Though I’m content with the built-in markdown editor in DTP,* I can’t seem to stop myself from trying out different external editors as a distraction. If, from within DEVONthink, I use Open With to edit a file using an external editor, what risks are there, if any, for corrupting a DT database or messing things up in other ways? Thank you.
*While the DTP editor does most of what I need, the sorts of things I enjoy using in external editors are tabbed windows for multiple documents and synchronized scrolling of editing and preview windows.
This has already been discussed several times. Things haven’t changed in this regard.
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I figured it had and remembered reading a few things about this but couldn’t find by searching. I’ll continue trying later.
Thank you, chrillek. That search string led to several helpful threads.
Like you , I have played with many different external editors (opening a document in DT in an external editor). I personally have not had any issue with database corruption. I have in the past had a few issues when using an external editor on a finder folder indexed into DT. Some editors can lock a file and not save the changes back (for DT to recieve) until a save is done.
The biggest problem with external editors is all the different markdown flavours. DT uses multimarkdown while other editors might use common mark or their own version. This results in some files not rendering fully/properly in the external editor. Examples include footnotes, referenced links/images, and glossary items. If you only use simple markdown (headings, lists, bold, italic) then it usually works fine.
I mostly edit within DT. For large markdown documents I sometime use an external editor. My current favourite is IA writer, though I have used Multimarkdown Compser and even a text editor linked with Marked2 in the past. I suppose I haven’t found my silver bullet yet…
I noticed Marked 2 exposing rendering errors with fenced code blocks: bachelors backslashes were not always rendered in this context.
Database corruption is a very rare thing and would not be caused by using a third-party Markdown editor. If you were using a Save As and saving into the database’s internal structure (which you should not do), it would cause an inconsistency (technically, creating orphaned files), but that is not corruption.
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Thanks for this, saltane. I can work around the differences in markdown, as 95 percent of my formatting falls within what they all seem to have in common. I’ve been concerned that, in my experimentation, I’d end up corrupting a file – not that big a deal, for much of my usage – but I really didn’t want to goof up the internal structure of DTP.
From what I’m reading here, though, problems of that nature aren’t something that I’m likely to provoke by moving files back and forth or sharing them with a third-party editor.
I’d forgotten how many editors there were out there. I hadn’t checked out this scene in maybe 10-12 years. I’m liking Typora pretty well but have been impressed with some of the more bare-bones ones, too.