#Macos markdown outliner pdf#
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You can also move sections around like an outliner, but FoldingText is still, at heart, an app for writing and working with text. This feature lets you write longer documents, keeping a big-picture view without having to tediously scroll up and down. The $25 app is a combination of a text editor and an outliner: You format your text with Markdown syntax, but you can “fold,” or hide, sections by clicking on header characters.

#Macos markdown outliner software#

Hog Bay Software offers an alternative to WriteRoom called FoldingText, which, while not exactly a focused-writing app, does something interesting.

I like Byword’s paragraph focus, which highlights the paragraph I’m working on while dimming the rest of the document. But if you like iA Writer’s approach and attractive styling, you’ll find it to be a great tool to write without distractions. If you don’t like what’s here, you should look elsewhere. In fact, that’s one of iA Writer’s hallmarks, love it or hate it: Little in the app is customizable. You also get a decent Markdown-preview window, though it’s not customizable. The app offers a formatting bar at the bottom of the window that lets you quickly apply Markdown formatting, even if you don’t remember which syntax characters to use. IA Writer’s Markdown support is very good. (I’d prefer it if Focus Mode highlighted the current paragraph rather than sentence, since many writers think in terms of paragraphs, but the app’s sentence-level focus seems to be popular.) iA Writer is a minimal, yet powerful writing app.

The app also includes a Focus Mode that restricts the view even further, letting you concentrate on a single sentence at a time.

#Macos markdown outliner windows#

While it doesn’t let you choose your own typeface, the company’s Nitti is a beautiful mono-space font, and working in iA Writer lets you ignore everything around its document view-I often use iA Writer’s full-screen mode to block out the other windows on my Mac. Information Architects’s $5 iA Writer wins hands down for simplicity and for its attractive (and only) font. (Note for this feature to be useful, the apps must use a common sync platform such as iCloud or Dropbox.)

An iOS companion app is a nice bonus-if you tend to write on both platforms, an OS X app with an iOS cousin lets you easily switch between platforms.

Data such as word count and character count are essential to many writers some people may also want more-advanced statistics such as reading level and estimated reading time.

#Macos markdown outliner pdf#

(Since OS X lets you create a PDF from any file, as long as a writing app has a mode or view that shows your text with proper formatting, the app doesn’t need a specific PDF-export feature of its own.)

Multiple export formats, such as HTML and RTF, for publishing or sharing your styled text.

Support for the Markdown writing language, a simple syntax for formatting plain-text documents that can be easily converted to HTML for use on blogs or web pages.

A full-screen mode, so you can shut out everything else on your Mac’s screen.

A distraction-free environment-or at least a special view or mode-that allows you to focus on your writing without worrying about toolbars, palettes and other formatting tools.

Today’s best focused-writing apps are made with writers in mind and offer some or all of the following features:

#Macos markdown outliner code#

(We’ll look at word processors and code editors in future articles.) I looked at the top focused-writing apps for OS X to find the best one.

Unlike a word processor, which has lots of complex features for formatting and styling text, or a text editor, which is better for complex text modifications or working with specific code languages, a focused-writing app takes a minimalist approach, providing just the necessary text tools for writing and then getting out of your way so you can focus on your words. These apps, increasingly popular of late, allow you to write in a focused environment, export your writings to various formats, possibly apply basic styling, and let you print your work. I tend to use what have come to be known as focused-writing apps. Depending on the type of writing you do, you may want something as simple as a basic text editor or as complex as a full-featured word processor if you write code, you want an editor designed for that type of content. Your documents may be short (tweets and iMessages) or long (reports, stories, or even novels), but you need an app to handle that text.