Applications for writing Markdown

Markdown is a lightweight markup language that is useful for adding formatting while still maintaining readability when viewing as plain text. Markdown (and Markdown derivatives) are used extensively as the primary form of markup of documents on services like GitHub and pagure. By design, Markdown is easily created and edited in a text editor, however, there are a multitude of editors available that provide a formatted preview of Markdown markup, and / or provide a text editor that highlights the markdown syntax.

This article covers 3 desktop applications for Fedora Workstation that help out when editing Markdown.

UberWriter

UberWriter is a minimal Markdown editor and previewer that allows you to edit in text, and preview the rendered document.

The editor itself has inline previews built in, so text marked up as bold is displayed bold. The editor also provides inline previews for images, formulas, footnotes, and more. Ctrl-clicking one of these items in the markup provides an instant preview of that element to appear.

In addition to the editor features, UberWriter also features a full screen mode and a focus mode to help minimise distractions. Focus mode greys out all but the current paragraph to help you focus on that element in your document

Install UberWriter on Fedora from the 3rd-party Flathub repositories. It can be installed directly from the Software application after setting up your system to install from Flathub

Marker

Marker is a Markdown editor that provides a simple text editor to write Markdown in, and provides a live preview of the rendered document. The interface is designed with a split screen layout with the editor on the left, and the live preview on the right.

Additionally, Marker allows you to export you document in a range of different formats, including HTML, PDF, and the Open Document Format (ODF).

Install Marker on Fedora from the 3rd-party Flathub repositories. It can be installed directly from the Software application after setting up your system to install from Flathub

Ghostwriter

Where the previous editors are more focussed on a minimal user experice, Ghostwriter provides many more features and options to play with. Ghostwriter provides a text editor that is partially styled as you write in Markdown format. Bold text is bold, and headings are in a larger font to assist in writing the markup.

It also provides a split screen with a live updating preview of the rendered document.

Ghostwriter also includes a range of other features, including the ability to choose the Markdown flavour that the preview is rendered in, as well as the stylesheet used to render the preview too.

Additionally, it provides a format menu (and keyboard shortcuts) to insert some of the frequent markdown ‘tags’ like bold, bullets, and italics.

Install Ghostwriter on Fedora from the 3rd-party Flathub repositories. It can be installed directly from the Software application after setting up your system to install from Flathub

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31 Comments

  1. BlueEnglishMailbox

    Vim.

  2. I like Ghostwriter and another one called Markdown (search flathub). The latter is rather slick as it converts the formatting in place instead of the need for a separate preview pane. It’s still young, but it is a good concept and worth trying.

  3. HI, great list, BUT … you missed a trick 😀
    https://typora.io/

    Inline markdown.
    Enjoy.

  4. bytesamurai

    Seriously?!

    What about the good stuff like Mark Text:
    https://marktext.app/

    or my personal favorite Typora:
    https://typora.io/

    Please -> Update the post, these two should be worthy to look it up

  5. Robin Hindryckx

    There are also a multitude of plug-ins for known code-based text-editors.
    i personally use this markdown plugin for visual code studio.

  6. Alex P

    Ghostwriter is also available as a regular package.

  7. uriesk

    Marker is also available from copr:
    sudo dnf copr enable atim/marker -y && sudo dnf install marker -y

  8. Elizeu Santos

    Good job. I currently use Typora. It is a great md file editor. Anyway, VScode has great plugins for editing and viewing md files.

  9. I use Joplin after trying multiple markdown editors. It is feature rich and has a nice intuitive interface. Available in Fedora through copr.

    https://github.com/laurent22/joplin

    Fedora:
    https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/taw/joplin/

    Thanks
    Anil

  10. I like Uberwriter!

  11. Dick

    I like to use https://github.com/joeyespo/grip which uses the GitHub API and has auto refresh in a browser window so I can use my favorite editor with live updates.

  12. Ph0zzy

    VIM?

  13. Yury

    Hi there! I believe you should mention Joplin (https://joplinapp.org/), it’s open source and has great speed and ability to sync md texts across devices.

  14. Doc

    remarkable
    available in the repo

  15. toto

    https://boostnote.io
    It’s GPL, multi-platform , has local storage in clear, no DB, no cloud.
    It also has nice feature like copy/paste from web, support for the graphing langage (mermaid, …)
    And most importantly search feature for free!
    Couldn’t find this anywhere else.

  16. I made a plugin for neovim that will do live previewing of markdown files in the viewer of your choice, as well as LaTeX files and anything else you configure:

    https://bitbucket.org/frabjous/knap/

  17. Ryan McAlister

    Unotes vscode extension gives a simple markdown WYSIWYG.

    https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ryanmcalister.Unotes

  18. giuseppe

    when we talk about text editor, beside vim, I think sublime text outperforms others. It containts also plugin for markdown

  19. Schmidt

    Atom is my favourite.

  20. Bruno

    By the way searching on FlatHub is not that great.I hope thy could implement faceted search. Like Editor / Markdown + AsciiDoctor

  21. Bruno

    One solution that has not been mentioned is https://allmark.io/
    – Standalone markdown web server
    – Open Source
    – Linux, Mac OS and Windows
    – written in go
    work with all editors …

  22. Ricky B

    Geany w/ Markdown plugin works for me 🙂

  23. Some time ago I searched for a good markdown editor, at least good for me. At that time I settle for retext which was simple an it was on fedora repos.
    I did try to do a “dnf search markdown” and found the following:
    retext
    notes-up
    ghostwriter
    There are times when flatpack is better, but probably it is good to mention that ghostwriter is in the official repos. I will give it a try.

  24. Vasiliy

    I want to ask the author:
    Why you recommend use third-party repo from unknown maintainer for install software instead Fedora’s main repo?

  25. luis

    LOVING typora. please update the list!

  26. Typo Detected:
    «Markdown (and Markdown derivatives) are used extensively as the priumary form of markup of documents on services like GitHub and pagure. »

    priumary —> primary?

  27. Luca

    ReText

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