Your Preference: Which of These Two Interfaces is Better for Writing?

[Christian]

I may be cheating a little by not answering the question precisely. The Ulysses screenshot does look beautiful. It does offer a clean user interface. The typography does look great. It combines the Markdown “source code” with layout. Ulysses goes quite far and almost hides the Markdown markup. It still is visible, but in a subtle way. If you like this way of writing, basically putting the layout to the foreground while not seeing too much of the source code, it is a very good option.

iAWriter is putting the Markdown markup in the middle of the stage. You already can see what effects the markup will have when you eventually will export the Markdown file to something else. But the emphasis is clearly on the markup, which does not look as beautiful, but it for sure is functional for those who do like this mixture of source code and WYSIWYG.

Both apps have a different approach and do offer a feature set that has different purposes and options.

So, what is it that I am preferring? None of them.

When I am writing Markdown, I am doing so because I want to store it as plain text in the long run, sitting in a folder, accessible to any app. Another use case is that I want to use the text on the internet and additionally as a PDF. If I write in Markdown, I want to see everything I type. Every blank space, every line break and what not. I am not looking for a focus mode or stuff like that. If I had to decide between Ulysses and iAWriter, iAWriter would be my choice because it does emphasize the Markup more. But it still does not show me everything I have typed in a clear and unambiguous way. How many line breaks between two paragraphs? Where exactly are spaces? How many of them?

I prefer a text editor for that. BBEdit does so much and also with Markdown everything I want:

Marked 2 is my tool of choice if I want to see more of the layout stuff (sometimes as a second window beside the BBEdit window). If I already know that my text will end up as a Word document and nowhere else, I do my writing in Word (using the format templates I need for the specific document). This does happen occasionally, but not very often.

[alvinc]

iA Writer. Font and the grey background result in peaceful and visually comfortable writing interface.

[ibuys]

The one on the right looks better. I imagine the one on the right is actually better to use… right up to the point when the formatting does something I don’t want it to do because the word processor thinks it’s smarter than I am.

That’s the main reason I avoid Word or similar applications. The formatting always gets in my way. Like when trying to create a list or an outline. Or when trying to align an image. While in the best case scenario, when everything works the way it’s supposed to, WYSIWYG applications look better and are easier to use, for whatever reason I always get myself in a situation where I can’t get the formatting to look exactly how I want it to look, which distracts me from writing.

If I can just put some asterisks, pound signs, and underscores in the right places… well that’s worth it to avoid the frustration of fighting with the auto-formatting doing things I don’t know how to fix.

[brookter]

I like BBEdit and use it extensively for text manipulation, but I wouldn’t want to write a long piece in Markdown in it.

The reason may sound trivial, but it’s something that really annoys me every time I try to do so.

It’s that BBEdit enforces its own definition of what ‘backward word delete’ means as ‘trailing spaces are treated as separate deletes’. The standard definition every where else on a Mac for backwards word delete is ‘trailing spaces are part of the preceding words.’

So, in every other Mac app, if you have the words "One two three four ", it takes two opt-deletes to delete “three and four”, but in BBEDit it takes four. This trips me up every time…

Bizarrely, if you do shift-opt-left, shift-opt-left then delete, it works as expected. There may be a valid reason for this discrepancy (perhaps people writing a lot of code like it?), but there doesn’t seem to be a way of correcting the behaviour. Emacs, for example, allows you have different word boundaries (which is the problem here) for different modes, but BBEdit doesn’t, AFAICT.

It’s only a minor thing, but it’s a constant niggle every time and it’s enough to put me off. (And yes, I could try to remember to do the highlight first then delete trick, but I never do, because I’ve been using opt-delete for this purpose for twenty years…)

Actually, I’m also put off by the fact you can’t change the left margin (the text always looks so cramped against the edge) or centre text in a window, or split a window to side by side, but they’re minor cosmetic irritations in comparison.

[tonycraine]

The one on the right. But only if I don’t need to use Markdown to make it look like that.

[karlnyhus]

Sing hey! for opinionated app developers. From among all of the choices they present, each of us should be able to find a comfortable home. Or go off and create our own text editor as @snelly threatened to do. (How’s that coming by the way?)

Thinking about building a Markdown editor for macOS and iOS - Software - MPU Talk

[Jeagar52]

To me, Ulysses is the hands-down winner as a “more enjoyable writing experience.” If I wanted to write in an environment resembling the iA Writer sample, I’d just go back to MS-DOS Wordperfect.

I use the Mac because of the superior design, beauty, and artistry of macOS. I find Ulysses a much more artistic and beautiful context to write in and that makes me happy.

[snelly]

@karlnyhus Got into learning Swift, but didn’t have the time to juggle that and everything else happening in life. Eventually had to say no to that so I could say yes to other things. I’d be happy to design one, but building it would consume years of my life, and I don’t think I have that to give at the moment. (Plus, Obsidian got a better UI, iA Writer worked well with it, etc. No clear way to win here.)

[lsieverts]

I do prefer the iAWriter view. I’m so used to seeing the Markdown that it relaxes me — I have the confidence that the right Markdown is there.

[karlnyhus]

@snelly

didn’t have the time to juggle that and everything else

I hear you. There was always too much to do, too much code to write. That’s why I saved my code snippets, subroutines, and libraries as a programmer, or looked for the same from others, so that I could build on them and not start from scratch.

And always tried to remember not to let “perfect be the enemy of good.”

[alvinc]

There is something I would like to add as well:

I don’t like the markdown to grey out, so I will prefer WYSIWYG in this case or appear markdown when you edit that word, like what Bear 2.0 is doing right now.

I do prefer Typora however it doesn’t have mobile version.

I don’t know why app developers who disagree locked databases are reluctant to create one which is WYSIWYG in plain text files. You can have two modes for users and I don’t see it’s not technically feasible.

[RobertBlack]

I may be stating the obvious in this forum, but if you have Keyboard Maestro, a quick check confirms that a simple macro that types Option-Shift-LeftArrow followed by Option-Delete when triggered by a Option-Delete keyboard shortcut, seems to work well in BBEdit. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

For extra spice you could add things like a test for whether the title of the front window ends in ‘.md’ and conditionally run it normally or with the adjustment, to your taste.

Of course, BBEdit being the rich tool that it is, I look forward to someone coming forth with a native (but obscure Terminal) tweak to its settings to fully alleviate your issue with it’s word boundaries ‘more properly’.

[GL-Wilson]

I use iA for taking live notes, like from a sermon on Sundays, on my phone. But for bible study, where I am not racing to get ideas down, I use Ulysses. I keep a journal on those and like the structure for filing, formatting and reading.

[zkarj]

I have used Ulysses for some years now and I was confused because the view on the left looks like Ulysses to me.

Primarily I think what threw me is the serif font. I think that makes more difference than anything else. Also my headings aren’t that large and at least levels 1 and 2 render in the same sized font. I suspect changing your theme could make a lot of difference to the experience.

This is a grab from my current Ulysses setup, which I have probably arrived at over lots of small tweaks.

[MartinPacker]

Left - but then I’m in the “Text Editor” school of writing Markdown. I like to see what I actually wrote, and only occasionally render.

[JensV]

The thing what I prefer in Ulysses is the choice to dial in your writing environment to your liking. I’m pretty sure you could make Ulysses look either way of the screenshots in the first post, with serif font or monospaced, markdown visible or hardly at all based on color. I can color my styles and render certain markdown things … IF I want.
Based on my knowledge iA Writer does not give you that level of choice.

[Glimfeather]

Like others here my vote goes to … Scrivener.

[Jeagar52]

What font are you using in Ulysses?

[chrisecurtis]

@Bmosbacker

I’m using the D22 theme with New York font.

The OP said this many posts ago!

[Jeagar52]

I missed it, thanks!