I would also just add that I am keeping my bear subscription, even though I don’t actively use Bear, because:
It’s a great app and I like seeing where it’s going
To support shiny frog in developing a standalone Markdown editor
Having said that I would love a file view. Files and Folders is a well tested and commonplace data storage mechanism. It’s what one thinks off when storing data. There are no learning curves and data implicitly has hierarchical relationships and semantic location based on where the data is.
For example:
/Vehicles/BMW/e38/Finances
I know that this is where are financial information regarding my E38 BMW is (I don’t own one). I know exactly where it is and what to expect from it. You get the rest for free without having to invent much more.
I see most apps as lenses over the data stored on a hard drive. In this instance, bear would be a lovely lens to view the markdown data I have stored on my drive.
Much like my code can be viewed either in Sublime or VS Code, they are distinct ways of parsing underlying data. Having a folder view makes it homologous with the OS, it doesn’t do anything that you don’t expect the OS does not do. This way you have a cohesive experience, and the app is much more pleasurable to use. You can do a search on top of the files and folders, by filtering the tree presented. This could be a good compromise. Between list and file / folder view.
Although the competition here is Alfred, which is incredibly fast at finding files, so in order to beat it, you would have to do Fuzzy search on contents and Filter the folder / file view. This would be novel and a great filter to put upon a hard drive / Folder hierarchy.
P.S. I would pay good money for a standalone markdown editor.
One thing I would like to see (both this and Bear) is better handling for Markdown tables. I want to type out the raw markdown for tables and that does not work in Bear or Panda. Also I want to be able to plaintext edit the table. The table rendering is first class but a big reason I dumped Apple Notes for Bear was to do straight up markdown and Bear/Panda does all but tables correctly.
It’s fine to have the method you have available for tables for people that don’t want to edit the source but for those of us completely embedded in Markdown, not being able to manually type out/correct tables is friction.
One other suggestion - would be great if you could tie into Git. I could see editing my GitHub wiki (which would be a local git enlistment with GFM files) with Panda.
Please, team, allow for your current tables editing mode to stand (side by side with native code edition for people who want to use it). As for me, I’m using Bear especially because you do table editing the way you do and I hate Markdown tables with a passion. have both modes if you intend to include that, please.
I’m currently. looking at Panda as a markdown editor for an app, for which I need it pretty much as it is now, with no sidebar for note files. So that as an option would be nice, assuming Panda might also become a note taking app with local storage.
That in mind, using the current panda.app I’m unable to have it open a file given on the command line or using a callback URI. Are either of those things possible just yet?
The key difference between the two apps is the selling point for me — Panda presumably gets all of the Bear UI goodness in the context of interacting with Markdown text files, while its older sibling is a contained, syncing (if you want) experience. I’d be using both — Bear for journaling, Panda for writing and editing.
I want to use it on iOS/ipados to open up markdown from devonthibk.
I also want to use it for my journaling. As long as panda allows opening files from anywhere in the operating system, it is very easy to use the built-in Apple shortcuts to make daily notes and a shortcut to append them from the home screen. Then it’s easy to edit them with panda later. This means you don’t have to have “panda specific” shortcut actions And can just use the prebuilt in Apple shortcuts for text files.
For static site blogging, yes. Also, on iOS, I would use Panda to open and edit markdown notes in the field (i.e., on-the-go). It’s important to me that I’m able to open a markdown file for editing as fast as possible. I still use Obsidian for some research notes but the Obsidian mobile app has been unreliable for years now. So, now, I have to write research notes in Bear then export them to Obsidian. Panda on iOS solves this problem.
I have a folder structure with MD files, PDFs and images that I access from Taio and iA Writer (used to use Obsidian, too, but it’s too fiddly). I use wikilinks and image/PDF embedding and I use frontmatter – so supporting those is a must for me to use Panda. I don’t use tags much (I only use tags in Bear because it has no folders: I find folders more efficient than tags for how my brain works.)
The perfect Panda for me would:
be compatible with Bear (i.e., copy-pasting between both would lose no formatting)
would support MD extensions such as wikilinks (with aliases!), tables, strikethrough
would auto-update wikilinks like Obsidian does
would handle content embeds gracefully, ideally including ![[transclusion]] (this notation is supported by all three apps I use)
Like many said before me, I would use it as a markdown editor. As a software engineer, I have several Git projects, each with their own documentation (in markdown). I would love to use a bear-like experience on those, instead of going for suboptimal solutions like VS Code or IA Writer.
As other’s have said, I’d use Panda for all the markdown notes that I keep outside of Bear — currently use Bear for work projects, but there’s a whole raft of life admin, journaling, quick notes and emails and other bits and bobs I have notes on but don’t want to keep in Bear (cough areas cough).
For Panda it’d be great to be able to handle markdown editing with the features of the Bear editor (images, tables, markdown etc). I feel that Panda should remain a relatively simple standalone editor rather than offer more advanced functionality - very much Bear editor but standalone. Otherwise it runs the risk of drawing focus away from Bear. That said, a couple of additional features that I’d really like to see are:
If there’s a a file browser, would be great to have something as snappy and keyboard focused as the old Notational Velocity (still the one to beat for me - tried the NV Ultra beta and feel it’s going in the wrong direction for me).
Support for system file tags; would be great if it was easy to use MacOS file tags. While seems a bit redundant to duplicate Bear on the tagging front, being able to use Finder tags would be really helpful.
I’d love to use Panda alongside DEVONthink for taking notes. I like using DEVONthink to store my notes alongside my PDFs etc., but I’m not a huge fan of their inbuilt Markdown editor.
For this purpose, Panda in its current state is almost perfect already, if it weren’t for the issue with 2-space soft tabs explained above by @jrk. The Markdown preview in DEVONthink (I think it’s based on MultiMarkdown) seems to expect the indentation of a list to use either hard tabs or 4-space soft tabs. Therefore, the second level of a list created with Panda (indented using 2 spaces) is rendered exactly the same as the first level and the 2 spaces in the beginning of the line are just ignored. The third level (indented using 4 spaces) is rendered as the second level of the list, as if it was indented using 1 hard tab.
First of all, I would like to say that I love both Bear, and Panda as a stand-alone markdown editor. I would use both, but for different purposes:
Bear for all notes and most writings
Panda for browsing and editing markdown from other sources, long form writing, and to emulate workspaces
Feature Requests
User setting switch to set default file type: .textbundle, .textpack, .bear, .panda
but of course, be able to open and edit any of the above.
I really like the idea of hybrid formats like in Panda alfa: .md (or .markdown) for text only, and one of the above types for notes with images and attachments.
Built in file browser and being able to add external folders from anywhere on disk both on Mac and iPad/iOS. Like Ulysses external folders and Textastic on iPad/iOS:
Wishing to get a file browser tree view in left pane, to quickly browse through notes displaying them in editor pane as you go, almost like in Bear today.
Three panes would be nice (with shortcuts to view 1, 2 or all 3 panes):
External folders (“workspaces”) pane.
File browser collapsible tree view pane.
Editor pane
Or emulate Ulysses’ implementation of External Folders
Don’t know if I would need the tag view or notes view – I can use Bear when needing that and Wiki-Links.
Settings for default mark up for bullets - * or + and Italics _..._ or *...*.
Helpful when copy or exporting as plain text, or markdown used in other apps.
(This request goes for Bear as well.)
Have the same Copy As... and Export As... functions as in Bear today.
Later, hoping for user defined HTML, PDF and Print in both Bear and Panda, using standard CSS language style sheets, with additional functions for page size, page breaks and pagination (I’ll continue to use my Apple Shortcut until then )
Other Uses
Yesterday I exported all my Ulysses’ groups and sheets to folders and .textbundle files, by dragging them all to a new Ulysses external folder on iCloud Drive.
I’m currently writing and testing a Python script that converts Ulysses’ special markups (highlight, strikeout, comments) in those files to Commonmark and Bear specific notation on image sizes etc. and also converting .textbundle to .md when no images or attachments present.
Planning to use the renewed Panda with those files and other folder trees (“workspaces” )
Bottom Line
Most important: get Panda Editor back up and running on Mac, iPad and iPhone soon, maybe with the addition of point 3, 4 and 5.
I think the way Ulysses handles External folders and files is excellent, and may be the way to go:
Three Panes:
Multiple attached folders with collapsible, arrow navigational tree view
Note (sheet, file) preview.
Main editor pane.
Ulysses supports multiple external folders, that makes it easy to have a variety of:
Multiple Local Folders (not synced)
Multiple Synced iCloud Drive folders
Multiple Synced DropBox folders (that was a big undertaking, that also works on iOS/iPad) Not on my list my for Panda.
And additionally on Mac: Regular synced folders/files to Dropbox, Gdrive, OneDrive, etc. that are synced and can be viewed and edited on Web, Windows Linux, Android, etc.
GUI works almost exactly the same as in Bear today, but first (left-most) pane shows nested folders instead of nested tags.
An optional collapsible #tag view in same pane could be added further down the line, but for me, getting started with only nested folders, would be first priority.
have both modes if you intend to include that, please.
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