I prefer Markdown but I dislike the way DT displays Markdown documents. Lately Iāve been doing RTF more and it seems fine.
Common wisdom among many people is that Markdown is more futureproof because itās based on plain text. Iām skeptical whether common wisdom is right here. RTF is used by just about every desktop word processor, and it was developed in 1987.
RTF is not mobile-native and Apple doesnāt consider it a first-class citizen for iOS. For many people thatās a major drawback.
Me as well possibly. I may need to look into this further.
As long as DevonThink and other apps support RTF on the iPad and iPhone, that may be good enough for me.
The problem with futureproofing is that youāre usually trading off capabilities today.
Just my 5 cents:
I used to use RTF/RTFD for all my notes for the last few years. I kind of messed up by switching to slightly different formatting once a year (font face, font size, and ways to emphasis keywords, important sentences, highlights, etc). I found myself increasingly uncomfortable to reviewing notes that are with different looks.
Thatās why I switch to markdown for note-taking since the last few months and I am loving it.
The pros: (1) I now am certain that I will have a consistent look and feel for all my notes in the future, and I can change the format of all my notes at once by switching to a different stylesheet. (2) From a programming aspect, it seems to me that it is easier to manipulate markdown files in batch mode (add some info/heading or extract links from the content, etc). (2) I believe that it is easier for other apps to import/use markdown files for further processing. (3) If the transclusion feature of MMD6 (Thoughts on migrating from Ulysses) is implemented in DT3 in the future, I think we will be able to snap/link multiple notes in DT3 in a manner that is as smooth as Scrivener or Roam Research.
The cons: (1) The markdown file still canāt handle image attachment as a package. The images in a markdown note are stored in a separate folder, and the way those assets folders are managed is not consistent. Disclaimer: I am not an expert in markdown so I may be making a wrong statement. (2) It takes some time for me to cognitively filter-out all those formatting characters while reading the notes in raw-mode and I had to switch back-and-forth between the raw and preview mode for a while. However, I only use DTās internal editor. Some users prefer using external WYSIWYG markdown editor for a unified interface.
@cj13 ādot joiningā is indeed the desired state. will try to get to the books that you have mentioned. thank you for sharing.
@cj13 - a specific question on your process for you - say you reading a few articles one after the other, or a book, and you have ideas that pertain to different zettels in your system. do you go to each individual such note and type your thoughts, or do you write in a note related to that book or a note for that day, and tag the zettel in that line or paragraph. And thanks again for taking the time.
@ngan - Transclusion is the word that describes what I am loving about Roam. Didnāt know that there was a word for it already! So that way one can avoid having to open a separate document every time.
Would be so great if DT could create a (virtual or periodically generated) page for tags (via transclusion) with tagged
It seems @BLUEFROG considered this feature here - Thoughts on migrating from Ulysses.
What was your solution? Did you just get used to seeing the formatting characters, or did you find a workaround?
I donāt want DTās Markdown editor to be WYSIWIG because that defeats one of the main purposes of Markdown.
However, every Markdown editor Iāve seen EXCEPT for DT offers some light formatting in the editor itself. Text wrapped with double-asterisks is a bit darker, blockquotes are indented, headers are bigger and darker, etc.
This is one of my top two or three feature requests for DevonThink.
I guess I could get used to working with the preview window side-by-side with the editing window. However, that gets cluttered if I also have OTHER windows open on my desktop.
P.S. It just occurred to me that Iām wrong about DT being the only markdown editor that doesnāt provide some visual formatting. The Discourse editor also works the same way as DTās. Somehow itās not a big deal in Discourse.
P.P.S. Apologies if Iāve taken this thread off on a tangent ā however, Iāll bring it back home a bit by noting that Ulysses is one of those Markdown editors that offers light formatting, and it does a great job of it. One of my favorite features is its proprietary syntax for embedding comments in a document; just surround the comment in ++double plus signs.++ I use a stylesheet that shows comment text in red. So I have little notes to myself throughout drafts: ācheck spelling of this guyās name,ā āwhat year did that happen?ā etc.
(1) Get used to ānot-seeingā the formatting characters.
(2) The only experience I have is Typora which is a very nice and minimalist app. But I choose to stick with DTās editor shortly after to avoid using too many apps.
FYI you could use either DT3ās Markdown editor or double-click and open the same Markdown file in Typora. I use Typora more myself due to some issues with the DT3 editor such as rendering output as single line entries rather than a block of code.
rendering
output as single line entries rather than a block of code.
??
I filed a bug report, screenshot and examples and sent it over maybe two months ago. Itās pretty easy to repro, just compare the output between DT3 view and any markdown editor app view.
Although I know about it, I donāt use it as often as I should. Perhaps if it were included in DT3 I wouldā¦
Connected Text, a windows wiki software, does something similar and you can even select the section you want to transclude. This makes it very very interesting. (Only problem is that it does not have auto wiki linkingā¦)
and any markdown editor app view
If you are referring to not using two spaces at the end of paragraphs, that is not part of the Markdown or MultiMarkdown spec, so itās an extension to Markdown therefore not a bug.
Staying within the boundaries of Markdown or MultiMarkdown is the best option if you will be using Markdown in DEVONthink.
@mals I usually keep quotes and notes from a book of paper in the one note (current note). if there is a big connect I notice with another book or paper, I will sometimes dump that quote with notes into the current note. I donāt use any tags. I date and time stamp each note, something, I think, Luhmann did with his slip box? As I said I am no DT expert and use a minimal set of its myriad features. I have a short working paper that details my history in all of this, a pdf: zettelkasten.pdf (184.8 KB)
No itās about single quote code and code block
code
here
where in DT3 view mode code blocks
code
here
has gaps with css backgrounds so it loos like code. It has nothing to do with markdown standards, this is plain CSS where a background should be continuous.
Note that in Discourse here it looks as it should.
BTW maybe the most common Markdown today is the github specific Markdown. Typora even adds more formats that are useful for layout, notes and so on. But thatās another story.
A screen capture of what youāre referring to would be helpful.
MultiMarkdown is viewed as the natural successor to Gruberās original work. And supporting multiple flavors of Markdown is not in our plans.
I filed a bug report already and this has nothing to do with multiple markup formats. Itās a css rendering bug on your side. But hereās another screenshot:
I assume you could figure out the css rendering issue with the code block. If not let me know and I will point it out.
PS: Typora seems to be nice and support various Markdown formats. Itās nice and the beauty with Markdown is that if the format is not understood, just the plain text tag format is rendered as plain text without causing problems: for example foot notes and table of contents tags.
Anyway, as mentioned many times, this has nothing to do with Markup, the example above is plain Markup, not even MultiMarkup.
