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If you search 'Markdown' on HackerNews, it'd seem like the 'market' for markdown editors is fragmented: there isn't a single dominant editor yet. I think every week there's a new editor posted (Joplin is an exception given that it's been here for a while). Why is that the case?

I think it is because each comes with its own opinionated workflow, and missing features. Each has a way of writing markdown/connecting notes that is novel, which means each other option is missing that feature.

A take away from this scenario might be that this design space is wanting for a meta-editor. Some tool which allows feature creation in the same context as these markdown/note tools. An analogy might be that this meta-editor is to digital note keeping as racket is to programming languages.

Of course all the obvious requirements apply. Has to be usable out of the box, has to just work, has successfully convey it's ability to be changed to the end user.

I think emacs is such a solution, there are no features in the list of hn posts under the search "markdown" that it doesn't have. But emacs is missing all the requirements. It is not usable out of the box.

I think this meta editor could best be built on top of emacs, but this will require a lot of work. I have been playing around with this idea for a couple of years now and it's slow going but fun to think about.

I've been looking at the ProseMirror as a way of building this meta-editor that could have plug-and-play components. The issue is, although the library is open-source, there hasn't been many open-sourced components that people have built. Ideally, we could go one step forward and abstract away the npm library; then everybody could build their custom editor by mixing components. One editor that sort of does this is StandardNotes but I haven't tried building something for it yet.

[1] https://prosemirror.net/ [2] https://standardnotes.org/extensions

Typora: Format a paper

iA Writer: Write something eloquent

Joplin isn't a Markdown editor, it's a note taking and todo list app. It just happens to use Markdown as its entry format. It seems like it's a "Markdown editor" in the same way as reddit or github.
I gave Joplin a try and syncing with Dropbox wasn’t flawless.

Still searching for a markdown editor that runs on both iOS & Linux and does auto save & auto sync.

Isn’t any text editor compatible with Dropbox? I mean Dropbox does the syncing and your editor just saves the file there, right?

You don’t even need the same editor. You can use one on Linux, one on iOS and another on Windows.

I miss worded: Looking for a note taking app with markdown to replace Apple notes. Autosync & auto save should work with self hosted service.

In the discussion above saw many good suggestions, none that fitted the requirements.

The reason is that existing solutions are inadequate/not-powerful-enough, so the moment a developer is limited by what the app has to offer there's a chance a new note-taking app gets developed to solve that specific need.
well this looks more like a todo program than a markdown editor

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