Show HN: GitBook Editor Beta – Markdown WYSIWYG, TeX
gitbook.com
gitbook.com
It's geared primarily towards research papers and associated material, but can be used for anything! One of the first projects (not by the founders) was a set of wedding invitations!
PS: In case you can't guess, I'm one of the founders, and any feedback is always appreciated, thanks.
We try to detect which compile engine to use, and you can always specify it manually in the editor settings. Just click the gear icon in the top right.
It's not the same as having a full offline mode, but it certainly helps.
Writing out all the symbols names and getting the formatting right seems to take a fair amount of time and I typically get behind.
I have a Microsoft Surface I use for class, so what I have just switched to handwriting the notes now on the surface.
Is there some way for native apps to launch my preferred default browser to do this task?
(Note: this is by no means an accusation towards OP; I just tend not to type my gmail password into random apps I downloaded from strangers on the internet).
I see this happening over and over again on my phone. Especially with Facebook logins.
EDIT: Done correctly, "Log in with ..." should NEVER need your password for the site it will use separate authentication tokens to associate with your account. It may try to redirect you if you're not logged in, just make sure you log in by directly accessing the primary auth site first.
In an ideal world auth flows would always open in my system browser that I can trust. On both mobile and desktop.
(Well, technically I already installed a proprietary .deb and am running the process as my user, so game over.)
All of that was a long time ago, though, and there's a lot more flexibility in where a document can start and end up in various other formats. pandoc changes the rules entirely, and markdown seems the most "native" format for pandoc.
In short, I think I need to be working in Markdown. But, this doesn't look like the right tool for me, at all. A subscription service for a text editor just feels wonky. I don't really want anyone else in the workflow until I send it off to an editor or for print publication. And, the idea of paying for a text editor, especially one as limited as this one seems to be (though it has some neat tricks), when there are such good/flexible/powerful/free/open editors, seems bizarre.
I think I just need to find a good set of vim settings for markdown, or give Atom another try.
Also, I haven't written any books, but I wonder if Markdown is the best choice for a canonical format. The syntax is lightweight but also limited. For example, it doesn't support tables, and doesn't differentiate between source code (which should be syntax highlighted) and literal text (which shouldn't). You could define your own extensions, of course, but that breaks the compatibility feature. I think reStructuredText (for example) might be a better choice, although Emacs' Org-mode is my personal favorite document format. I suppose that in the end, whichever's most comfortable for the author to write in is the best.
edit: I should mention that this is in reference to a technical book because I've been thinking about technical writing lately. It just occurred to me that you could be writing the type of book that doesn't need tables or source code, in which case Markdown is probably perfect.
It is a technical book, but no math. There is table support in some extended versions of Markdown, so that's not a problem. And, I've found syntax highlighting works OK on our website (which is Drupal with a geshi filter setup for Markdown text format posts...it is a little clumsy in that it has to be wrapped in <code></code> tags, but it works well enough that I'd be comfortable using it).
I just started googling WordPress plugins for Markdown. Maybe that'll do the job well enough, and I'll do my editing in vim or Atom.
You won't get GitBook's online services but their build toolchain is fully open, can be run locally.
Aside from being proprietary, this seems a neat local markdown editor with built-in git support. I too would prefer something FOSS and more flexible, esp. for a huge project like a book, but I can see myself recommending this to people.
LyX+Mendeley works pretty well for me...
I've really been enjoying mdBook. https://github.com/azerupi/mdBook/issues/29#issuecomment-168... for example is so awesome, can't wait until it lands.