

Show HN: My WWDC-inspired project. A Markdown editor for Lion - SeoxyS
http://kswizz.com/post/8624456381/macchiato

======
callahad
There's some great market research being done for you in the comments! It
looks like some of your primary competitors are:

1\. Emdee: $Unknown, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foE-dXgTHoU> (Not yet
fully released)

2\. Markdown Editor: Free, <http://keshiki.net/markdown-editor/> (Source code
available, but no license specified)

3\. Marked: $2.99, <http://markedapp.com/> (Previewer, not an editor)

4\. Byword: $9.99, <http://bywordapp.com/>

5\. iA Writer: $17.99, <http://www.iawriter.com/>

6\. WriteRoom: $24.99, <http://hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom>

~~~
bodhi
Hey cool. Someone else actually knows about My Markdown Editor! I wrote #2.
It's got some issues, and according to some feedback, it doesn't work on Lion
(I haven't updated yet, so I can't test.)

As for licence, I should really add a note to that page. I guess BSD/MIT will
do. Or GPL if you so desire :)

------
bodhi
> The internals of the app uses NSRegularExpression

I tried to implement my version of this idea[1] with regular expressions too,
using OgreKit. I ran into all sorts of problems with corner cases, especially
with nesting of block-level elements (lists/blockquotes/code). I wanted to
switch over to a parser-based implementation, but at the time all the existing
parsers were setup to emit HTML, so getting character-offsets out of the
parser wasn't possible without hacking the parser to death.

There's been some good discussion on the Markdown list[2] recently about these
sorts of things, a really interesting example is PEG Markdown Highlight[3],
which is exactly what I wanted to do with my app, but I was too busy (read:
lazy) to get around to.

[1]: <http://keshiki.net/markdown-editor/>

[2]: <http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss>

[3]: Project: <http://hasseg.org/peg-markdown-highlight/> Discussion:
[http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-
discuss/2011-June...](http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-
discuss/2011-June/002129.html)

~~~
xentronium
> I wanted to switch over to a parser-based implementation, but at the time
> all the existing parsers were setup to emit HTML, so getting character-
> offsets out of the parser wasn't possible without hacking the parser to
> death.

You might want to try libupskirt [1], library github uses.

[1] <http://fossil.instinctive.eu/libupskirt/index>

~~~
bodhi
Cool, thanks. I haven't looked deeply into it, but from a quick glance it
seems to want to transform the input.

For my use case I need a parse tree, with specific byte (well, character
really) offsets. For example, I need to know _where_ the link started, not
that there is now a a link with text T and href H.

My program (and Macchiato I assume) doesn't actually transform the source to
an output format, we add attributes to the source text (similar to RTF).

------
SeoxyS
Woah, this made front-page!

I realize the price is kind of prohibitive to just check out. I wish the App
Store would let me give a massive discount coupon for HN readers. Turns out
that for the niche market I'm targeting, this is just about the right price,
though.

I'm working on making a downloadable trial version. However, for the time
being I have some extra promo codes I can give out. First come first served:

H4JTKTFN3FHL RR6AA6696WJK 9F4NFPN3LEFJ F36LEP9T7JMH NTNWAFJ6K9A6 HXRA4TT6WWFN
H4HEEWXHXNEF 3RMYERRJXKWW 64AK4K67XPJ3 LPPTJT9PKKR7

I'm open to all feedback! Thanks!

~~~
terinjokes
__Woot __I got one of them!

I'm composing this reply inside of Macchiato. Honestly, I think it's a pretty
decent idea, although it might have a hard time to displace Vim, which I alway
have tend to have open.

Something that it might easily displace is composing my blog posts, the fact
that fullscreen mode knocks out my secondary monitor is probably a good idea,
and keeps me focused on the task on hand—writing the blog posts.

On that note, I've switched to full screen. The animation to full screen
wasn't the smoothest, and doesn't have the same feel that Apple applications
scale up. In addition, while the slight gradient works in a small window,
blowing that up to the fullscreen doesn't work very well, and I feel like I
looking straight into the middle of the sun.

I realize that you're attempting to be fairly minimalist with your
application, but I think that a less-strain theme for fullscreen would be a
very good improvement.

I've noticed that while backspacing, especially when typing in a blockquote,
the cursor doesn't line up with text you're editing. Small display issue, no
biggie.

Another thing that I would think very cool for fullscreen writing applications
is to display text with TeX-like text justification, so you don't end up with
very staggered paragraphs in the middle of your screen. Probably well outside
the scope of your application, but thought for other HN-ers.

I think that's all feedback I can come up with right now. I'll continue to try
out the app, and look forward to what updates you have up your sleeve.

EDIT #1: Fixing some grammar. Trying to get the elements right ;)

EDIT #2: Apparently I can't make new comments anymore. Since I comment rarely,
I assume this was some change as part of HN's vote-less comments change. May I
make a theme request? Yes? Great! I really like the Solarized[1] theme, and
think it would be a great addition.

In addition, I think callahad had a really great review on this same thread. I
agree with #5 in particular, being able to switch off the preview, should I
come about the need, would be really nice, mostly for the same reason callahad
mentions. And #7, too.

One last agreement with callahad:

> Hopefully this is helpful and not discouraging! I didn't want to take the
> promo code without leaving you with some feedback.

[1]: <http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized>

~~~
SeoxyS
Thanks for the feedback!

Themes are coming up. I'm gonna have a handful of color palets and typographic
themes to pick from.

Took note of everything else. Will be working hard on making the app better in
updates!

------
emehrkay
$20 is a hard "check out."

It looks cool though

~~~
keyle
Yes I think it should sit at the $5 mark.

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swanson
Think it's going to be tough to compete on price with: <http://markedapp.com/>

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metafour
While the stylized text is a nice touch it does seem to be on the upper end of
the market in terms of price at $19.99. Would be nice if you included some of
the features of Byword on top of what you have.

Also, for those mentioning Marked as a competitor I must point out that Marked
is actually solely a previewer, not an editor.

------
cambriaone
Congrats on launching! It looks cool. I applaud your audacity by pricing it at
$20, but that's pretty steep when there are already other markdown focused
text editors (marked, iA writer, etc) for much cheaper.

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benatkin
I really like the web page. I can't comment on the app, because there's no way
to try it without shelling out $20.

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homosaur
Byword is like 5 bucks. Not sure how this is going to compete, honestly.

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rocktronica
Wondering how this will stack up to emdee.app (still in development).

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foE-dXgTHoU>

~~~
SeoxyS
The most significant design decision (and something that I think is a major
feature over Emdee and Marked (mentioned in another comment) is that there is
no distinction between preview and editing modes / views. Your code is
stylized as the Markdown it represents, and that's the fundamental idea behind
Macchiato.

------
realize
Too expensive

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jonknee
Why is your app's squeeze page so big? It's over 3MB, mostly being weighed
down by a 2.46MB background image (because it's a photo and you used PNG, you
could cut it down by an order of magnitude by using JPEG). I'm glad I wasn't
on 3G...

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tszming
I am using Markdownlive, it support instant preview (mit-license, need to
compile using xcode) <https://github.com/rentzsch/markdownlive>

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geoffb
Nice work. Would be great if unordered and ordered lists were stylized.

~~~
SeoxyS
They are, to a small extent. They look like plain text, but if an item wraps
across lines, the indent level is preserved. Note: blockquotes and code blocks
should do the same thing, but it hasn't been implemented yet.

------
Kwpolska
$20, are you crazy? Vim is the best choice.

