Markdown editors

[finid]

Maybe somebody will fidn any one of these good enough to do something with.

• EpicEditor - EpicEditor is an embeddable JavaScript Markdown editor with split fullscreen editing, live previewing, automatic draft saving, offline support, and more.

• Pen - Live editing (+markdown)

[meetdilip]

I would be happy to have a WYSIWYG editor. My forums is slowly picking pace. Not always young people who are smart enough to figure it out visit my site. :wishlist:

[psychobunny]

TBH I'm surprised nobody's been asking for a BBCode version of our editor yet

[HolyPhoenix]

@psychobunny

I would really like a BBCode version of your editor. XD I just figured I'd be stuck with markdown and have to figure it out as well as teach my community members how to use it.

[finid]

@HolyPhoenix

Markdown is so easy to use it baffles me why some don't want to learn. I was never a fan of BBCode and I even consider Markdown easier to learn than BBCode.

[HolyPhoenix]

@planner

I'm just old fashioned. I'm not against markdown, but it doesn't seem quite as specific as bbcode. In bbcode it's easy to remember what does what because you basically spell out what you want. It's like coding. For me I prefer Java, C#, etc because I define things more exact. Like Int, or String. While in Python and other new languages you simply just use it how you want and don't have to spell it out. I prefer spelling it out because in the future its easier to read and figure out what was actually written, but with markdown you have to learn to interpret symbols and spacing.

[julian]

@HolyPhoenix The way I see it, it's an improvement over BBCode because it's still readable even without parsing.

Take the following example short paragraph, in Markdown, followed by BBCode:

## Steve

Steve walks *warily* down the street, with brim pulled **way down low**.

* Ain't no sound but the sound of his feet
* Machine guns ready to roll

vs

## Steve

Steve walks [i]warily[/i] down the street, with brim pulled [b]way down low[/b].

[list]
[*] Ain't no sound but the sound of his feet
[*] Machine guns ready to roll
[/list]

Markdown is definitely more readable, hands down. * and _ already map to "emphasis" in most peoples' brains, so it's not that much extra mental processing, whereas with BBCode, you're having to parse out square backets, etc.

[Steve]

BB Code really is dated. Markup for me at least feels like the evolution of BB Code.

I can tell you now if I took BB Code off of an EXISTING forum like one of my muscle car sites, I would lost users in droves. They're just used to it and like having the "same old place" no matter how outdated as an admin I might feel it is.

Moving forward on new forum software like NodeBB, and interacting with NEW websites, forums, communities I really want forward thinking software and not the same crap I used in the 90s. That's just me. Some people still live and die by BB Code.

[psychobunny]

Haha I guess I'm (was?) old fashioned too. As you know @HolyPhoenix I've spent a ton of time with phpBB. I was totally going to go forward with BBCode for NodeBB when we first wrote it until @julian stepped in.

Fortunately I'm lazy so he wrote the first MD plugin against my original wishes :p. Worked out in the end though, I'm glad we went this way. As for a BBCode based composer? Totally possible as of recent developments (v0.4.2+), one could potentially write a plugin to modify the composer and such. If anybody wants to write that let me know, I also wrote a BBCode to Markdown plugin which could be useful as well.