SimpleMDE maintenance status

[jancborchardt]

We use SimpleMDE as our base. Unfortunately looking at the repository at https://github.com/sparksuite/simplemde-markdown-editor it does not seem so maintained anymore.

As requirements and issues come in, maybe it makes sense to look for an alternative sooner or later. Maybe someone even took over maintainership in a fork or will do so soon.

No rush, but just to keep that in mind @nextcloud/notes. I guess @stefan-niedermann you have a similar situation with the Android library?

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[korelstar]

Looks like Markdown isn't that hip anymore. :-(

[sunjam]

Here is EasyMDE, a fork that has seen more maintenance. Mentioned in this thread on SimpleMDE. I have not tested it.

[juliusknorr]

I recently came across https://github.com/nhnent/tui.editor which looks pretty nice and seems to be well maintained (at least for now) 😉 I guess we should at least collect some options and compare them. Also in terms of possible WYSIWYG options which have been requested quite often and for stuff like #200

[stefan-niedermann]

I guess @stefan-niedermann you have a similar situation with the Android library?

From time to time... At the moment, the Android-lib is experiencing much attention by its maintainer. Of course this can change every day, but currently i would not describe our lib as "not maintained".

[jkaberg]

Moveing to something like previously suggested (https://github.com/nhnent/tui.editor) would be an HUGE improvement IMHO, or atleast something that resembles an wysiwyg editor

[jancborchardt]

@jkaberg it seems like you’re looking for the Markdown app which renders code on the left and rendered Markdown on the right.

We aim to merge the two as best as possible so you don’t need to have two separate views. Our first priority is notes. Then something we can look into for the future is stuff like iOS Notes and Google Keep does like lists, images etc.

[jkaberg]

@jancborchardt actully no, I'm looking for a notes app with an WYSIWYG editor (as I have a hard time rembering syntaxes 😆), AFAIK neither the notes nor the markdown app has this

I've used https://stackedit.io/ in the past, and would love something like that with Nextcloud (I don't need the split pane thing in the markdown app)

[korelstar]

The TUI Editor looks interesting to me. Maybe, the appearance can be configured, so that we can disable distracting elements?

[korelstar]

Another hint from @biva in #214:

"Mark Text is a realtime preview editor text styles and formatting update automatically as you type".
https://marktext.github.io/website/

Looks also very interesting to me.
Edit: Oh, that editor requires to be installed locally. Hence, it's not usable for us.

[juliusknorr]

I also use MarkText on the desktop and it is probably the most promising markdown editor I've tried so far. They also seem to move their rendering engine into a npm package, which would allow webapps to use it: https://github.com/MarkText/muya

[biva]

Would you consider using Muya?

[korelstar]

@juliushaertl , @biva :
Thanks for the hint! I think we should watch the progress on that project before switching to this editor. Currently, there are only four commits in their repository and they write about themselves:

Muya is still under development and should not be used for production.

[biva]

I think we should watch the progress on that project before switching to this editor.

You're right, but maybe if Nextcloud shows interest for their technology, they might be encouraged to go forward?

[marcelklehr]

How about https://github.com/sofish/pen ?

[korelstar]

In #200, @jancborchardt mentioned the Vue.js based editor tiptap which looks very interesting. However, it currently doesn't support Markdown export which we definitely need. But there is already an issue on that: ueberdosis/tiptap#66 and that project's development activity is high, so let's see what will happen in the next months...

Since we want to switch to Vue.js (see #241), we should focus on editors, that already support Vue.js. Here is a list of some: https://github.com/vuejs/awesome-vue#markdown

[brandonkirsch]

I just opened (and closed) Feature Request #284 - I am looking for an editor that allows an option to (temporarily) disable Markdown rendering while I type. It's distracting at times.

Unfortunately, this feature isn't available in any of the Vue.js Markdown editors suggested above. The Toast-UI one looks close, as it has options to toggle between Markdown vs WYSIWYG - but it still does not allow a "plain text" rendering at time of input.

I may wait to see which direction the Nextcloud Notes team decides to go and then look to contribute to the editor that you choose. Thanks.

[Larsene]

In #200, @jancborchardt mentioned the Vue.js based editor tiptap which looks very interesting.

Whow ! Tiptap Notes could be so great ! <3 Thanks, i didn't know about TipTap !

[sunjam]

CodiMD is a realtime collaborative markdown notetaking tool, inspired by Etherpad. It is totally amazing, and includes many features beyond SimpleMDE, including very easy collaboration. Click here to try the demo.

[tnyeanderson]

It appears that CodiMD runs as a separate service, and the client would be linked to the CodiMD port. Unfortunately, I don't think this app allows for something like that. It would have to be "built-in" so-to-speak, as making users set up another server (a la OnlyOffice) is just not within this app's scope.

If I am mistaken, please let me know.

[korelstar]

For #290, I've checked many alternative editor libraries. Unfortunately, every library had some problems. As a result of this analysis, I decided to change the editor from SimpleMDE to EasyMDE (which is a fork of SimpleMDE). But I changed the configuration, so that the appearance has changed a little bit. However, this has fixed many issues regarding the editor (please stay tuned for release 3.0 of this the notes app which contains this).

Nevertheless, there are still some open issues regarding the editor library, so this decision is not meant to be final. Hence, we will have to keep collecting possible editor libraries in this issue. Thanks for your help, community!

[putt1ck]

Has anyone looked at Prose Mirror in context of this issue? http://prosemirror.net/examples/

[e-alfred]

as making users set up another server (a la OnlyOffice) is just not within this app's scope.

How about integrating with Nextcloud Talk? It is already there and integrates well into the details pane inside the files app for example.

[sunjam]

It appears that CodiMD runs as a separate service, and the client would be linked to the CodiMD port. Unfortunately, I don't think this app allows for something like that. It would have to be "built-in" so-to-speak, as making users set up another server (a la OnlyOffice) is just not within this app's scope.

If I am mistaken, please let me know.

See this request for Codi support in the Ownpad app, which currently supports Etherpad and Ethercalc.

[e-alfred]

Why not merge with https://github.com/icewind1991/files_markdown by @icewind1991? It is far more feature rich than the simple notes app and both do the same, being editors with Markdown support.

[tnyeanderson]

Because we want an inline editor, meaning that the place where you enter the text also formats that text. This is so you don't have to switch between the markdown preview and the editor. You edit the "preview" itself. This is much better for a notes application, because the user doesn't want to views of the same note, they want a consistent and editable view of their formatted note.

Also, that app is only a file editor, where this app provides a navigation interface to different notes.

[PackElend]

Have you considered CKEditor or TinyMCE?

[tnyeanderson]

More specifically:

CKEditor - Github Flavored Markdown:
https://ckeditor.com/docs/ckeditor5/latest/api/markdown-gfm.html

CKEditor looks like it supports inline editing... will have to do more research. Looks promising!

Unfortunately it seems TinyMCE has less support for markdown:
tinymce/tinymce#3467

[PackElend]

here might be a good spot to start the research but it is not up to date
http://socialcompare.com/en/comparison/javascript-online-rich-text-editors

[tnyeanderson]

That's a good link. I took a look through the options (with compatible licenses and usages) and it looks like CKEditor might be the one! It has plugins for typing and saving markdown, supports inline editing, is feature-rich, and appears to have good long-term support as it can also be licensed as a commercial product.

The markdown plugin appears to be built on codemirror-gfm as well, so it shouldn't be too hard to migrate any of our CSS/JS.

@PackElend thank you for taking the time to look into this! CKEditor is the best option I've seen so far!

[PackElend]

You are more than welcome. Hope the note app reaching the same functionality as Joplin 😊

[e-alfred]

Maybe Stackedit is also of interest:

https://github.com/benweet/stackedit

[tnyeanderson]

We have already discussed StackEdit at length in this thread. It will not work for our purposes.

[e-alfred]

@tnyeanderson Sorry, I missed that. I suppose markdown-it is also not suitable as a replacement?

https://github.com/markdown-it/markdown-it

It would be quite useful to have all the features QOwnNotes has in an in-browser notes editor using Markdown.

[jancborchardt]

Thanks for your enthusiasm! But it feels like we’re going in circles – multiple alternatives have been mentioned now each multiple times. :)

We are testing out some alternatives at the moment, and @korelstar @juliushaertl will soon update you with news on that.

[hinder90]

Another reason to disable markdown for a page: look at the Boostnote Cheatsheet. This is supposed to be the "code" version of the page but the obligatory MDE still interpolates parts of this page so it's a jumbled mess. The creator attempted to `\ out markdown but it only works in places. I'm not sure if the markdown interpolator changed behavior since the author wrote this page, but to attempt to update it to figure out how to disable every single MDE interpolation would be a herculean task, especially if it were to change again.
Anyway, what I was going to suggest was perhaps a token to disable MDE in blocks, not all or nothing (raw effectively does that anyway) as this document is a case where portions intend to use MDE (for the links and such, obviously) but the rest of the code ought to be left as-is. I am not sure what happened in this particular document, but it a blocked approach to disable markdown would make these kinds if meta-docs easier to draft.

[joshtrichards]

This got completed long ago via #290. :-)