Tell us about Settings

I don’t see this in your email, website, or the default “welcome” md document in the beta…

But my first instinct was to look for styles and editor adjustments. And then I realized that Settings isn’t active yet.

No big deal from a beta tester stand point, but you might want to outline what is forthcoming (kinda like “known issues”) to head off lots of duplicate feedback.

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Looking forward to themes. Missing my Toothpaste theme already. :sweat_smile:

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Tell us about Settings

They will come!

As a software developer, I love to hear that people crave customizations so that we can tweak all the things in the app.

Now you: tell us about what you want to settings-ify!

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Most important to me would be the typography settings (as in Bear). Other options are nice but not essential to me. Default theme of Lettera looks nice as is, but I imagine folks will want themes as well. To be precise I think I’d want all the options in Bear typography:

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First, this is awesome! I’ll be using this for my work notes and using Bear for personal.

The setting I would like to have is the option for the file name to mirror the top H1 line, if there is one.

This is Amazing, I was waiting for it for years! Now I can keep my work notes separately, sync with GDrive, and use the best editor in the universe!

And if you could add one more thing, it’s editor settings, especially line width. I just want to use all the space that I have :slight_smile:

Great question! Typography like Bear. Focus mode line width, so I can make the text a customised readable length when I’m writing. Image folder to place or find images by default and image width to display images within text.

I’m thrilled this editor is in beta now!

Settings:

  • Typography and Theme Settings from Bear
  • Ability to Create/Edit Custom Themes (via CSS?)
  • Ability to Change Text Colour for different levels of heading (H1, H2 etc)
  • Optional Support/Setting for Mermaid diagram rendering via Code Block
  • Optionally choose Extended markdown support (Commonmark, Multimarkdown etc)
  • Optionally utilise YAML front matter as document properties

Bear is opinionated software in terms of what you’ve chosen to leave out, rather than include. It’s a curated experience, and benefits from that. I wonder whether with Lettera you can take a different track and provide the user with options to make Lettera work the way they want rather than the Shiny Frog way… Especially considering that many will be coming to Lettera with an existing ‘vault’ of documents and hope to wrangle Lettera into being compatible with their existing formatting and expectations.

Bring across the beautiful UI from Bear, but with the power and options in the users hands to customise the core experience how they wish, even if it results in an uglier, less sublime experience for that user - it’s their choice.

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If we take Bear as an example, two come to mind right away: the typography settings and the “create new notes with:” option.

I bought a year of Bear but gave up on it after a few weeks. The encapsulated file system was a show stopper. I had thought I could solve this using automation but never got it working properly. NOW, we have Lettera which is really exciting for me.

I have lots of documents that use the kbd tag and have styled these in custom CSS styles in Obsidian and in Typora. I’m not sure how to do this in Lettera.

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In addition to app settings, I would love to have folder-specific settings. Even it is provided via a hidden dot file placed in the folder.

If all works out, I’m hoping to replace Obsidian vaults with Lettera. But I’d need support for folder specific setting.

@gormus like what kind of settings per folder?

Why would you replace Obsidian with Lettera? If Lettera is to be a text editor - and a lot of people here seem to think that that’s not the case, that it’s another notes app like Bear - then it’s not designed to manage the files the same way.

Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I often find your tone in your posts quite unpleasant.

Lettera is a new app that is still evolving. The direction it takes will depend, at least in part, on the expectations, ideas and feedback of its users. Just because other users would like to use the app differently than you do doesn’t mean their way is inherently worse. Ideally, the app would support both ways of using it.

So please allow other users to express their needs, hopes, ideas and expectations instead of trying to define from the outset what Lettera is, how it should work or which features it should or should not have.

The developers themselves have repeatedly said that nothing is set in stone at this point and that the direction Lettera will take will also depend on feedback from its users.

So let it happen! :hugs:

If it’s called a text editor, then one has certain expectations. Coming from developers who have a mature notes app, it is expected that it be different from that app. if users just want Bear+, and that’s what developers are going to deliver, then they should make it clear. A text editor is a very different beast from a notes app, though you can, of course, write in any notes app, just with certain limitations, such as not being able to open external files.

On its website Lettera presents itself as a markdown editor. If you take a look at the many markdown editors that already exist you will see that your definition is too narrow.

By all means feel encouraged to share your own wishes and ideas. That’s ultimately what this forum is for. What makes your argument difficult is that you are not simply expressing your own preferences or ideas. Instead you’re presenting your own assumptions as if they were established facts in order to reinforce your argument.

Anyway let’s use this forum for what it’s intended: sharing ideas, feedback and different perspectives. :wink:

I can’t think of too many TBH, but having able to override these settings per folder would improve my productivity:

  • Display all files/folders (boolean) When false display only markdown files, and folders containing markdown files.
  • Hide extensions (boolean)
  • Ignore list (string[]) Based on .gitignore rules and patterns. (This could be its own thing too. See Feature request: Support for an ignore file )
  • Sort order (created_at, modified_at, filename / A-Z, Z-A)
  • Accent color (string) Especially useful when having multiple Lettera windows opened for different folders, assuming the accent colors are utilized in windows to create a visual distinction.
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The way I see so far, Lettera is a standalone markdown editor, which allows user the manage their own files in the file system unlike Bear.

Btw, I love Bear, was a pro user for many years, it was just not enough for me anymore. I’ve been trying to make switch to Obsidian mainly because it uses the file system as the storage, and allows vaults to be created anywhere in the file system. But I don’t necessarily love Obsidian.

Lettera (or Bear) will not and cannot replace my IDEs, but it will help me manage my Markdown files with Bear style, while allowing me manage files outside of Lettera when I need to. That’s why I’m very excited about Lettera.

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I like the idea of having different accent colours for different workspaces :+1:

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I have a number of folders full of dated files, like journals, project notes, etc. I’d love to be able to choose how to sort the files list too.

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