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I had to build my own Markdown Editor because no tool was fast enough for me.

Andrew Brown 🇨🇦 on February 14, 2020

TL;DR I built an open-source markdown editor called Fast Author to improve my productivity when creating written articles specific for t...

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Ben Sinclair • Feb 15 '20

Nice, but I think you built it because you couldn't find a tool that had all the features you want built-in. The line about it not being fast enough is to do with workflow, not the editor.

I mean, Vim is pretty fast at editing markdown, but it doesn't have image editing features, and that's ok. Other people's workflows will be to use an image editor to edit images and a text editor to edit text. Building a behemoth is fine, but it's not going to speed up other people's workflows.

Andrew Brown 🇨🇦 ExamPro • Feb 15 '20 • Edited

The line about it not being fast enough is to do with workflow, not the editor.

I thought that was obvious. I guess I'll do more exposition dumps in the future.

Building a behemoth is fine, but it's not going to speed up other people's workflows.

What's your point here? I built it for me. If you're doing the same kind of content creation as me then it will absolutely speed up your workflow.

Haider Ali Punjabi • Feb 15 '20

Just started using Typora, but maybe it's time to switch :)

Rick Mills • Mar 2 '20

This is awesome, as someone in the middle of writing a ton of markdown content I share your pain with the existing editors out there so will be giving this a try!

One thing I am curious about - grammarly. Did you manage to get this working? It's super tedious copy/pasting into their online editor to check things constantly.

Andrew Brown 🇨🇦 ExamPro • Mar 2 '20

Not yet, but its fairly easy to load Chrome Extensions into Electron:

Just have to download the extension and then use the Electron API addDevToolsExtension

const path = require('path')
const os = require('os')

BrowserWindow.addDevToolsExtension(
   path.join(os.homedir(), '/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Extensions/fmkadmapgofadopljbjfkapdkoienihi/4.3.0_0')
)

electronjs.org/docs/tutorial/devto...

Its a pain point for myself as well. I'm just in the middle of publishing a 10 hour course, so something that show up on Fast-Author in a week or two

Ant The Developer • Feb 15 '20

I totally understand your motivation. I've written several Electron-based markdown editors in a struggle to do the same as you. Though I think I made my scope too large to satisfy.

The current editors out there are really not good enough because many tools are great for writing but not for editing, publishing, or writing multi-markdown documents.

Andrew Brown 🇨🇦 ExamPro • Feb 15 '20

Inkdrop comes as close as possible since it has taken a modular approach where you can install various plugins, though InkDrop has yet to reach the maturity which will satisfy my needs.

How I Built a Markdown Editor Earning $1300/mo Profit — Inkdrop

Takuya Matsuyama ・ Feb 4 ・ 9 min read

#markdown #productivity #sideprojects #startup

Ben Halpern • Feb 14 '20

Wow, well done.

Michael "lampe" Lazarski • Feb 14 '20

Nice work :)

Sean Allin Newell • Feb 15 '20

No reactive nonesense.

Blam-o!

I'll have to check it out.

Andrew Brown 🇨🇦 ExamPro • Feb 16 '20

Its much more stable today. Once you make a project public you realize you can't just keep pushing random commits.

Charbel Sarkis • Feb 15 '20

Very nice.

Carlos Orelhas • Feb 17 '20

Good Job Andrew, an amazing project you built!

Akshay Kadam (A2K) • Feb 17 '20

Amazing job. Since I write blogs too, I wanted to build something like this but it uploads to Imgur so that I don’t have to manually upload to Imgur & link images to it. I’ll probably build it 😂

Brandon Martel • Feb 15 '20

Nice to see another Mithril user. One of the most underrated libs around, and my personal go to for years when I'm on a tight deadline. Really nice work.

Marko Shiva • Feb 15 '20

A JavaScript error occurred in the main process
Uncaught Exception:
Error:
Something went wrong installing the "sharp" module

Module did not self-register.

Andrew Brown 🇨🇦 ExamPro • Feb 15 '20

I spent so many hours on this.

You may need to change 0.24 in the package json to 0.23.4 , and then

rm -rf node_modules/sharp

And ensure you do the electron-rebuild setup. That might fix it.

I think once we build binaries things will be easier

Duy K. Bui • Mar 3 '20

For those who thought "SharpJS, what???" like I did, Andrew was referring to Sharp (sharp.pixelplumbing.com/), not SharpJS (iridiumion.github.io/SharpJS/)