Support bi-directional refresh in Bear, others: Check GitHub Checkboxes?

Matthew L.'s Avatar

Matthew L.

11 Dec, 2019 11:16 PM

I currently use Marked2 with Bear as I am a former Boostnote user but needed to have a mobile editor which the Boostnote project abandoned. On the desktop Boostnote has Bear/Marked2 beat with is much richer markdown syntax, but the one super-great feature no one else seems to have is the side-by-side view of markdown vs preview where editing from within the preview pane is possible, not just to the markdown text where the preview needs to be refreshed- a solution that is in comparison rather clunky.

While making edits in the preview pane didn't always format predictably (it was about as problematic as Evernote is with its often impossible WYSIWYG editor ) however one function that was VERY useful was to be able to check off checkboxes in the preview pane which would in turn update the " - [ ]" to "- [X]" in the markdown editor. I would have probably stuck with Boostnote had they not abandoned the mobile app especially since there is no Marked2 app for IOS.

I do realize that Marked2 just renders markdown files and is not an editor. From what I can tell, Marked2 reads Bear's note file and manually renders it on demand. To be able to make changes to Bear's note file it would appear you'd at least need a socket for a semaphore between Bear and Marked2 to handled editing the same file as even the simplest edits like checking checkboxes require this, not to mention autorefresh. With Marked2's $14 price tag and Bear's subscription cost (with no preview function whatsoever) I was expecting the integration between the two apps to be a bit more advanced and was disappointed to discover otherwise. While the ability to export to other markdown/markup formats which Bear doesn't actually support is definitely helpful, but considering that Boostnote is an open source project that offers much more as a desktop app than than Bear and Marked2 provides I was expecting this integration to be more substantial.

  1. Support Staff 1 Posted by Brett on 11 Dec, 2019 11:56 PM

    Brett's Avatar

    I’m unsure where your expectations came from, but you are correct that marked does not edit files, nor have I teamed up with the Bear developers on direct integration. Two entirely separate apps.

    - Brett

  2. Support Staff 2 Posted by Brett on 12 Dec, 2019 12:30 AM

    Brett's Avatar

    Sorry, I took this as a criticism rather than a suggestion. Thanks for the idea. Unfortunately marked can only interact with other applications using methods that they expose, so it’s unlikely we’ll see this kind of integration with Bear or any other application.

    - Brett

  3. 3 Posted by Matthew L. on 12 Dec, 2019 02:08 AM

    Matthew L.'s Avatar

    No worries, I am fully aware of what the intended purpose of Marked is and I realize that this is not a small ask. I had discovered that Bear actually has a posted API so I thought that may be a way of going about it if the Marked team was so inclined. Then again, it's not really Marked's responsibility to reverse engineer Bear's missing rich text preview window!

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