What happened: I have several consecutive paragraphs (either ending in double space + line break, or just line breaks, the result is the same). I add a > at the beginning of the first line, and all other consecutive lines get formatted as a quote. Also, deselecting the option to “hide markdown” doesn’t seem to work for blockquotes, which keep showing as vertical lines instead of >.
What did you expect to happen: I expect only the line where I add the > to get the blockquote formatting. I expect showing markdown to show the > symbols.
Yes, I can see that both behaviors are a bit unexpected, but both works as designed.
With Bear 2 we have shifted to follow the CommonMark Markdown standard which has this feature that it is enough with one > to make the whole block of text as a block quote. You will need to add a blank line before the rest of the text lines to limit the scope of the block quote.
Regarding markdown hiding, we don’t have full text mode where you can see all markers (as it is rarely requested). Instead we have a mixed mode with the option to hide all markers outside of the cursor or selection.
With Bear 2 we have shifted to follow the CommonMark Markdown standard which has this feature that it is enough with one > to make the whole block of text as a block quote.
Hmm… well, it’s certainly unexpected, even if it adheres to the standard. I think it’s specially jarring when you delete the > you just entered and it doesn’t clear the block-quote from all lines.
Try this: write 3 lines of text, type > at the beginning of the first line. All lines get block-quoted. Hit backspace to delete the (hidden) >. Only the first line goes back to normal, the rest remain block-quoted. That’s pretty weird. I think the behavior should be consistent both ways. If adding a > affects all the lines, I would expect deleting it to clear the format for all lines.
I tried that, and used Copy As > Markdown to be able to see the hidden characters. I see there’s > at the beginning of each line. So I guess that explains the behavior… But still, should Bear be adding those extra >? I thought the contents of the file would be exactly what I typed.
Regarding markdown hiding, we don’t have full text mode where you can see all markers (as it is rarely requested). Instead we have a mixed mode with the option to hide all markers outside of the cursor or selection.
I thought the option was meant to render kind of like Ulysses does, where you see the visual formatting, but still none of the markdown is hidden. Hiding the markdown is an awesome feature in Bear, but it’s weird to me that disabling it doesn’t go all the way. What’s the advantage of the mixed mode form a user’s POV? Why wouldn’t I want to see all the markdown when I disable hiding markdown? I understand it works as intended, I’m just curious.
Yes, this is also as designed. You see, when you insert the first > character, the whole text block is to be a block quote according the standard. But the editor is designed to help manage markers and spacing in block quotes and lists, and usually you don’t have to think about it. In this case, the editor inserts the > character on each line. Then when you remove the first one, the rest remains.
Bear uses markdown, but want to provide a more elegant user experience than just presenting plain text. With Bear 2 we added the option to further hide markers when you are not editing close by.
Making an editor like this is a balance walk, to have all the benefits of standard markdown while providing a nice user interface. There are tradeoffs involved.
I for one, appreciate the tradeoffs made by the dev team. While I like to use markdown while writing, I don’t like to see all the characters. It’s off-putting.
