I am considering several note-editing apps and found about Joplin when looking for an Evernote alternative.
I tried it and got quite puzzled about the editing mode, which enables edits in Markdown only and does not seem to allow direct modification in a WYSIWYG way (like on Evernote, Notion, Apple Notes…).
Am I mistaken? Or did I miss anything?
I find it nice to be able to use Makrdown, but I am not very geeky and thus I quite enjoy the simplicity of WYSIWYG editors and would love to use Joplin instead of Evernote for my notes. Any workaround or alternatives will be more than welcome!
I also just dumped Evernote and Google Keep in favour of Joplin, and I don’t understand why not a WYSIWYG editor and what people find more convenient with the double view (editor and what you see next to it)… don’t the want just to see a beautifully formatted notes? why they need to look at the “code” of the note… isn’t it confusing?
Isn’t it Joplin for notes?
People use it for programming?
I don’t get it.
Thanks anyway for this beautiful free product
Yeah, there’s a reason Markdown is so popular: its simplicity and the obviousness of its formatting.
As soon as you have a WYSIWYG editor, you have to deal with invisible formatting markup which is opaque and often causes problems. Of course I can’t speak for everyone, but many of us just love the fact that a) we can just type the formatting in, which is quick and b) when something goes wrong, you can most often see it immediately and fix it with a few keystrokes.
In fact, the annoying, horrible WYSIWYG editor is one of the reasons I’d dumped Evernote for Joplin, and Wordpress for Ghost, and Word for .md files whenever it’s possible.
WYSIWYG should be an option and not be forced onto the user. I wouldn’t want such an editor either, but I guess a lot of people do. AFAIK Laurent was already saying that a WYSIWYG editor might be available in the future. I just hope it will be optional.
I can’t wait for good WYSIWYG editor.
What most people fear is that it would hide markdown tags from user making or cause distractions by constantly redrawing editor view as you type or move cursor, for example Typora does that and it’s annoying.
However, current setup is also far from ideal as it needs frequent switches from code to view, even to correct simple typos so I mostly use both panes simultaneously.
The solution would be editor similar to one Bear has - https://bear.app (unfortunately Mac only). Basically you write markdown tag that is rendered, then your content which stays this way unless you start editing tag itself. Really looking forward to something similar in Joplin.
Thank you for your work @laurent
The best way to add this is make it optional. For those who want markup can have WYSIWYG disabled. For those who don’t want markup can have WYSIWYG enabled.
Joplin notes can be opened and edited using an external editor of your choice. It can be a simple text editor like Notepad++ or Sublime Text or an actual Markdown editor like Typora. In that case, images will also be displayed within the editor. To open the note in an external editor, click on the icon in the toolbar or press Ctrl+E (or Cmd+E). Your default text editor will be used to open the note. If needed, you can also specify the editor directly in the General Options, under “Text editor command”.
The editor command (may include arguments) defines which editor will be used to open a note. If none is provided it will try to auto-detect the default editor. If this does nothing or you want to change it for Joplin, you need to configure it in the Preferences -> Text editor command.
Some example configurations are: (comments after #)
Linux/Mac:
subl -n # Opens Sublime (subl) in a new window (-n)
code -n # Opens Visual Studio Code (code) in a new window (-n)
gedit --new-window # Opens gedit (Gnome Text Editor) in a new window
xterm -e vim # Opens a new terminal and opens vim. Can be replaced with an
# alternative terminal (gnome-terminal, terminator, etc.)
# or terminal text-editor (emacs, nano, etc.)
open -a <application> # Mac only: opens a GUI application
Windows:
subl.exe -n # Opens Sublime (subl) in a new window (-n)
code.exe -n # Opens Visual Studio Code in a new window (-n)
notepad.exe # Opens Notepad in a new window
notepad++.exe --openSession # Opens Notepad ++ in new window
Note that the path to directory with your editor executable must exist in your PATH variable (Windows, Linux/Mac) If not, the full path to the executable must be provided.
Oh yes, please implement WYSIWYG.
I can write Markdown and even become faster.
But I don’t like the two panels open. And reading in markdown is a pain …
I don’t get how anyone thinks opening the notes in a different editor is in any way acceptable. If I wanted to write my notes in Typora or VSCode I would have done so from the start.
