Hello people,
I am just random user of Bear and got interested on your view on the ‘un-hide’ markdown option.
I have seen some people disliking the current visual implementation of the headers and got curious on what would be your preferred method of viewing your notes.
For markdown hiding people like me, this is no question needed.
But if you are the type that wants markdown visible, would you like your notes to show semi-markdown like what current Bear2 and Panda is
VS
would you like it to be completely markdown like Ulyssess, iA Writer and Drafts? That is, unformatted todos/ tables/ etc. as well.
I think there is a middle way between semi markdown (like in bear) and bare-bone markdown.
Asking just for the headers would lead to a different voting result than also including tables and to-dos that causes worse user experience. Actually the headers are the point where people are criticising
I don’t consider what Bear 1 (or the Discord message editor) does to be “completely bare-bone markdown” – when I put asterisks around a word, both of these things are true:
I can see the asterisks
The text inside the asterisks is emphasized/italicized
“Completely bare-bone markdown” makes it sound like only 1 would be true true, and the formatting is not applied.
I want to see the asterisks/markdown characters, and I also want to see the text be formatted as much as possible.
You are right, but it is hard to distinguish the level if that is the case.
There is
level 0: completely bare bone no highlights nothing
level 1: highlighted but not fully rendered (todos etc.) like iA Writer etc.
level 2-A: highlighted and partially rendered like Bear 1
level 2-B: the header is visual now in Bear 2
level 3: hide markdown
I was just curious about the extreme case of what people would select if they had the option to go completely level 1 to what we have now since I can’t see the devs considering to redo the header.
Initially I thought the way the cursor jumped around would bother me, but it doesn’t anymore and I like my markdown hidden.
However, I really miss the H1-3 icons for headers as I think the new ones take way to long to recognize what heading level it is. Maybe heading levels in general aren’t distinctive enough that the icons are a problem…
Like @Eleanor points out, there are several levels.
I think iA Writer is the benchmark for how to deal with typography in a markdown based editor. Their choices are pretty much perfect in my opinion.
Previously I found it pointless to ask for it since they already showed some markdown (in Bear 1), but I think considering it’s going to be a setting anyway I would love for Bear to show markdown in similar ways to iA Writer. What they basically do is that they do show all the character always, but they do smart things with spacing and alignment to make it feel very natural.
Since Bear has a bit different vibe from iA Writer I suppose you could do somethings more Bear-y. For instance, when showing lists iA Writer just shows asterisk and dashes as is. I think Bear could do that, but show the dashes/asterisk in Bear colors for instance.
I also really like how iA Writer does headings. If you’re on a small screen they just show them as-is (aside from bolding them) with all the hashes, but if you have more vertical space then it aligns it such that the title itself is aligned to the text while the dashes hang out to the left.
All that said, I can see all this being way too much effort for a setting not that many people might even turn on (hiding markdown).
So as long as I get to avoid text jumping around due to formatting I’ll be happy enough! That’s the really important part!