Experimental WYSIWYG editor in Joplin

I do hope that it will match the terminology of the import feature and web clipper eventually though. I test edited a few notes and now part of the note uses the asterisk for italic and the edited sections suddenly switched that to the underscore.

Though this might not be a big deal (they both work), my inborn quest for uniformity rebels against that haha.

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As I’m making progresses with this I indeed notice a few inconsistencies with the generated Markdown, which I’m fixing. The generated Markdown would be similar to the one from the Stackoverflow toolbar for example.

So *italic*, **bold**, and lists: (I’ve removed the extra spaces)

- One
- Two

If you notice any other inconsistencies please let me know.

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Will do! And thanks so much for all your hard work... either you have three clones of yourself running around or you are part machine... I haven't figured out which yet :grin:

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Both

clones2

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For what it is worth, I’ve been using the wysiwyg editor for about a week now, and am very happy with it. Windows 10. I haven’t found any issues yet. I tend to have multiple windows open sharing space on 2 monitors and leave Joplin open all day, taking notes, as well as using previous notes to work. So, Joplin only gets half of one monitor. I also have notes for stuff I’m working on in multiple places, so before normally had 4 panels open. It’s much easier to find things which I bullet list or bold or use a header to make it stand out with 3 panels instead of 4.

I’d used Evernote for years and imported about 2,000 notes. Even before wysiwyg I found it better and more useful than Evernote. This editor is even better, plus I can always switch back if needed.

One more thing, is that a Wysiwyg editor was needed before I could recommend Joplin to business clients who simply won’t be able to handle markdown.

This is great.

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I wouldn't doubt it for a minute :smile:

Well we're trying to automate as much as possible in this project, but we haven't mastered cloning yet. We take pull requests though :grin:

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Glad it's working for you, as the goal of this release is indeed to have a stable base usable on a daily basis, and which can be improved over time. And indeed wysiwyg will make the app more accessible to less technical users.

It is a great feature. Now i can add multiple bullet items in the cell of a table. However i still need to switch to markdown to add a row or column

Kindly allow the addition of row and column of table in WYSIWYG.

You are aware that, when a note contains <style> information and/or embedded html, this will be discarded when modified using the new editor?

I'm happy to say that the issues I had with the WYSIWYG editor seem solved:

  • Images display correctly now
  • Italic is consistent with the rest of my notes
  • Bullet points are now spaced correctly

The only minor inconsistency now is when I clip a web page or import Evernote, lists bullet points are displayed as * and the new editor changes those to -. It's absolutely no deal breaker, but you asked to report these things :slight_smile: I actually prefer the - so I wouldn't be at all upset if you changed it to the dash everywhere.

Thanks for all your hard work, loving Joplin more by the day!

Can we have different Layout Button Sequences for WYSIWYG? I would personally prefer a “WYSIWYG / Editor / Viewer” option. Also, just having “WYSIWYG / Viewer” would be nice.

Is it possible to simply have keyboard shortcuts to jump to a specific layout, regardless of what the sequence is set to?

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I tried WYSIWYG editor a bit and I personally don’t like it. I think it betrays the spirit of markdown and its immediacy. I know this editor won’t replace the split-view but I think it would be much better an editor with in-place markdown preview: you have the advantage of seeing the result immediately in the same panel without having to give up the convenience of markdown and especially without having to click here and there to edit formulas, code, links etc. Famous examples of this approach are Typora, Zettlr and many others.
Is that a possibility you’ve already considered and discarded?

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As far as I’m aware there’s no such editor in JS that would provide the customisation we need for Joplin.

But also you’ll find some people who are used to Typora and would prefer that way to format their text, and others (probably more numerous) who are used to real WYSIWYG like in Word, and they’ll prefer that.

In fact, I don’t think it would make sense to add a second Markdown editor to the mix (even if it’s a more advanced one like Typora), because that won’t address the main point that many people still want a Word-like editor.

As for clicking buttons to format text, we can always improve that over time with shortcuts, etc. (in fact Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I, etc. already works). And Typora also needs a separate text box for math formulas, diagrams, etc. It’s still code that needs to be entered separately.

I point out that Typora doesn’t need separate text boxes: simply moving the keyboard cursor the preview disappears and the markdown code appears. Moving away the keyboard cursor, the preview reappear.
You say that people still want a Word-like editor. What does it really mean? I can’t understand: if I use Typora using shortcuts or buttons doesn’t it give you a Word-like experience? Meanwhile, if I am a markdown user, I can use markdown syntax flawlessly with preview and on full-screen, not half.

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Speaking strictly for myself, I have no affiliation whatsoever with Markdown. I like the cleanness behind the scenes, but I have no reason to ever look at it as long as the wysiwyg formatting looks good. In fact I don't like Markdown much, it's very restrictive (no colored text etc).

I think that is what Laurent means by people wanting a Word editor. I'm definitely not much of a geek and love the new editor exactly because it doesn't shove Markdown down my throat. I personally hate Typora for that reason.

The reason I moved to Joplin is because I was fed up with the lack of innovation at Evernote and their ever increasing prices and Joplin is almost a perfect replacement. Plus development is awesome and the price is right (go donate now!)

I think this editor might draw in a lot more users like me, who just want to clip web pages, make notes, collect recipes etc without any desire to look at the code.

Of course this is just one person's opinion, but that's how I see it :slight_smile:

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Ok. Now I see your point.

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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!!!

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

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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!