I recently migrated a few of my Electron apps to Tauri -- was easy and fast in my case -- went down from 130mb installer to 3mb installer. Worth considering!
Shame, too. I've been looking for a new text editor. Someone else in this thread recommended SubEtha. I'll take a look there, instead. Happy to keep my Mac Electron-free.
A web browser is one of the most complex pieces of software developed by human civilization, there should be no need to ship one with each and every trivial to semi-trivial app.
Electron can feel bloated because instead of native code or even a web view inside a thin native wrapper, it's web code with its own Chromium runtime and Node.js plus Electron’s native integration layer
There must be something fascinating about writing Markdown apps - either it scratches an itch, or AI is really good at creating them. There's a flood of them on r/macapps and similar places.
I wrote my own wiki to use as a personal knowledge base to replace Dokuwiki because I wanted a simpler Markdown-based solution written in Python. I started it during the pandemic times and all of the code in there to date was written by hand. All of it was pretty easy except the CSS/layout parts which I'm just not very good at. It took months of free time to get it where I wanted.
I also recently created a day-to-day notes and daily planner app that's basically a bunch of markdown notes. I spent about a week of free time defining the problem, setting constraints, and refining with an LLM that wrote almost all of the code for me. I've been using it for months and it's working great.
The wiki uses Markdown because I browse it just as often as I edit and I appreciate some modicum of basic formatting. The daily notes app doesn't really _have_ to use markdown, I've just gotten accustomed to writing Markdown pretty much everywhere.
(These are on github, but I'm not posting the links here because I don't want to or care about promoting them.)
It's because it's effectively impossible to make a markdown authoring app that meets everyone's needs, and people tend to be picky about what they want in a writing environment. People have strong preferences about WYSIWYG, flavor of markdown (pandoc/quarto/GFM/etc), theming support, some want notes to be able to link to each other, etc. As an example, I require math notation support for basically everything I write which automatically rules out 90% of markdown editors for me.
Writing is also a deeply personal exercise for many, and I can say from personal experience that the environment I write in, from the room/place I'm in to the color scheme of my editor, really matters sometimes.
I haven't found a need to build my own editor, but I can see how someone else would.
didn't know about that, but when I looked around, most of them were paid and just didn't really scratch the itch. this really starte as a simple editor for writing blog posts
small bit of feedback, "Rice it until it
feels like yours." is pretty jargon heavy for a landing page, i don't think all that many people outside linux/tech use that term, why not "customize"?
It's funny that you say not many people outside of Linux/tech use that term when "ricing" started in car mod culture. It was used to describe the act of customizing your (typically Japanese import, hence the term "rice") car with an abundance of cosmetic mods, without investing in performance mods. So your car would look really sleek and custom on the surface, but it would still drive like a stock '94 Honda CR-X del Sol.
Before anyone asks: "race inspired cosmetic enhancement" is a backronym, not the origin of the phrase.
SubEthaEdit is still around and open source. It supports Markdown side-by-side view along with numerous other languages. Excellent lightweight (26mb, native) editor, available directly via the macOS store at no cost.
For Macs, there is iA Writer already. Why don't you make something equally polished for other platforms? I am genuinely interested, I always wanted iA Writer for Linux. Everything I tried falls short.
I've started getting warnings from MacDown about how it'll stop working soon because Rosetta or something. I like the side by side view, but sadly this isn't that.
Since it's Electron why not have a Windows version of the app too?
I'm not sure people seeing "Made for Apple silicon" will expect an Electron app.
That's fair enough. I'll change that, so it doesn't seem misleading
I recently migrated a few of my Electron apps to Tauri -- was easy and fast in my case -- went down from 130mb installer to 3mb installer. Worth considering!
https://github.com/whyboris/Simplest-File-Renamer <- 130mb to 3mb from Electron to Tauri
will expect an Electron app.
Whoops! Thanks for the warning. I'm out.
Shame, too. I've been looking for a new text editor. Someone else in this thread recommended SubEtha. I'll take a look there, instead. Happy to keep my Mac Electron-free.
I can recommend Bear (https://bear.app) been using for ~6 years or more. Truly native and 100% macOS-ish.
Out of curiosity; how come?
Some people think it’s bad performance and bloat. They learned it ten years ago and haven’t questioned it
So what’s the alternative, Tauri?
A web browser is one of the most complex pieces of software developed by human civilization, there should be no need to ship one with each and every trivial to semi-trivial app.
Performance
Electron can feel bloated because instead of native code or even a web view inside a thin native wrapper, it's web code with its own Chromium runtime and Node.js plus Electron’s native integration layer
There must be something fascinating about writing Markdown apps - either it scratches an itch, or AI is really good at creating them. There's a flood of them on r/macapps and similar places.
In recent years, I've written two!
I wrote my own wiki to use as a personal knowledge base to replace Dokuwiki because I wanted a simpler Markdown-based solution written in Python. I started it during the pandemic times and all of the code in there to date was written by hand. All of it was pretty easy except the CSS/layout parts which I'm just not very good at. It took months of free time to get it where I wanted.
I also recently created a day-to-day notes and daily planner app that's basically a bunch of markdown notes. I spent about a week of free time defining the problem, setting constraints, and refining with an LLM that wrote almost all of the code for me. I've been using it for months and it's working great.
The wiki uses Markdown because I browse it just as often as I edit and I appreciate some modicum of basic formatting. The daily notes app doesn't really _have_ to use markdown, I've just gotten accustomed to writing Markdown pretty much everywhere.
(These are on github, but I'm not posting the links here because I don't want to or care about promoting them.)
It's because it's effectively impossible to make a markdown authoring app that meets everyone's needs, and people tend to be picky about what they want in a writing environment. People have strong preferences about WYSIWYG, flavor of markdown (pandoc/quarto/GFM/etc), theming support, some want notes to be able to link to each other, etc. As an example, I require math notation support for basically everything I write which automatically rules out 90% of markdown editors for me.
Probably a lot of both.
Writing is also a deeply personal exercise for many, and I can say from personal experience that the environment I write in, from the room/place I'm in to the color scheme of my editor, really matters sometimes.
I haven't found a need to build my own editor, but I can see how someone else would.
didn't know about that, but when I looked around, most of them were paid and just didn't really scratch the itch. this really starte as a simple editor for writing blog posts
small bit of feedback, "Rice it until it feels like yours." is pretty jargon heavy for a landing page, i don't think all that many people outside linux/tech use that term, why not "customize"?
think that's valid. gonna change that. thanks!
It's funny that you say not many people outside of Linux/tech use that term when "ricing" started in car mod culture. It was used to describe the act of customizing your (typically Japanese import, hence the term "rice") car with an abundance of cosmetic mods, without investing in performance mods. So your car would look really sleek and custom on the surface, but it would still drive like a stock '94 Honda CR-X del Sol.
Before anyone asks: "race inspired cosmetic enhancement" is a backronym, not the origin of the phrase.
i don't think all that many people outside linux/tech use that term,
The term is quite a bit older than today's tech bubble.
It came out of hotrod car modification clubs that specialize in Japanese brands. Some consider it pejorative. (See: "rice rocket.")
SubEthaEdit is still around and open source. It supports Markdown side-by-side view along with numerous other languages. Excellent lightweight (26mb, native) editor, available directly via the macOS store at no cost.
https://subethaedit.net
No image support though.
For Macs, there is iA Writer already. Why don't you make something equally polished for other platforms? I am genuinely interested, I always wanted iA Writer for Linux. Everything I tried falls short.
I wish we can have a good markdown support with images ala GitHub (good days).
But GitHub has _bad_ Markdown support. GFM is the reason why so many projects on GitHub are besot with Markdown that's unreadable in a text editor.
Electron? No thanks.
how is it different from obsidian?
Obsidian's closed-source is it not?
it does much less, not really an alternative to Obsidian
Honestly the first time I’ve seen an app use the glass aesthetic as a selling point
tbh I kinda dig the glass aesthetic. I understand it's not for anyone, that's why you can theme it
How does this compare to Typora? That's the leader in this market as far as I can tell.
much worse than Typora. this is a very basic markdown editor for writing blog posts in "minimalist" space. and it's just free
I've started getting warnings from MacDown about how it'll stop working soon because Rosetta or something. I like the side by side view, but sadly this isn't that.
edit: Oh, electron?!
There are a ton, there is Typora (paid) and there is https://github.com/joelbqz/writer-computer (Tauri)
But Macdown is a universal binary? https://github.com/schuyler/macdown3000 So it should just keep working
Yeah, it's an electron app. Is it causing a "not good" feeling on its own, or do you have another suggestion?
That's the app I'm looking for a direct replacement for as well.
ANOTHER.md
YETANOTHER.md
YETANOTHERAGAIN.md