Who knows Joplin REALLY WELL and wants to be paid for help?

[rlgreen]

I write big, complicated historical novels for a living and do a ton of research. Everything from what eggs cost in 1850 in St. Louis vs. Manhattan to the construction of a fort in Santa Fe after the Mexican-American war.

For years I used Evernote to keep track of all the research, but things went crazy some time ago and I've had to use Legacy Evernote, which is not reliable.

Scrivener looked like it might work for keeping research organized, but I find it bloated and awkward.

Joplin looks like exactly what I need, but my programming skills are way, way too basic to make the changes I really need. Nothing elaborate to a person comfortable with the software, but I just can't take the time to learn it all.

What I want is basic. I'd like to have the two main panels switched, so the markdown version is on the far right and the more readable version is in the middle and somewhat larger, with a background color to set it off. There are other, minor points as well, but nothing horrendously complicated.

I'm thinking a couple hours at most for somebody who knows Joplin well. But I'll pay a flat $150 for the whole shebang*, the two css files, some back and forth about possible changes, and follow up in case of errors.

Please yell if you're interested. Many thanks.

*Unless there is some huge challenge here that I'm not seeing, in which case I am willing to rethink payment amounts.

[personalizedrefriger]

Here's some really fragile (& free) CSS (goes in "Custom Stylesheet for Joplin-wide App Styles") that can be used to switch the two panels:

.rli-editor > :nth-child(1) > :nth-child(1) > :nth-child(1) > :nth-child(2) > :nth-child(1) > :nth-child(2) > :nth-child(1) {
    order: 2;
}

I didn't see a way to select the left/right sides of the markdown panes directly, but this is a starting point!

[Daeraxa]

I did this a while ago in a slightly different way, probably no less fragile though.

.rli-editor > div > div > div > div > div > div {
    flex-direction: row-reverse !important;
}

[rlgreen]

Many clever people here. Thanks for the suggestions. You have to start somewhere, fragile or not.

[Daeraxa]

When I started with Joplin I barely knew anything about CSS, I picked this all up from the forum resources and a lot of google-fu.

[rlgreen]

That would be the sensible approach, I agree. But I've got so many irons in the fire that adding another one might burn the place down. My friends-who-are-less-conflicted-than-I tell me I need to delegate. Which is what I'm trying to do. Spending hours on getting things just right is not a good use of my time and an undesirable challenge to my juggling skills.

I will happily pay somebody who really knows what they are doing so I can concentrate on what I really know how to do.

[Daeraxa]

Oh I just mean in the context of "clever people", as a self diagnosed idiot I reject the claim

As for altering the background colour of your viewing pane you could try something like:

#joplin-container-body {
	background-color: #ffff00;
	}

in your userstyles.css.

[rlgreen]

I'll try that today, thanks. You know the one thing that drives me crazy is font size and weight. No matter how carefully I construct the css, it never works. ever. I realize there's something going on behind the scenes that I haven't figured out yet, but it is infuriating.6

[rlgreen]

The suggestions you all made were successful (swapping panels and adding background color). Maybe this will be as easy?

Two things that need to happen, as noted on the screenshot. Click on it for the larger, more legible version. joplin screenshot

[prosas]

My settings

Tools > Options > Appearance > Editor font size (13)
Tools > Options > Appearance > Editor font family (Verdana)

[prosas]

Editor line height (in userchrome.css)

pre.CodeMirror-line {
    line-height: normal !important;        
}

For viewer font I have this (userstyle.css)

body {
    background-color: #F6F3E3;
    line-height: normal;
    font-family: Verdana;
    font-size: 10pt;    
}

[prosas]

@rlgreen

... and somewhat larger ...

When I need wider editor/viewer, I just turn off notebook list (F10) and note list (F11)

[chairmanbrando]

I use the Rich Markdown plugin to enhance the editor area and don't use the preview at all. This does limit access to some plugins that use special tags in Markdown to trigger fancy things in the rendered view, but the clarity of a single editor is nice.

Plus, you can hit Cmd/Ctrl-L to switch over to render mode any time you need to see the end result. (So, I could use those special-tag plugins in the end...) Just be sure to set View > Layout button sequence to Editor / Viewer so you're only ever switching between the two single-pane modes.

Just throwing that out there in case another option was useful.

[rlgreen]

Very useful. I hadn't yet clued in on the command-L business (using the tiny icon on the top menu, but that was disruptive).

Thanks, Chairman

[rlgreen]

THANK you prosas. Finally the font is doing what I need it to do. You must be fairly young, because I could never handle a 10pt font. 18 is more my neighborhood.

[rlgreen]

One thing that may not be important (given the help all y'all have given me). You suggest

Tools > Options > Appearance > Editor font size (13)
Tools > Options > Appearance > Editor font family (Verdana)

But this is what I have on my Joplin bar:

[Daeraxa]

On mac it is Joplin > Preferences or something similar because of macOS conventions.

[rlgreen]

got it, thanks