Typographer

Hi there!

markdown-it supports nice option typographer. You can see how this feature work in live demo: https://markdown-it.github.io/

Briefly, it converts inputs like

(C) (R) (tm) (TM) (p) (P) +- -- ---

"Smartypants, double quotes" and 'single quotes'

to

© ® ™ ™ § § ± – —
“Smartypants, double quotes” and ‘single quotes’

It would be nice to have such option as plugin in Joplin. And it seems not difficult to develop.

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Hi @danil-tolkachev and welcome.

I am not one of the devs, just a user.

Whilst I could see this as useful to some, I feel that this is taking Joplin more towards being a word-processor rather than a notes app. I just wonder if this sort of facility is necessary for this type of application.

If I were to need such characters I would just use Alt+ codes such as:

Key Symbol Note
alt + 0153 Trademark
alt + 0169 © Copyright
alt + 0174 ® Registered
alt + 0176 ° Degree
alt + 0177 ± Plus Minus
alt + 0183 · Mid dot
alt + 0188 ¼ One Quarter
alt + 0189 ½ One Half
alt + 0190 ¾ Three Quarters

and I feel that smart-quotes are also more of a word-processing / DTP sort of thing.

I rarely need them in notes and if I do it tends to be the fractions. If the contents of any of my notes were later to be used in a more formal document and did need any of these I would use a word processor.

Please do not think I am having a rant :slight_smile: , I am just throwing my particular view into the thread.

Yeah, it is one of possible ways to type rare characters:

  • Alt+codes on Windows
  • compose key on Linux
  • something like hacker keyboard on Android...
  • finding symbol in the Internet and copy-pasting it to note :wink:

But I think that using typographer is a little bit simpler. There are another pros:

  • it's already existed typographer option in markdown-it
  • it's existed similar plugin in Joplin for emojis (although you can just copy-paste emoji)
  • some users want something like that: SmartyPants plugin

@danil-tolkachev can you please check which version of markdown-it supports this? we are using 8.4.0 (mobile) and 8.4.1 (desktop).

Also, you are right, it would be easy to add. If @laurent accepts a PR, I can do this within a few minutes.

I’d accept a PR and as far as I know it’s an option of the Markdown renderer. In our case, we should make it look like a plugin though, like we did for the soft break option.

Yep that was my plan. PR coming up in a few minutes.

I can't check directly, but it seems that this feature was introduced in 2014.

Thanks. I’m already adding it.

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No, thank you :blush:

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Maybe it's simpler on Windows, since Windows is still stuck in the stone age with its Alt+codes. Compose key works much easier (and there are thingies for Windows as well) but, and that is most important, it works identically in all applications. Having one application behave differently from another because both have their own (but different) support for 'rare characters' quickly becomes a PITA.