I think this is the right decision. Markdown is a compromise that prioritises simplicity. Adding spacing options adds a whole level of complexity that is unneccesary in a note app. The only reason to have para spacing is so as to make unneccesary the ‘crime’ of double lines between paragraphs for visual clarity. But this is a trivial search and replace in a ‘proper’ desktop publishing app or word processer if you need your text from Bear formatted in such a fashion.
2 Likes
Where do you see the complexity in a simple option that rules a simple thing?
For many bear is a writing app. It offers an excellent environment for longform writing. Paragraph spacing supports the improvement of that environment
No, I really dislike such kind of passive-aggressive comments. Is it really that hard for you to live with an option that you never have to use but would help other people in their use cases? Rather than that you prefer to send us away as if we are not the users which deserve bear. Why is it all necessary to have chooseable fonts or even such useless things like themes? These features are not essential (fonts maybe) but they make using bear a pleasure. So do paragraph spacing which furthermore improves readability which however is more essential. To let you look into a mirror: why don‘t you change to grey cold TextEdit and convert your stuff with a script to html if markdown experience is the holy grail?
For the same reasons Matteo listed above. For paragraph spacing to work properly you would need specific settings for each paragraph type – bullets, code, headings etc. – as well as individual space-before and space-after settings. Once you’ve implemented all of that and made a UI for it you may as well just drop using markdown altogether and build a full blown rich text word processer.
I understand much of the focus of Bear 2 is to use standard markdown (commonmark) rather than trying to reinvent the wheel with custom solutions that never really worked well (as in Bear 1).
And it is perfectly fine for that as it is. But it is not a word processer or DTP app. And should not be made into one.
Hmm. I’m not the one being passive-agressive here. Adding that tiny bit of typographic control adds a disproportionately large support burden on the developers as well as a lot of potential incompatibility with other markdown editors …
1 Like
Nobody asked for that or a bloat of options but just to keep the feature that existed in bear 1 for years additionally with some decisions for different parts of the text (lists, code blocks and footnotes)
Actually it worked well for me. And i see no reason why it shouldn’t work well in bear 2. The problem here seems that you believe that your use case is the same one of every other user. And once again: if it doesn’t work for YOU then just don’t change the spacing
Apart from the fact that you cannot make different paragraphs clearly visible especially in left aligned text without justification and therefore readability suffers
Some whataboutism: Why nobody used that argument in regard to the style bar that mimics a richt text toolbar? Bear definitely doesn’t stand for the pure and origin markdown experience. Daring Fireball: Jason Snell on iOS Markdown Editors
You underestimate the meaning of that “tiny bit control” for many people
What kind of compatibility? The spacing in other editors might not be shown if they do not have an option for paragraph spacing? I really can live with that as i spend the most time in bear which is the central writing app for me. Occasionally i use ulysses because of its export features with many presets. In ulysses this option exist and it exists because it is an app dedicated for writing
Me neither. Sorry for the words which i should have chosen more carefully.
I just want extra spacing between list items, specifically when items take up more than one line.
For me, an empty newline is an ok paragraph break in normal writing, but it’s overkill for lists. Something in between would be extremely useful.
I support adding paragraph spacing option back. And increasing paragraph spacing should increase the spacing after a heading even more than what the default is (I assume there’s some sort of modifier after the spacing after headings as it’s larger than normal line height on H1 and H2 especially).
I know there’s people who’d love to decrease the spacing after heading and before the following body text, but I would actually love to increase it even more, just a bit. Also it would help to space out list items.
It is precisely those ‘additional decisions’ that would add complexity for the developers. And I can almost guarantee you would not find them adequate.
You’re the one demanding features that apparently have little interest and that the devolpers have stated are tricky to implement well. I am simply being pragmatic. The more simple the app is the more chance we have of getting some actually useful features. The Bear developers are not the fastest in the world after all …
Not sure what you mean by that, sorry …
And you seem to underestimate the complexity of adding that control. As a graphic designer I know that for that control to actually be useful it would need to be far more complicated than you imagine. I too am very pernickety about typographic presentation but there is a time and a place for everything. And a markdown based notes app is not that place.
It seems to me a markdown based app is simply the wrong tool for the job for your useage …
I have my reservations about markdown too. But I can accept its limitations in this kind of app for the sake of simplicity.
1 Like
I just don’t put a blank line after list items and do put one after paragraphs. Things only get confused when an app adds additional line spacing after a single return.
I guess you have a prooving for that claim? As far as i can see here in the thread the majority is interested in that feature. But can you tell me what your interest actually is by pandering to the devs? You come from nowhere and pretend to suffer from the alleged complexity other people have to handle. What is your motivation in this discussion at all?
Paragraph spacing is useful. You are not in the position to define what is useful. But let me gues: useful is probably what you are interested in?
I am an user. And as such one i know what i need. You are - sorry to say that to you - also just an user. If you are a graphic designer is definetely not of interest at all in this discussion. get your designs straight in your professional context but please do not bother other people with your qualification which just seemingly qualifies you to play a dev in your imagination
Once again: i won’t be driven away. If you want to see me going you have to offer more than phrasemongering
Thanks for clarification that bear 1 was not a markdown based app.
Just to shock you: bear 2 is neither according to the founder and originator of markdown, John Gruber
Maybe I don’t know much about Markdown, but my understanding is that the whole point of it is to provide a syntax where the most common HTML tags for prose can be replaced by simple punctuation characters that are meant to be visible to the writer. I want to see the characters so I know I’ll get exactly the HTML output I think I’m going to get, but those punctuation characters shouldn’t distract from the readability of the prose.
Daring Fireball: Jason Snell on iOS Markdown Editors
Please ask the bear developers why they added complexity by removing markups from text body
I use ulysses and its presets if i want to export to a fancy pdf or docx style. But the majoority of time i work in bear and store my notes and writings there for reading and working for it. So that is not a solution for me and others 
If they decide to do so, i hope they’ll take a look into ulysses for inspiration. See here!
1 Like
I wouldn’t be too ompitimistic about @trix180 anouncment. He talks about export preferences but not necessarily about fancy presets. We should wait until bear 2 gets released so that the devs heads are free before we try to persuade them 
1 Like
Presumably the same as yours. I simply want Bear to be as good and useful as possible. Obviously we disagree on what this entails. But you need to accept that other people have different opinions to yours. If you can’t discuss these things in a civil tone then I don’t think we need continue this conversation.
1 Like
Hey, that’s the first time I agree with you.
You are not suffering from an option because you do not have to use it. You are even not able to tell me why an option for paragraph spacing decreases bears usefulness and goodness but the other options in editor settings do the opposite. You just don‘t need paragraph spacing and that‘s totally fine. Nobody forces you to use all the editor settings, just keep the defaults. As a user you are not affected at all so that you switched into the role as an imaginary dev which you definitely not are and who doesn‘t have to handle the tricky stuff in mysterious markdown that indeed exist. I just can‘t stand if someone tells me that I should switch to another tool just because I am requesting a reasonable feature whose only offense is that you don‘t need it. You don‘t know me, my workflow or for what I am using bear but you want to send me away? I am not asking for table calculation, database views or for playing doom in bear what you indeed can do in obsidian but for a simple feature from the point of view of an average user. If the devs decide that for technical reasons the feature will not be implemented then I will have to accept that, what else? They will have their good reasons. But as far as I have understood matteo it was not a complete refusal: they will consider the feature after clearing some stuff. So what is your problem with that? Why the destructive manner in your arguments? I really don‘t understand the mindset behind that: there are so many features that I do not need in bear but I am happy when other users find them useful and are happy with them. We all are bear users, we love the app and try to contribute each one as good as he or her can to improve the app. And as a user we are aware that the devs lifes are not easy with so many people with different needs and use cases. That part is probably as hard as creating the code. It was Peter Pawlowski, the developer of foobar2000, which placed in his signature: „it would be such a great job if it weren‘t for the users“. It was his way to say that his app IS for the users. Bear is also such an app, An app for us, the users, even then if requests are not fulfilled.
Peace, Love, Unity and Having Fun! 
2 Likes
I’ve not been using the Beta, but am personally a bit gutted that paragraph spacing will not be in Bear 2. I use it primarily for long form writing, as it’s great for just getting words down. The paragraph spacing got rid of the need of having to double-enter for a new paragraph, and keep things readable. Believe me, if you’re writing a lot of dialogue, double-entering every few seconds interrupts flow too much.
I’ll probably end up going back to Ulysses which is a shame, as I prefer everything else about Bear. The look, the feel, the tagging system, the new backlinks, the new outline view… you guys do so much right, and yet you’re removing what is (to me at least) a very simple UI option.
I’ve just tried Ulysses after a long absence, and I don’t like it. I think it’s looks were always a strong point, but it’s looking a bit long in the tooth now. The UI in comparison to Bear is too fiddly as well, too many distracting bits and bobs.
So it looks like I’ll be sticking with Bear for now. 
Quick question though. I’ve got two thirds of a novel typed up in Bear with paragraph spacing turned on. When Bear 2 hits the app store and I update, do I then have to go through every paragraph of my novel and hit ‘enter’ just to create a space? I hope not.
Actually that‘s what you have to do.
The next problem I see is that an empty line produces an second empty paragraph on export to docx. When we talk about unexpected behaviour this also has to be mentioned. I am not able to wrap my head around that. On one side it is said the real markdown experience means that „enter“ produced a soft line break but two times „enter“ leads to a paragraph. But on the other side on export to docx (don‘t have tested pdf) after each paragraph an empty paragraph is created.
You are absolutely right with ulysses. It has some very good features but alone the visible markups would disturb me now not to speak about he ui which even can hold 5 panes side to side. Ulysses cannot compete with bear as note or pkm app. Bear however is already an excellent app for longform writing which could take a look at some points in ulysses to improve its character as writing app. Paragraph spacing is fundamental for writing. Nothing fancy, just a checkbox for paragraph spacing would be enough and the spacing of paragraphs is calculated by line height
Good lord. Really? That’s insane! 
I have about fifty thousand words I’d have to do this for. 
Given that they’ve added things like an outline mode must mean they realise people can and now use Bear for longform writing? I never thought they’d be removing features from Bear 2 that were in Bear 1. 
As others have said in this thread already, how a markdown document is rendered (e.g. exported to docx) is not the same as how it is edited. It’s early days for exporting in Bear 2.0 and the devs have talked about giving users additional themes and maybe further control over exports in versions after 2.0. If you are familiar with Ulysses you know that there are various ways to render its documents into pdfs, epubs, docx and so on.
The argument against paragraph spacing in the EDITOR is that it appears you are entering paragraph breaks, when you are only really entering line breaks. That’s what creates problems like having to edit every paragraph break in a long document. I’ve had to do it more than once in various software having exported from markdown based editors that add paragraph spacing (including Ulysses). In practice, it’s not that difficult to “replace all” in something like MS Word, once you’ve figured out what to replace with what.
How line breaks and paragraph breaks are rendered on export or printing is a separate issue. It’s perfectly possible to set up export templates in many markdown editors which produce text files from markdown with any layout and spacing you want.
Here’s a thought off the top of my head, similar to your checkbox idea. Two options in the settings for the editor that changes how hitting Enter just once works. One option creates a line break, the other option creates a paragraph break.
That’s more or less what Ulysses does. In my experience it doesn’t solve the problem, partly because Ulysses tries to be too clever and has its own “flavour” of markdown. For example, if paragraphs work, lists might not, when exported.