Years ago, when I first started using markdown, I used Byword and AI Editor. Over the years, I also used Bear, Ulysses, and a few others. I'm setting off for a period of of digital nomading and was thinking of taking my iPad as a minimalist work tool. Everyone's always down on Joplin's markdown editor so I thought I'd try these other apps with an external keyboard and paste it into Joplin.
But here's the thing. I didn't like them more. Bear and Ulysses are undoubtably beautiful apps, but they are significantly more expensive, and honestly I still think the Joplin app is attractive, is distraction free on iPad, and implements Markdown just as well (or better) as these other expensive apps. I didn't like them so much that I'd go through the annoyance of adding additional steps to get them into Joplin.
So my question is this: given the incremental increases in productivity in using these apps, Byword, Bear, Ulysses and the like, why the hate for Joplin's mobile markdown editor?
PS. I should add that I'm a markdown minimalist. I don't need to be able to change fonts, make things small, add fancy formatting and the like. If it's not in the standard markdown protocols, I work around it. If I can't, I add CSS to the document. I just submitted an academic article to a journal that was written entirely in markdown using Joplin, so it must be doing something right.
Honestly, I don't think there is? At least not as a markdown editor.
I think most complaints come from the richtext editor (i.e. TinyMCE). Not the editor itself but the integration into Joplin, particularly the fact that it has far more options for formatting than Markdown does. Because things are converted into Markdown there is a lot of confusion and questions when people toggle between the two notes with data being "lost" as the conversion takes place (including formatting made, usually in html, in the markdown editor first).
There is also the fact that many people don't know, or care, what Markdown is. They find Joplin as a free Evernote alternative and are presented with a very different editor paradigm than what they are used to with Evernote or OneNote. I think this is improving somewhat now that Markdown is becoming more popular in messaging apps and social media as it seems a less "alien" concept. The idea that you don't have more "direct" control over your formatting doesn't sit right with some people (e.g. font colours, alignment, font sizes etc.) and think that Markdown is far more restrictive in that sense (which it is, by design).
I'm quite satisfied with the free version of the Drafts app on iOS and iPadOS. Basic things like using the scroll bar aren't implemented well in Joplin's mobile editor. I must admit, however, that the latest major overhaul of the mobile app has been a game-changer. So let's hope that things keep on improving!
That makes sense @Daeraxa . I got my partner onto Joplin and she uses it in an entirely different way (mostly to put course materials online through Joplin Cloud). She uses the richtext editor but only on desktop, so my experience of the mobile richtext is zero.
When I used Evernote, I'd always hoped they make it markdown, which is why I've probably taken to Joplin so easily and well.
