Experimental WYSIWYG editor in Joplin

jason-01 · 2020-04-05T11:33:58.704Z

I have just started using Joplin this week to check it out, previously I used Typora and now I use Mark-text as my daily note taking app, well I disagree with @Sophia on this one.

I have been using mark text which is imho a more refined version of typora and its open source too! my only problem with mark text is it tries to do too much(has all lot of features) but in some area it fails to get the basic right(problems with redo-undo, does not allow you to move the lone up by pressing alt+up arrow etc…), Joplin on the other hand does the basics well, i have no annoying bug i encountered in my first week on taking notes on joplin but i also felt it lacked some features that were present in marktext

I believe since joplin has to support both wysiwyg and markdown (it toggle between both the modes at anytime of writing notes), the wysiwyg would just be a very bare bones version of what it could be (like a wysiwyg editor with only making words bold , italic etc) it cannnot support variable fonts, variable font-size, font color, indentation, because how will the notes look when you toggle back to markdown. So in essence it people wouldn’t jump ship and leave their WYSIWYG editor to joplin because i seriously doubt how can joplin support both MD and Rich-text with all the complex features, so what is left is a very basic version.

In additon to that I know alot of people who would never touch wysiwyg, it would be waste of resources in implelementing a feature which half of the community might never use.
Plus believe me or not i feel i have more fliexibility when i write markdown, typora isn’t the best implementation of a inline-markdown editor and i belive Joplin can get alot of people to start using it if it does the inline markdown editor right.

I seriously urge you @Sophia to try an inline markdown editor, its simply the best of both worlds, i would love if @laurent can support it!!!

Sophia · 2020-04-05T19:17:11.579Z

Always happy to read different opinions, that way we learn from each other

Sophia · 2020-04-06T01:12:11.215Z

Found a small bug: in the new editor, links won’t open (not even if you right click and choose open web page). I have to go back to the split view to open links!

laurent · 2020-04-06T14:46:18.293Z

A few thoughts about the wysiwyg vs inline-markdown issue:

Before settling on the current solution, I’ve tried 3 or 4 other editors and none of them was good enough. So at some level, it doesn’t matter that much if inline-markdown is better or not, there’s just no existing editor that would work for Joplin.
WYSIWYG has probably been the most asked feature for Joplin since the day it was released. It’s been asked dozens of time in many different forums. Almost never did anyone mentioned they’d like inline-markdown editing. We’re a bit biased in this forum because we like Markdown, but truth is Typora is a very niche editor and what everybody is familiar with is regular Word-like wysiwyg editor.
If somebody is motivated enough, they can always add Typora like feature on top of what I’m developing now. TinyMCE would definitely support inline-editing. In fact, even if we wanted Typora style editing, we’d still need the work that’s being done now first.

jason-01 · 2020-04-09T13:37:40.421Z

Thank you @laurent for being understanding about this, one more reason i prefer an inline-md editor is the space i get while taking down notes, i usually take down notes while watching youtube videos, and it becomes really annoying if you constantly need to switch panes,

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while this becomes incresing annoying in split markdown mode

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bedwardly-down · 2020-04-17T20:15:23.908Z

I’m not sure if this is the proper location for it, but the mobile version on iOS 13.4 needs a bit of adjustment.

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The tool bar needs to be raised a bit. I keep accidentally hitting the word bar at the top of the keyboard when i try to hit some of the buttons.

laurent · 2020-04-17T22:24:38.501Z

bedwardly-down:

I’m not sure if this is the proper location for it, but the mobile version on iOS 13.4 needs a bit of adjustment.

This thread is for the desktop wysiwyg editor. We don't have a thread yet for the new mobile editor actually. I was planning to make an announcement for it by I'm waiting till we upgrade RN as that will fix a crash in Android.

bwl21 · 2020-04-19T20:41:33.431Z

I am looking for a proper replacement for Wunderlist and Joplin is really promising. But this feature (I would call it antifeature) is really making me nervous. I am so tired of wasting time with making WYSIWYG editor to do what I really mean.

But on Mobile we need a working “Share” feature such that I can send stuff with the share menu to Joplin. This is IMHO more important than WYSIWYG

tessus · 2020-04-19T20:48:56.518Z

bwl21:

I am so tired of wasting time with making WYSIWYG editor to do what I really mean.

Why? You don't have to use it. I have never even opened the WYSIWYG editor on my main Joplin instance. (I started it one time in my local dev build for testing purposes.)

bwl21:

But on Mobile we need a working “Share” feature such that I can send stuff with the share menu to Joplin.

It's being worked on. We had a share-to-joplin on Android for text data, but the module we've used is not maintained properly and broke when we upgraded react-native. On iOS it never worked and I'm not sure what the status is.

bwl21 · 2020-04-19T21:23:21.048Z

Thanks for your reply. As long as you do need remove the plain markdown editor, I don’t care about the WYSIWYG stuff.

The issue with „share“ is really bad. I mostly crate todos and Notes using „share“ on my mobile …

We will see.

Thanks

b.

tessus · 2020-04-19T21:35:14.511Z

bwl21:

As long as you do need remove the plain markdown editor,

Hahahaha, definitely not. This would be a total showstopper - at least for me.

bwl21:

The issue with „share“ is really bad.

Yes, I agree. That's why I haven't upgraded my Android version. The last version that had the share-to functionality (only for text though) was 1.0.316. If you are using iOS, you are currently out of luck.
Please note: If you use E2EE, you won't be able to use 1.0.316, because the encryption algorithm has changed and 1.0.316 does not understand this new algorithm.

SteveShank · 2020-04-21T23:19:56.360Z

I’d also like to get this back. For the interim, I can sometimes use copy and paste into Joplin from wherever. Sometimes I end up emailing myself.

huy · 2020-06-03T00:30:00.159Z

For those of you who wanted to try this out and couldn’t find the mentioned menu: View => Layout button sequence, and choose "Split / WYSIWYG"

You now I have to click the Code View button to toggle back and forth

pasmon79 · 2020-06-16T22:45:09.396Z

Can we get some keys for entering katex on toolbar like “, $$”?

Salasso · 2020-07-13T12:54:19.267Z

This is definitely moving in the right direction! I love it!!! THANKS!

nokoa77 · 2020-07-13T14:41:31.230Z

Hi, I love the new WYSIWYG editor, but unfortunately after a few weeks without any problem, I'm experimenting a very annoying bug : some of my notes are emptied all of a sudden, and it happens once a week Sorry I don't know yet how to declare a bug

laurent · 2020-07-13T15:16:01.228Z

@nokoa77, how does it happen exactly? Is it when you edit a note that suddenly the content goes away? Or when you go back to a note?

When it does happen, could you check the log? https://joplinapp.org/debugging

By the way you should be able to recover most of the note from the note history feature.

nokoa77 · 2020-07-13T15:28:38.138Z

Hello,
Thanks for the anwser and debug link, I will check the logs next time.
Lastly it happened when I went back to notes, so I don’t know exactly when the emptying really happened (when I last edited the note or when I went back to it).
Yes the version history helped me twice, but on the last occurrence of the bug it was a big note that I hadn’t edited since some time (since Joplin installation or 180 days) so it didn’t help. But I will find it in some backup so it’s not bad. And now I will keep note history for 365 days.
Thanks
PS : Joplin Desktop 1.0.227 (but bug happened with 1.0.224) on Mac OS X 10.15.5 and on Windows.

laurent · 2020-07-13T22:54:05.149Z

nokoa77:

Yes the version history helped me twice, but on the last occurrence of the bug it was a big note that I hadn’t edited since some time (since Joplin installation or 180 days) so it didn’t help. But I will find it in some backup so it’s not bad. And now I will keep note history for 365 days

Maybe it's something specific to your notes, like some particular markup or size of the note, etc. Once you got the note back, could you try to make some changes, switch to another note, go back to it, etc several times like this to see if you can replicate the issue?

nokoa77 · 2020-07-18T17:38:11.868Z

Hi and many thanks for your messages Laurent (and thanks for developing this nice app I can't live without ),
Here is how I can replicate the issue to empty a note in WYSIWYG mode on my config (1.0.224 or 1.0.227 and Mac OS X 10.15.5 or 10.15.6, Joplin installed with homebrew cask) :
1/ open a long note 'N' in notebook A
2/ edit this note 'N'
3/ immediately change the notebook to another one (whatever but another one), let's say notebook B
4/ I see a 1st bug then : the note 'N' also appears in the notebook 'B' above the other 'normal' notes of notebook B
5/ switch back to notebook A
6/ then I see the 2nd bug : the note 'N' I just edited is now empty, and the note history contains an old version that doesn't include the modifications I just made.
Here is the CONSOLE log : Framabin
Here is the log.txt extract : Framabin (password : titi)
We can see in the LOG.TXT extract that the note "KM" has a BODY the first time (anonymized to "TRES LONG TEXTE") and then the body is empty ("body":"").
I hope this can help,
Best,
Bruno