Which is the very essence of the problem, as I see it. One either deals with the visual clutter or switches views—both of which detract from the writing flow. 
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Actually, I’ve used Markdown for many years. Markdown has it’s uses, Obsidian being a very good example of it. I apologise if it seems I’m saying Word is the only way, it’s most definitely not. I’m trying to provide some balance to the large swathe of imbalance that seems to say Word is evil and no-one should use it.
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@Oliver_Reichenstein just wanted to jump in and say thanks for making a great app. I like seeing the markup. It makes it easier for me to see what text is where, and it helps me make fewer mistakes. I don’t find iA Writer gets in my way at all. I still find the writing environment quite pleasant.
I see what others are asking for, but I think there are a lot of people who probably don’t actually like seeing their markup as they write, which means (in my opinion) the whole point of Markdown is sort of lost on them.
I also see that some of us have chosen to turn this into a personal crusade, which is unfortunate. Apologies that you were caught in this crossfire. But thank you for making a wonderful app for me.
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Absolutely right. I love love love iA Writer. An absolute joy to use.
My one wish is that the Dynamic Outline and Folding feature found on the Windows version of iA Writer would be ported to the Mac version. I use this same feature (in another MD editor) a lot for longer writing. Although the “other app” is not as enjoyable as iA Writer, this outline & folder feature pushes me to use the other app for about 50% of my writing. I’d love to move to iA Writer 100% of the time.
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I understand this is not your point, but if you wanted to write those kinds of formatted papers with markdown, you would probably use Marked or Pandoc. You get footnotes in Github-flavored markdown which iA supports.
There’s certainly value to using Word just because you’re in a hurry and everyone else expects its default look, but some of the pushback against Word comes from not wanting the world to be that dreary.
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You keep repeating this, Would you be able to show them also?
What’s the other app?
I use bike.app with dictation specifically for features like this.
You’re asking what I’d say if our son Akira or our daughter Momoco had to write an essay? I’d say something like:
"First make sure you have something to say. Don’t pretend to know what you don’t know. Keep it simple.
When you have a raw idea, when you feel like you want to express what you have inside, start. You can write to find out what you think, but it’s better if you are at least motivated in a certain direction before starting.
And then just write. Nothing else. Focus on what you feel, and shape it into words. No links, no images, no colors, no underlines, no emphasis and no bold, either, you can do that later. At first, just use verbal language, no visual language.
I advise using a monospaced font, so you can see your progress. It’s appropriate to have a font that tells you “chill, this is just a draft.” Proportional fonts speed up the reading and make it harder to find typos. You need to slow down, don’t rush anything. Otherwise you need much more time to correct. Think, then type, until you get into the flow. A careful first draft goes a long way. Find pleasure in the right words, sounds, images and in the meaning you shape. It’s hard work, but if you find joy in it, hours will fly by.
Just think about the right words, order them and reorder them. Start with a simple beginning-middle-end structure. Don’t overthink. Listen to the music of what you express as much as to what they mean. Don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t try to convince others or yourself that you are smart or that you know more than you really do. If you express what you feel, and you enjoy the liberating feeling that this offers, you won’t feel like you have to write, you will experience will and joy.
Once you have a first draft, edit. Don’t edit too early. Try to get at least the middle part. The intro will need a lot of rewrites. The conclusion is a bit easier, but don’t sweat it either.
Editing still is the hard and usually the longest part. Order, and reorder paragraphs, within sentences and words. Keep similar thought together. But be careful how you alter context by doing so. You can ruin everything at the service of logic. Keep your sentences short but vary the length. Meaning and sound work together.
You can use the different parts of speech to improve your writing. There’s an app that highlights syntax. It helps, just as much as syntax highlight helps when you code. Taste your adjectives and adverbs. Leave only those that contribute to the meaning. Taste your conjunctions to make sure they are really logical. Replace abstract verbs with concrete ones. Rewrite “to be” and “to have” using active colorful verbs, if possible. Not all passives are bad but keep an eye on them.
Repetitions are fine. But check for unwanted repetitions. Often we repeat nouns inadvertently. Find clichés and fillers. (Again, there’s an app that highlights those). Don’t just delete them! Some are fine, some are an indicator that you used prefabricated word packages instead of saying what you feel and mean. Rethink your sentence with fillers and clichés to make sure that you really mean what you said. This is all that counts: Know what you say and say what you mean, and make music out of it.
Edit until the structure becomes clear and every edit is adding to clarity abd every detail makes your writing more understandable. Read and rewrite until you feel that to what you wrote is clear, means what you felt and sounds right.
Then, if you need links, images, footnotes, tables, footers, coverage, color underlines, I can help you with that. It’s all possible in iA Writer. Some of those things are very easy, some are advanced, some require painful templating skills.
Once you format your document, you work with the preview side by side. Use PDF preview if you need to make a PDF or if you need to print it. It will show you exactly what happens, big and nice. No staring at thumbnails before printing,
Of course, you can use a layout app, if you are already familiar with one of them. Use Pages, I don’t want to unnecessarily pay Adobe, or, beware!, Microsoft. Quark is for obsessed old graphic designers. Google is free but then it’s not, but let’s not get distracted by talking about privacy and data capitalism, today. It doesn’t matter what you use as long as you don’t waste money and time. In any case, when you write your essay you are well advised to start somewhere that doesn’t invite you to do anything but write. Especially as a beginner. As you get more experienced you can type 2000 words on a phone in an HTML textfield in another language.
For good formatting, learn typography. Good typography reads well and looks good. Be careful with colors and underlines. Use italics, real italics for emphasis. They look nice and read well. Use a typographic template that has good line height, leading and hierarchy. Careful with Word’s or Pages’ Ferrari and Wild West templates. They look fun now that you’re 11 years old, but, honestly, they’re just bad taste. You can of course use them, or you can have one of my personal ones. We should release more those to the public actually…"
And then I’d talk about typography and our kids roll their eyes. Here he goes again with his Garamond and what not…
For me, this is the way. I enjoy writing like this so much and I hope that comes across here as well. I am smiling as I type this. iA Writer was born out of this love for words and type. There are other ways to write, of course. If you need footers and headers and images from the get go to write well, you have all the traditional apps at your service!
But let’s not be too wishy washy. If you don’t fully concentrate on your writing and do just that, your writing just won’t be as good as it can be.
I think this answers the most relevant questions, above, including: why do we not hide links and footnotes?
But to be clear: We are a plaintext markdown app. We are not a milk-and-water WYSIWYG app and we don’t jiggle text around (showing and hiding markdown depending on cursor position and shake everything up). Our users want to see the links and the footnotes without the old clicking peek-a-boo.
Not all iA Writer users, but lots of them are markdown hard liners (the very inventor of markdown uses our iPad app and raves about it not hiding stuff) and we love them and they love us. They don’t want pictures in text. They don’t think that it’s clever to hide footnotes or links.
And it is neither clever, new nor modern, to hide markdown. Word snd others have done it before. Same for the jiggle. It has been done by plenty of apps and Web editors for years and years.
As I said before, eventually, we’d like to do something even cleaner with markdown, but we won’t go back to Word or the jiggle. We’ll do something better, we’ll move forward. No ETAs and no promises. Design takes time.
TL;DR
Write first, format later, with or without markdown depends on your skills.
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Clarke: That’s interesting! I’ve been using Bike more and more for various things related to my responsibilities as an educator. … but I honestly hadn’t considered it as a kind of pre-writing app that later goes into iA Writer. Your approach might be a good fit for me. If you’re willing can you provide more details? Especially how to move over to iA Writer (copy markdown or something else, do you take advantage of headers in Bike, etc.).
BTW I’m quite serious about learning more about how you use Bike. The more I use that app, the more I enjoy it. Finding more uses for it benefit me. And I’ve just started a semester break … so a great time to learn new skills or approaches.
The “other” app I use is Nota. More here: https://nota.md
Below is a screenshot of part of one page. All headers can be “folded” and the outline on the right hand side are internal links that go to each of the headers used on the page.
I’ve never used IA, but I love that @Oliver_Reichenstein has shown up here and explained the rationale.
I also think the feature is dead clever.
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I use IA Writer for most of my day-to-day writing. Sometimes, I will spend a little effort to add footnotes and images and formatting, but often it is simply the text that is important. I generally do not find the Markdown particularly distracting. For relatively informal documents, I either print to pdf or send the text to co-workers. They sometimes put the text into Word documents.
When I need to submit manuscripts for publication or submit proposals with a very specific layout, I convert my text files to LaTeX. I used to do all my writing in LaTeX, but I have found that writing in Markdown is more enjoyable and IA Writer meets my needs very well.
I know nothing of possible buggy behavior of Word, I simply know that I do not enjoy it.
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