Recently my interest in using Markdown documents as personal notes have re-emerged.

Typora

This looks like a really good markdown editor. Desirable features include:

  • Cross-platform and free
  • Paste images from clipboard
    • There's an option to save image to current folder
  • Cmd-K to insert link
  • Follow links with cmd-click
  • Able to follow local links (important for wiki like personal notes)
  • Outline mode
  • Always-on-Top (useful for note-taking)
  • Launch Typora from command line
    • Mac: open -a typora <file>

This feels like a quality build software. I predict it will become wildly more popular.

Note - launch typora from command line

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cat >$HOME/.local/bin/typora <<'EOF'
#!/bin/sh

(
/Applications/Typora.app/Contents/MacOS/Typora "$@" >/dev/null 2>&1 &
command osascript -e "delay 0.2" -e "tell application \"Typora\" to activate"
)&
EOF
chmod +x $HOME/.local/bin/typora

Vim

In the past 10+ years I've been using Vim for basically everything everyday. So my default markdown editor has been vim. For quick edits I still prefer vim. Some nice plugins for markdown editing are:

  • Goyo: distraction free writing
  • vim-markdown: better syntax highlighting
    • ToC: :TOC
    • Link conceal: :set conceallevel=2 concealcursor=nc
  • Follow local link: the good old gf
  • Preview image (maybe gx)

If you choose to not using hard wrap, then following config makes long lines look nice:

set breakindent " soft wrapped lines are indented too
let &showbreak = '↳ ' " visual line break indicator