A Perplexing Markdown Problem or iA Writer Specific Problem

Some folks are starting to sound like wood-sculpture purists trying to tell an excited novice to stay away from the carving knife because it does not have a fine enough blade-to-handle balance ratio.

When you appreciate the limitations of a syntax as a way to change vanilla ASCII text display into some form of prettified display, when you still want to use that syntax as a way to work effectively in writing ASCII text yet being able to see a basic prettified version, and when you accept the limitations of the tool that you are using to invoke that syntax – go for it. There is no need to know that syntax A can only be used if you know syntax B to which it points and/or is derived from. It is like saying we cannot appreciate Biblical times unless we also know Aramaic.


JJW

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I use Markdown (and/or MultiMarkdown) for nearly everything involving text, and find it useful for everything up to book-length writing (which I don’t do). That said, I also indent a lot for a variety of my writing, and I don’t love that indenting creates a code block.

One way around this is to use bullets when you want to indent a paragraph for whatever reason. Most markdown editors handle indented bulleted paragraphs the way you’d expect, by displaying them inset from the left margin, without turning them into code blocks.

All that said, Markdown really is designed for writing, not presentation. And it has plenty of ways to emphasize a paragraph if emphasis really is the goal: italics, bold and quote blocks among them.

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You don’t need to know HTML to be able to use Markdown. But two things are true in this case.

  • Markdown is (effectively) an abstraction that translates into a simplified, stripped-down, limited subset of HTML.
  • The complaints that frequently seem to be arise is that the subset is too limited.

If the subset is too limited, HTML is the fallback as that’s what Markdown becomes anyway. If somebody can’t do what they want to do in Markdown, and doesn’t want to use HTML to augment it, then Markdown probably isn’t the tool for them.

In much the same way, you don’t have to know Aramaic to appreciate Biblical times. But the level of your knowledge is going to be limited at some point if you’re not capable of interacting with primary sources, as you’re going to be engaging with the texts through the filter of a translator.

Whether that’s okay with somebody is up to them. :slight_smile:

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There are challenges here too. If I write in MS Word, I am embedding formatting into the document - including font size, the actual font, indentations and so on. Which is fine is I know precisely what my content will be used for e.g., a report for the board meeting on Tuesday.

Retaining that formatting by converting to a PDF is fine, except it may become unreadable on a small phone display. If I convert my content to ePub because I want to distribute my content in that way, then much of the formatting (such as font) is lost, which is a problem if I was using certain types of formatting to emphasise content.

I love Markdown as a writing tool, despite (or perhaps because of) its limitations, precisely because I’m writing content first and formatting second. I can focus on the words, not the precise layout. My content may have multiple purposes - to read aloud, to publish online, to provide as print outs, as a submission to an academic journal,… all of which will (ideally) require the content to be formatted differently. I need a much bigger font to read aloud than I would provide in a printed transcript. With Markdown, it’s as simple as selecting an alternative style on export.

Indenting may be a specific issue, but bold-italics could be used to signify text of specific importance rather than an indent. Upon export that can be made to look like anything you like.

Edit: Although, thinking about it, there’s nothing wrong with using a code block/indent for the intended purpose. @Bmosbacker 's only issue was the theme was rendering it in a way he didn’t want.

Kind of. Innovation most commonly comes when people develop others’ ideas or find new uses for them. A lot of people have worked on Markdown syntax since.

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@nationalinterest, that is a valid point. Perhaps this dog needs to learn a new trick. :slightly_smiling_face:

This has me wondering: What is the HTML code (if there is one) to indent a paragraph without it becoming a code block? I could create a text replacement shortcut for that code when needed. I’ve already done that for headings, e.g., hitting h2 creates ##, h3 creates ###, and so on. I also made a text replacement shortcut for a comment block in iA Writer so that typing cc creates <!— text —>. Could I do this for an indented paragraph with HTML code?

<div style="text-indent: 50px;">This is an indented paragraph.</div>

works directly in Obsidian and Typora - I don’t have IA to try.

That would work fine.

WARNING: More geeky option follows:

A better way of doing this could be:

<div class="indent">This is an indented paragraph.</div>

and then, in the stylesheet adding:

div.indent {
    text-indent: 50px;
}

Using a class means different exports could render an indent in different ways as the size of the indent isn’t defined in the document. So, for example, you could have different indents on a website vs a printed page vs a presentation on screen.

Just an extra thought - the tag for a paragraph should probably be p, not div.

<p class="indent">This is an indented paragraph</p>
p.indent { text-indent: 50px; }

Only bringing it up because stylesheets sometimes apply different formatting to p tags vs. divs, and the goal is likely to make it styled like a paragraph - but indented.

And of course if one is tweaking stylesheets, they can do cool stuff like apply global stylings to paragraphs:

p { text-indent: 10px; }

which would indent the first line of every paragraph by 10 pixels, if that’s your jam.

Lots of options once you open up CSS.

And of course you could set up a macro with something like Keyboard Maestro so that if you typed ;indent it would auto-create the p opening/closing tags, and position your cursor at the correct spot to begin typing. :slight_smile:

@nationalinterest @webwalrus Thanks guys, I appreciate the help. I’ll give that a try but this may be complicating my workflow as a non-coder beyond what makes sense for me. :slightly_smiling_face: I sometimes think I’m my own worst enemy. :slightly_smiling_face:

iA Writer does offer some useful keyboard shortcuts for Markdown’s structures. For example, command-1 through command-5 create the corresponding heading level at the current cursor.

You might wish to explore those key bindings before creating macros like h2.

Thanks, this is helpful and appreciated!

I do, and I have. :slightly_smiling_face: I’m asking your opinion, if you have one, on this subject.

Others can chime in as well!

The vast majority of people have used Ulysses for years with no issues, have thousands of articles, books, etc., in Ulysses, and have not lost data. The problem is related to backups, which are stored locally. If something happens to the hard drive and the backup files are corrupted, one loses the data.

Here is an example of the problem.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ulyssesapp/comments/1dzv86o/ulysses_lost_4_years_worth_of_my_work/

However, I have Backblaze constantly running and each week I back up to two external drives in two separate locations.

Should this protect me if I decide to keep using Ulysses?

I feel “safer” with iA Writer, but the app is less conducive to producing the documents I typically write, which often include quotes, images, indentations, and footnotes.

Thoughts?

Yes. I think my issue is that I’m trying to use Markdown for writing that the syntax is not desigend form (unless one wants to mess with CSS, which I don’t). My writing includes quotes, bullets, indents, images, and footnotes. Seldom is my writing comprised exclusivley of text and bullet points.

Yes, I think at this point you have outgrown Markdown itself.

But fear not, I have another geek rabbit hole for you: LaTeX. Let me talk to you about LaTeX. It will solve all your needs, at the very modest price of your sanity.

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There is nothing in that list which isn’t bog-standard Markdown. From your description, your only issue is that there is a single syntax (and therefore format) for indents and block quotes. But to my way of thinking:

HEY YOU! Pay attention to this paragraph!

and

“Some dozy readers need to be bludgeoned into paying attention.” (Bloggs, 1937)

are similar enough in intent (to show off the paragraph) to use the same format, while still being distinguishable because of the quotation marks and citation. And of course, you can use further emphasis, if you wish, within the block quotes. (The == syntax is in both IA Writer and DT3, BTW.)

> **HEY YOU**: ==Pay attention to this paragraph!==

Screenshot 2024-09-17 at 19.35.52

Of course, only you can decide where to draw the line, but I wonder if the small distinction between the two forms of block paragraph is worth losing the other benefits that you find in Markdown, or the time spent on learning other solutions which will inevitably have their own compromises?

To sum up: I agree with those who say that for complex layout needs, you need to supplement (or replace) Markdown, but Markdown can still do a lot and it’s worth examining what you actually need because the alternatives aren’t perfect either :smile:

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+1 for this well constructed case for staying within markdown (whether with iA Writer or else wise).

You need not do anything beyond what markdown can give you as it stands. You could spend a bit more time in two options: a) figure out how to set up a template with markdown + CSS to handle your exacting needs and be done with the agony or b) explore yet another writing syntax. :upside_down_face:


JJW

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You should be fine, as long as the Ulysses files are included in your backup. Worst case scenario you’d lose all work since your last backup.

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That truly sounds scary. :slightly_smiling_face: i’ve seen that recommended multiple times. I have never looked into it.

Nor should you. LaTeX is first and foremost a system to generate a document that must conform to specific layout and format standards when it is printed to permanent media. By comparison, markdown has no reference frontmost about layout and format standards, it is a translation of ASCII text to a visualization framework. By example, you must force page breaks and figure positions into markdown (with some agony), whereas LaTeX makes page breaks automatically (by standards on page size that you set in advance) and demands that you define where the figure is to be placed on the page (with defaults and options to tweak in all sorts of ways).

It is not scary. It is simply a different world. Some folks don’t like going into different worlds or do not have the mindset to adopt to the “programming” approach that seems to be demanded (hence the sanity check). No problem. I don’t like going into the Word world for creating PDFs of anything beyond two pages. I’ll wear my LaTeX hardhat when I work on my journal articles, and you wear your Word/Pages/Mellel … fire suit when you work. Perhaps we will share a few random thoughts on markdown. Maybe someday we will meet with Scrivener. All will be well in the end.

In Summary: I would not use LaTeX to work on documents that are one-off, never-to-be-printed-or-archived. I might use Obsidian or simply Word. I would not use markdown (or Word/rtf) to create a document that must be archivable (PDF/A standard), extends over more than 2 or so pages, should present a high level of consistency in layout and format standards down to the spacing between characters, lines, and paragraphs, and may need to have sequential content such as sections, tables, figures, or citations that must be numbered sequentially in the final document even after I muck about in the source document.


JJW

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Can always use pandoc to convert markdown files to another format such as LaTeX, docx, etc… It’s a wonderful tool.

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When I was using MarkDownload as a web clipper, the combination of Typora and pandoc (installed through Homebrew) seamlessly enabled me to convert to many formats for file storage.

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