT: Turns out there is an AUR package already:
[https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/typora/](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/typora/)

~~~
the_duke
Good catch.

Serves me right for just googling for "aur typora".

------
mdciotti
I've been using Typora for several months now. It's the best native markdown
editor I've found. Extremely smooth to write in preview mode using markdown
notation. Inline math support is nice, but I wish it had block/equation math
support. Code highlighting, table support, and YAML front-matters are also
great. I love being able to switch between source and preview with command+/.

~~~
nikkev
It does, just look under paragraph.

~~~
tnecniv
Not OP, but whenever I enter Latex into the math block, nothing ends up
getting saved?

------
hyperhopper
With everybody scrambling to support markdown, I'm surprised there isn't more
support for org mode. Once switching to it I can't go back.

~~~
Steeeve
I want to love org mode, but I don't know it well enough. I've only seen a
video that reviewed how great it was, but I haven't seen any tutorials/videos
on how to actually use it that went into detail.

Any pointers on getting started.

------
guessmyname
I used to use Haroopad [1] unfortunately the author seemed to stop its
development some time ago. This seems like a good alternative, in fact, it
looks and works so well that I can justify its dependency on Electron. Props
to @abnerlee for its work. I will definitely recommend this application to my
friends.

[1] [http://pad.haroopress.com/](http://pad.haroopress.com/)

~~~
acemarke
I just found Haroopad myself a couple weeks ago, but did note its lack of
updates. I may try out Typora for comparison. That said, Haroopad seems to
work pretty well for me at the moment.

------
pugworthy
Fool that I am, I stared at the page for quite some time wondering when the
loading animation was going to end and the page load. Then I saw the scroll
bar...

~~~
inimino
There's also a little downward-pointing arrow at the bottom, but I agree the
design is unintuitive.

------
tokenizerrr
The windows download page does not have a way for you to go back to the main
page... Not even clicking back in the browser.

Well, there is the "Typora on Mac" button on the top right, which oddly enough
does take you back to the homepage. But who would think to click that?

------
vaags
Looks nice. I've been using Writemonkey for a few years, but might consider
switching to this if the price won't be too high.

The showstopper for me, at the moment, is the non-international spellchecker.
I need my native language (Norwegian).

I would also like the option to have a tiny clock in the bottom right of the
page (like Writemonkey has). It's useful for fullscreen writing.

Writemonkey is probably the best alternative for Windows. It has way more
features, and it's free (unless you need plugin-support). It does not,
however, have inline live preview.

------
Fogest
It's a little laggy when I'm typing, I keep notes for my whole class, not one
file per lecture so the files are decently big. I have found all markdown
editors with live preview have this same problem as they redraw on every
keystroke and this is fairly slow process with a big document and slow
computer. My note taking laptop is not very powerful.

This program looks great and I really want to use it, so I may need to start
creating a new notes file for every lecture and then using a script to combine
them later and export to PDF.

------
asimjalis
Nice tool. Like it. Especially like the fact that it does syntax coloring for
different languages. There is nothing like this as far as I know. Usually
Markdown editors are not WYSIWYG.

------
GordonS
Does this only support GitHub-flavoured markdown?

I didn't find the website very informative (honestly, confusing if anything),
and couldn't find reference to anything else, like Asciidoctor.

~~~
vonklaus
I like it. Used it for >several months. If you have used mou before it is
similar. You can edit the themes (ive downloaded some from github) and you can
configure a couple markdown flavors out of the box iirc.

It renders in place in real time unlike some of the ones that load on half of
the screen.

Worth a download. They smoothed out a lot of the issues with updating content
& cursor movement.

Best markdown editor ive used, if viewing the rendered markdown matters to
you. You can export as a pdf and a couple other doctypes which is nice for
sending to non-technical teamenbers who have no markdown reader.

~~~
GordonS
Any idea if it works with Asciidoctor?

~~~
vonklaus
Not familiar with that. Probably not. Its a few MBs of diskspace & works out
of the box. Prob be quicker to dl & dump it if you dont like it.

All editors/notes/workflow are highly subjective, i tried macdown, mou, a
bunch of similar os x notes clones, notes, evernote, ect.

I like this for notes & simple docs. I would really like it if it had a
sidebar with directories but the reason so many of these things exist is that
everyone angry enough just builds their own.

------
serialpreneur
I have been using Typora for the past 6+ months. Love it!

Best markdown editor for my needs. Its simplicity is its best feature.

------
mrmondo
Yikes this is massive - is it a JavaScript site embedded in a frame by chance?

~~~
creshal
Electron does a bit more than that (full-blown nodejs in background), which of
course only increases the footprint. But apart from the final binary size,
it's an okay-ish development to work with. Especially for rapid prototyping.

(Disclaimer, shameless self plug: I wrote a blog article on it:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12651601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12651601)
)

------
fuzzygroup
I just installed this and what I found was that it works nicely but, at least
on OSX, it renders correctly but doesn't copy # or ## elements during a copy /
paste operation. It correctly saves them to do disc but doesn't put them in
the paste buffer. Pity. Its a pretty app but if they got that wrong, I wonder
what else is lurking.

I don't need another editor that writes files. I could, however, use something
I can paste markdown into, fix a formatting issue, and move back to a text
buffer in a browser / Github readme, etc.

~~~
fuzzygroup
I just tested a use case of:

* paste in a Jekyll formatted markdown document * select all (which it couldn't do with something of 3,103 words - I had to do it manually) * shift+command+c to copy it as markdown * paste it into a TextMate window * The initial ---- markup to denote the header block is missing * The tags: [] array statement is converted into a header

I hope the author notices; it really is pretty.

------
nodesocket
This is amazing for writing documentation. Writers can write inside of Typora
and export to pdf (print) and html (web).

Exporting to html even brings in code fence block styles and language color
pigments.

Bravo!

------
aq3cn
It is a great software. Much better than paid options out there. I tested it
on Mac and Ubuntu. I wanted Windows version too but was reluctant to install
it. Is there a portable version of it? I like to keep it on pendrive.

Edit: Don't mind, I loved it so much and I could stop myself from installing
it on my Windows machine too. But I still want the portable version so that I
can use it when I don't have admin privileges to install software.

------
brbsix
Is that deb source line correct? It's listed in the installation instructions
as:

    
    
        deb https://typora.io linux/
    

`apt-get update` barks out the following warning:

    
    
        W: Conflicting distribution: https://typora.io linux/ InRelease (expected linux but got )
    

To suppress the message I ended up changing it to:

    
    
        deb https://typora.io/linux ./

------
mintplant
VirusTotal scan of the installer, in case anyone is interested:
[https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/c825f1c56df8802215011f31c...](https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/c825f1c56df8802215011f31c30f477544ca84c02a95269eae3f38fcf20ffe5b/analysis/)

(1/56 detection ratio and it looks like a false positive)

~~~
creshal
Some virus scanners have gone full retard and flag all executables they
haven't seen before.

~~~
davidjhall
Hurm -- I just had Avira and Windows Defender flag it as unsafe. They both
said they detected Adware/Filefinder.IL

Is that a common missed signature? Does it have a common pattern?

~~~
creshal
No idea, to be honest. I'm not really using Windows actively any more, but
complaints about heuristics detections crop up all the time.

EDIT: I've just uploaded a test electron binary I made myself to see whether
it triggers on all of them. 0 detections for mine, but mine are always
digitally signed. I'm not sure whether and how that affects heuristics, but
theoretically it should.

------
tomne
Isn't that called vim (or insert your actual editor of choice)?

Markdown is meant to be readable while editing, I actually find having the
rendered edition on top of your edition really confusing, when you can just
open the .md file in your editor while having your preview outside of it
updated after each save.

------
tmikaeld
It's hard to stop being used to the folder-tree in LightPaper, makes it much
simpler to organise MD files.

------
steadicat
What’s missing in most of these markdown editors (including this one), is the
ability to copy the formatted document as clean rich text, for pasting into
email and other apps.

For example, a simple document with a list gives you this very clean HTML if
you “copy code”:

    
    
      <p>Here is an email with a bunch of lists:</p>
      <ul><li>
      <p>Item one</p>
      </li>
      <li>
      <p>Item two</p>
      <ul><li>
      Item three</li>
      </ul>
      </li>
      </ul>
    

But if you copy the rich text and paste into a contenteditable field, you get
this (ugh):

    
    
        <div><p cid="c1" mdtype="paragraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-margin-before: 1rem; -webkit-margin-after: 1rem; margin: 30px 0px 0.8em; width: inherit; position: relative; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: &quot;Open Sans&quot;, &quot;Clear Sans&quot;, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap; text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="md-line md-end-block md-focus" cid="c6" mdtype="line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block;"><span md-inline="plain" class="md-expand" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Here is an email with a bunch of lists:</span></span></p><ul class="ul-list" cid="c23" mdtype="list" data-mark="-" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0.8em 0px; padding-left: 30px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: &quot;Open Sans&quot;, &quot;Clear Sans&quot;, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap; text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li cid="c24" mdtype="list_item" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; position: relative;"><p cid="c25" mdtype="paragraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-margin-before: 1rem; -webkit-margin-after: 1rem; margin: 0.5rem 0px; width: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="md-line md-end-block" cid="c26" mdtype="line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block;"><span md-inline="plain" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Item one</span></span></p></li><li cid="c33" mdtype="list_item" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; position: relative;"><p cid="c32" mdtype="paragraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-margin-before: 1rem; -webkit-margin-after: 1rem; margin: 0.5rem 0px; width: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="md-line md-end-block" cid="c27" mdtype="line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block;"><span md-inline="plain" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Item two</span></span></p><ul class="ul-list" cid="c41" mdtype="list" data-mark="-" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding-left: 30px;"><li cid="c40" mdtype="list_item" class="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; position: relative;"><p cid="c39" mdtype="paragraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-margin-before: 1rem; -webkit-margin-after: 1rem; margin: 0.5rem 0px; width: inherit; position: relative;"><span class="md-line md-end-block" cid="c34" mdtype="line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block;"><span md-inline="plain" class="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Item three</span></span></p></li><li cid="c40" mdtype="list_item" class="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; position: relative;"><div><span md-inline="plain" class="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br></span></div></li></ul></li></ul><p cid="c120" mdtype="paragraph" class="unholdable" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-margin-before: 1rem; -webkit-margin-after: 1rem; margin: 0.8em 0px; width: inherit; position: relative; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: &quot;Open Sans&quot;, &quot;Clear Sans&quot;, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap; text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></p></div>

------
anotheryou
Super sweet! Any chance for vim and not hiding the syntax in the styled view?
With that I'd switch in a heartbeat.

Also nice to have: optionally show invisible characters. Than the headline
margins and doubled spaces become easier to digest.

------
salex89
I'll forgive the application size, because I like it. I hope there are plans
to add tabs, because the current approach is a bit clunky, you can switch
between open windows with Ctrl+Tab but the windows are independent.

------
tauchunfall
This looks like a WYSIWYM (what you see is what you mean) editor similar to
LyX.

------
desireco42
This is pretty awesome. My initial thought was that we really don't need
another Markdown editor, these are becoming like ToDo lists.

However, it looks awesome, so far it seems to work really well. Support for
unicode is great.

------
dewiz
I gave Typora a test drive with Readme.MD from Github. The rendering is
considerably different, too early to use it.

IntelliJ IDEA MD support is still the best tool IMHO.

------
adamrezich
Cool app! Glad it's for Windows!

Maybe it's just me though, but I think a smooth transition when the text
restructures would make it a lot less jarring.

------
ausjke
used various markdown editor these years, I now settle down on vscode for
editing and if I need export to PDF I use remarkable which does the job well
including various utf-8 fonts.

tried typora quickly, it looks nice, however it can't handle export-to-pdf
with some asia fonts in it for me, hope that can be improved.

it's fair to say pandoc can't do utf-8 fonts for PDF reliably either.

~~~
algorithmsRcool
Makes sense, Typora uses Pandoc under the covers for it's import/export.

I use vscode for my markdown editing also, but the lack of help with tables
and other formatting hurt along with the lack of a offline spellchecker makes
vscode a bit painful.

------
mrwnmonm
it is weird how you could ignore new startups, then use their products later
this is not just an app i like, i actually was going to build this, but when i
saw it, i downloaded, tried it, then forget about it don't be disappointing if
small people are using it at the beginning, just keep improving it

------
mattivc
I have been using MacDown for a while now, which again was a replacement for
Mou. But this looks even better.

------
gravypod
Is there an AUR or an arch package for this?

------
shRaj9fEc8Vith
not bad start up time consider it's using Electron! Love it so far.

------
ijafri
they have done/got a lot of things right.

------
therealasdf
This is beautiful

------
NuDinNou
> * Free during beta.

Ok, bye.

------
mankash666
Just curious if a WYSIWYG is planned for this. With all the possible languages
one can learn, learning one for documentation alone seems like cognitive
overload, especially if an application can do it for you

~~~
no_protocol
This already is "what you see is what you get" \-- are you asking about some
kind of buttons for hints to insert the markup for a certain type?

~~~
mankash666
No it's not. You _have_ to type in actual Markdown semantics for the rendering
to occur.

You don't write XML when you write in MS word, do you?

~~~
algorithmsRcool
You do not have to type the markdown. You can press Ctrl+B and bold text. You
can right click and insert a Table and fill it in as WYSIWYG.

You can always type markdown but you don't have to.

Pressing Ctrl + / will toggle the whole doc to pure markdown so you can tweak
for a second and then flip back to WYSIWYG.

------
oneeyedpigeon
Crashes for me on OSX 10.9.5:

    
    
        Assertion failed: (tokenCount < maxCountIncludingZeroTerminator - 1), function CUIRenditionKeySetValueForAttribute, file /SourceCache/CoreUI/CoreUI-231.1/CoreTheme/ThemeStorage/CUIThemeRendition.m, line 136.

------
whatgoodisaroad
"A truly minimal markdown editor"

Is less-minimal than nano.

~~~
vonklaus
What would that look like? Just nano, but removing the few shortcuts except
key entry & save.

