Ask HN: Lightweight markup language with an open-source WYSIWYG editor?

[Blip-A]

I'm looking for a lightweight markup language with a WYSIWYG editor, primarily for taking personal notes. I only require a few basic formatting constructs, primarily: headings, lists, and links.

My first choice would have been Markdown, but after trying several different editors with Markdown support, they all suffer from some common issues that disrupt the WYSIWYG experience, particularly the fact that they don't handle soft wrapping in a visually appealing way (for example, list items aren't wrapped to the appropriate level of indentation).

MarkText looked promising, but the project appears almost abandoned, and never had a stable release, so I'd be hesitant to use it for important documents.

On the other end of the spectrum there's Libreoffice Writer, which produces Open Document Format documents (which are just zipped XML files). However, this forces the user to deal with page breaks and style information, which is distracting and unnecessary for taking notes. It also produces unnecessarily large files because style information and settings must be stored.

Something like Zim Desktop Wiki is very close to what I'm looking for, but I don't particularly like how Zim handles file navigation.

My ideal editor would provide an experience similar to Libreoffice, except with no page breaks or style information. Perhaps I'm looking for a WYSIWYG HTML editor?

Can anyone suggest a markup language and editor that might fit my requirements?

Edit: To clarify, I would also settle for a Markdown editor that provides a similar visual experience to a WYSIWYG editor, such as proper soft wrapping for list items, while still displaying the actual markup syntax characters.

[mmphosis]

HyperText Markup Language (HTML.)

Never mind open source, I haven't seen a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) editor since the 1990s. An old version of Netscape had an HTML WYSIWYG editor builtin. Dreamweaver. I can't stomach LibreOffice.

[Blip-A → mmphosis]

I agree, HTML does seem like what I'm looking for, except I don't want to edit the tags directly. I really just want an editor that displays headings, bulleted and numbered lists, and hyperlinks, without forcing me to deal with soft vs. hard wrapping issues (on the Markdown / basic text editor end of the spectrum) or styles (on the Libreoffice end of the spectrum).

[mmphosis → Blip-A]

<meta charset="utf-8">I've resigned myself to writing raw HTML. It's horrible, but that's what I've got. I just tried a “modern” editor but the saved HTML is akin to homepage—no thanks.

  <h1>headings</h1>
  <h2>subheadings</h2>
  &bull; bullets
  <ul>
    <li>bulleted</li>
    <li>lists</li>
  </ul>
  <ol>
     <li>numbered</li>
     <li>lists</li>
  </ol>
  <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36620902">hyperlinks</a>

[mikece]

What was wrong with Visual Studio Code?

[Blip-A → mikece]

I assume it suffers from the same issues as the other Markdown editors I've tried, particularly failure to soft wrap list items to the appropriate level of visual indentation.

[mikece → Blip-A]

You assume? Wrapping to the "proper" indent level is a highly subjective statement but line-wraps in Markdown in VS Code don't go back to the start of the line but to the level of indentation.

[Blip-A → mikece]

Am I wrong? To clarify, I'm not looking for a Markdown editor with a preview pane. I'd want to see proper soft wrapping in the editor pane itself.

Edit: I also want the line to to be indented past the number or bullet, e.g:

Right:

1. first line of text

   second line of text

Wrong:

1. first line of text

second line of text

[mikece → Blip-A]

The spec doesn't address line wrapping in editors: https://spec.commonmark.org/0.30/#indented-code-blocks

I imagine you could open a Github issue or even submit a PR if you don't like how a certain editor does word wrapping in Markdown lists. Personally I am not concerned with this detail.

[Blip-A → mikece]

You are correct, I was using proper in a highly subjective/opinionated way. It's just that I would prefer lists to be wrapped and indented the same way they would be in a rendered document, as I will only be reading these notes in my editor.