My main requirement is that I am using Syncthing to sync my notes from my Android phone, which uses Quillpad. Quillpad is amazing and looks super nice, and functional too, but all the notes are in one big folder rather than being subdivided by notebook. So I require a markdown editor that can create “notebooks” but don’t change the folder structure of the notes (I tested putting notes in subfolders, and quillpad thought the notes were deleted. Silly Quillpad!)
So the notebooks/similar organisation of notes needs to be specific to the app and should not change the folder structure. I would prefer if the app is open-source too, and something that fits with my desktop (KDE Plasma) would be cool too :D
This rules out Obsidian (which puts notes in a folder structure. Obsidian is great, but won’t sync well with Quillpad), Joplin won’t work either. Ghostwriter is pretty much a markdown notepad (quite good, but can’t see all my notes in one place)
I am using EndeavourOS with KDE Plasma
edit: To clarify, I want a markdown editor that is able to separate notes into different groups without using folders as Quillpad doesn’t like folders. I also need to have a way to view all the notes at once in each group
Using a code editor VSCodium wouldn’t really work as there isn’t really a way to organise notes, aside from putting them in folders (which I don’t want), and I am not yet ready to jump into the Vim rabbit hole of plugins and configuration
edit 2: Markdown editor to note organiser to satisfy the pedant
edit 3: Looks like Obsidian has tags, so I could use those to organise notes without folders. I will try that and see if it works!
edit 4: Obsidian does have tags, but it seems like you sort by tags by typing tag:#NAME, and you can’t use spaces for tags. So not Obsidian then unfortunately. Are there any other options that have a larger focus on tags or similar?
I don’t think Vim has a way to show all my notes in one place, or any way to organise notes? (unless it does, you never know)
Also, Vim-based editors have steep learning curves. It would be cool to learn how to use it, but I want to explore other options before I fall into the rabbit hole
I switched from Obsidian to Neovim mainly because of Vim-motions and keybindings. Obsidian has Vim-motion support but it’s pretty basic and some stuff doesn’t work… it’s just not the same.
I have a pretty minimal Neovim setup and don’t use any special plugins for markdown. I just use Treesitter to create some custom highlight groups to highlight links, codeblocks, headlines and similar stuff. I don’t do images or complex tables or all of that other jazz and I know markdown by heart for the most part so I don’t really need any markdown preview plugins. But there are plugins that render markdown in the Neovim buffer itself, instead of having you go to your browser to see your changes.
It’s way simpler. I use
gOto see the outline of my file, alsomini.pickwhich is just a grep and fuzzy finder to find specific lines, words, files and navigate between them. I have been using Neovim for over a year so and use it basically everywhere so the benefits keep compounding as I learn how to navigate where I want faster. It’s a powerful tool. One thing I will say is because you use Neovim you don’t need to really organize your notes as you just use your picker to find stuff for you and it’s sooooo much faster and better than whatever Obsidian had. You never have to go to your file tree or whatever and search for that file.This wasn’t a switch that I did fanatically. I went back to Obsidian a few times for a couple of days / weeks and just used that. It’s fine … It works… But afterwards every time I just went back to Neovim, did some modifications to my config, and started using it more and more until it just became way better.
All of that being said … would I recommend someone start Neovim just to write markdown? No. As you said it has a pretty steep learning curve and you will never get back the time you spent on it, it’s also a bit overkill to use it just for markdown, you will need to make some modifications as well… But I find it more fun and enjoyable to work with.
Many use the “Nerd Tree” plugin for this, but there’s…too many options.
I respect that. The rabbit hole goes very deep. In your shoes, I might still take a look at an editor with a strong plugin ecosystem, like Emacs or VSCodium. Is Atom still around? Atom was nice.
Does Vim have any live markdown preview or plugins that enable that? If it does that would be quite interesting
https://github.com/iamcco/markdown-preview.nvim
There is one in Neovim that might interest you. It opens up the current file content you edit in a new web browser, Firefox in example. The cool thing is, it is also synchronizing the current position of the document in Neovim and the browser view. I don’t need that functionality, but found it very cool.
Yes. I recognize some of the ones mentioned in this article as ones I have appreciated, in the past.
https://www.w3tutorials.net/blog/is-there-a-vim-plugin-for-previewing-markdown-files/
Oh yeah!
I’m not actually trying to get you to switch, but your post reads to me as someone ready to bring in some serious tooling to achieve a precise workflow.
Vim still might be a bit extreme, haha. As you know, it has a whole learning curve. If you decide to give it a spin, be sure to try
:vimtutor, it is nice.Anyway, setting aside vim, it sounds to me like your needs call for an editor with a strong open plugin ecosystem.
I understand that Emacs and VSCodium also have excellent Markdown plugins.