Line breaks. This seems to be an issue that's been going on for years. A simple return
like this
in Joplin provides a new paragraph
like this
and not a new line.
Like this.
To prove Joplin is wrong, I'm having to use two returns to get a new para here.
The setting for soft breaks "Enable soft breaks (wysiwyg: yes)" in the Markdown setting doesn't do anything for me.
Before you jump in and tell me to use shift-return, no, ain't gonna do that no more. It doesn't fix the issue. If it doesn't work the way most people know and expect it should, its broken. But if it been broken for so long and many people compain about it, why is it still the same.
And if its not wrong, why does the iOS version work differently?
in the richtext editor all you need to do is replace with for the desired result. I think, but don;t know for sure that it works with the MD editor too.
You can use CSS to remove the line breaks visually, but other than that, the default behaviour is hard-coded and cannot be configured.
There is no right or wrong here, just different preferences. What the Rich Text Editor does mimics the behaviour of Microsoft Word. However, MS Word does allow you to change the defaults. Joplin unfortunately does not.
No, that's not how MS Word works for me. A return gets me a new line, not a new paragraph. That's the way its always worked and I don't see any settings to change that.
It is the wrong way! The expected behaviour is that a return gives me a new line. Its what I'm doing here on this site: hits return
when I hit return I'm on a new line.
hits return twice
So what other apps get me a new paragraph rather than a new line?
Even if everyone agrees a new paragraph is the 'correct' way, at least make it consistent and have the iOS versions work the same way.
So the problem here is Windows. Word for Windows users think this is the correct way of working. But, as pointed out in that thread on GitHub, note applications - even Windows ones - don't work that way.
And as I initially pointed out, there are lots of other people like me who think the current way is the wrong way. Even @laurent says
I agree that ideally pressing Enter should just be one new line, not a new paragraph.
But its not going to change because
However I checked and the editor we use, TinyMCE, doesn't really support it. Well it does, but when it's enabled many things are broken because it needs the concept of paragraphs to apply formatting correctly.
Its the story of open source software, isn't it. Its so good you want to use it, its so bad you're rather pay for something that actually does work the way it should. And if it doesn't you can justifiably complain and get it fixed. Actually, Apple Notes if free for me to use and really does 'just work'.
I don't have the skills to be able to mess about with the CSS - I tried before - or get involved with the coding. I think that may be true of many people who are looking for a nice note app like Joplin is, but don't want the trouble.
I typed "replace LF with shift-LF" and enclosed each with angle brackets, but didn't notice that the discourse editor removed everything with angle brackets.
Sorry
It depends on the paragraph style how things look. But on Windows MSWord, pressing enter gets you a new paragraph, no matter how it formats on the screen. If you want just a new line you need to press shift + enter.
This is a rather sad statement since everybody has the means to test many horses (unlike when buying a car or a house). And in my experience it is almost always wrong. Big companies may choose to buy 10,000 licenses of MS Office etc. for a number of reasons, but is it really better or does it work well. Sorry pal, you're just venting frustration ...
I agree with the OP, this should default to a single line feed. I have entered the 'correction' into the default CSS and it never seems to work, perhaps because I am using Joplin Portable??
Regardless, the easiest 'fix' for me is to simply use a SHIFT-ENTER instead of an ENTER to create a single LF instead of CTRL-LF.
What about the idea proposed in the final comment of the GitHub discussion linked above?
How about THIS as an option:
Some of us can choose a preference that creates a simple new line when you hit enter,
and if you hit SHIFT enter, you can create a line-space.
Basically the reverse of now.
Yes, it’s an extra option added to settings. But it has the advantage of only affecting the keyboard shortcuts for new line vs new paragraph, without affecting how these are handled by the text editor, without doing away with the concept of a paragraph, without having to fiddle with the CSS, and without changing how previously created notes will look. Would not confuse users accustomed to the current behavior because the default could be for what we have now.
The problem is that if we change this behaviour to enter a newline instead of a paragraph, the editor will see the document as one giant continuous line with no paragraphs (even two lines separated by two newlines will not be considered as two paragraphs). So a lot of functionalities that rely on paragraphs will be broken, in particular when creating lists.
The conversion to Markdown also won't be good, which means when you view the note on mobile you'll have a very long line with litteral <br> tags to represent new lines.
So it's not really a matter of adding an option or not. Even if we add the option, it's still broken and unfortunately that can't currently be fixed with the editor we're using.
My preferred solution at the moment would be to move to a different Rich Text Editor, one like Typora, which is a bit closer to Markdown while keeping most of the advantages of a proper RTE.
Here is my solution to the problem it might work for some of you.
First, when typing text at length, use the Markdown editor. Enter key will do what you want.
There's no simple solution in the rich text editor so when I need to type a paragraph of text or several paragraphs of text I simply use the external markdown editor function to type in the document text in a regular markdown format and then put it back into the rich text look and it works fine. You can also just type your text in the markdown editor rather than the rich text editor but that's not as nice looking.
Typora is a great markdown editor and it specifically has a preference feature that allows you to assign the enter key to do a line feed Unix Style rather than a carriage return line feed Windows style. Give that a try and you might be a lot happier.
I just tried your solution and it does not work for me in Joplin for Windows.
Plus, having to type the extra two spaces is really no different timewise than hitting shift enter.
Most of the time if I need to type consecutively without a new paragraph I use the markdown editor and then switch back to Rich text.
Besides, I like to add color to the text and the only way to do that is with an plugin and use the markdown editor it doesn't work in the rich text editor.
LeoW.
I just retested, and yeah, I got the same situation. My solution is yours, switching from Markdown to RTE and back.
Ignore me, I'm an old man!
Going to try your Typora suggestion.
