Open Source @lemmy.ml pexavc @lemmy.world 1 yr. ago

What's everyone's favorite README editor?

Looking for a good README editor. With maybe git functionality, but not necessary

Like adding shields/badges/assets within automatically
managing a directory like structure by generating new MD files in a directory like folder structure.

Essentially an IDE like environment just for markdown file management and a WYSIWYG editing experience

32 comments

Cant you just use your favorite general purpose editor?
- I could have posed the question better. But, I haven't found one that served my needs yet. Nor do I not know of one that may have interesting features that would make it easier to do things, like maybe adding shields/badges/assets within automatically or being able to create a directory like structure by generating new MD files when wanting to create a comprehensive API doc.
  
  What are your needs? You didn't express them...
- Even if not general purpose, I would think a markdown editor would suffice.
Don't you mean a markdown editor?

Chances are, your favorite text editor can handle markdown well enough... unless you want WYSIWYG, in which case your text editor would still be good enough for the job and you would be wrong :-)
- READMEs aren't necessarily markdown. That is the most popular option, but there's others out there. Here's Github's list of supported README formats for example:
  
  The following markups are supported. The dependencies listed are required if you wish to run the library. You can also run script/bootstrap to fetch them all.
  
  .markdown, .mdown, .mkdn, .md -- gem install commonmarker (https://github.com/gjtorikian/commonmarker)
  
  .textile -- gem install RedCloth (https://github.com/jgarber/redcloth)
  
  .rdoc -- gem install rdoc -v 3.6.1
  
  .org -- gem install org-ruby (https://github.com/wallyqs/org-ruby)
  
  .creole -- gem install creole (https://github.com/larsch/creole)
  
  .mediawiki, .wiki -- gem install wikicloth (https://github.com/nricciar/wikicloth)
  
  .rst -- pip install docutils
  
  .asciidoc, .adoc, .asc -- gem install asciidoctor (http://asciidoctor.org)
  
  .pod -- Pod::Simple::XHTML comes with Perl >= 5.10. Lower versions should install Pod::Simple from CPAN.
- Yeah, have been using text editor mainly for markdown editing or other lightweight WYSIWYG apps, it's good enough. Felt, there could be more out there that I am missing out on which I am unaware of.
  
  There are a pletora of markown editors that have a split view w/ live preview (I used various - the one I currently have installed is Ghostwriter), but you can most probably get the same with your programmer's text editor (well, unless your text editing is done in the terminal) and, one way or another, you are not guaranteed that what you see is what will be displayed in github/gitlab/...
Emacs.
More accurately

what’s a good text editor

Literally whatever you want, dude.
GNU Emacs of course. I am particularly fond of spacemacs, because I like vim keybindings. For git functionality we have the excellent magit package on our side, which makes Emacs also my favorite git interface.
VSCODE with markdown extensions
- Haven't thought of this yet, thanks
- VS Code's extension system makes it pretty easy to build your own code snippet extension. I use my own private extension to easily "generate" different types of markdown files (ie readme vs a troubleshooting guide) from my personalized snippets.
  
  Also has an easy way to jump between different markdowns files using the symbols popup menu Ctrl+T
Any text editor that can edit markdown files with syntax highlighting? What kind of git functionality do you want? If you want to see the formatting in place as you edit, look for a WYSIWYG editor (Ghostwriter and Typora come to mind). I use Neovim and have lazygit opened in another terminal tab.
- Essentially what I was thinking,
  
  Is an IDE like environment just for markdown file management and WYSIWYG editing experience
  
  Well VSCode has a markdown preview extension. Otherwise Obsidian might be what you want
- Typora is really cool, wish it was OS though. Although the one-time purchase isn't too bad
  
  Yeah, that's also why I use Ghostwriter as a Typora replacement. The KDE team developed it.
  
  Marktext is my favourite app that is very typora-like
Apostrophe. It's beautiful.
- A lot of people seem to have misunderstood the question and are offering text editors. Apostrophe as actually looks like it fits the bill for a decent markdown editor, which is what OP seems to have been asking for
I use Kate as it opens pretty quickly and I've gotten used to using it to make simple bash scripts
Obsidian?
- More like a notes/personal wiki app, than a readme editor.
  
  That said, Obsidian is a diamond in the rough. Building a personal wiki while learning a skill and referencing it later (via search or category) is a true life hack. It feels like augmenting your memory capacity.
  
  Truly invaluable if you need to reference things often but your knowledge base is highly specialized (e.g., I'm a neurology professor)
I like Jennifer the best, but Sally is excellent as well
I’ve been using Gedit
I guess it depends on what you want to use it for.

If it's knowledge management (to manage your own personal notes), you might want to check out logseq.
I just use whatever text editor I happen to have open - generally that's (neo)vim for me, but I've also used IntelliJ/JetBrains products to do so, along with VSCode on the rare case.

None of them have had the extra features that you mentioned, I don't use emacs but considering its very powerful org-mode I wouldn't be surprised if someone has implemented something similar for Markdown? I haven't specifically seen anything that covers these though (which could just be not looking hard enough, admittedly).
Ghostwriter for KDE, Marker for Gnome, Markor for Android

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