That's the kind of need for text manipulation I would expect of a typical writer. Hence why bother with markdown at all (unless it's the only thing available). Rich text is a much cleaner solution for that. Markdown really shines when it comes to text that has to be formatted just so for web layout. e.g. tables, bullets, multi-headings and linking.
Because it's not a bother. It's pretty much just plain text.
And having it as plain text means adding your own special annotations is easy. E.g. I'm writing my third novel in my own editor using Markdown, and key for me was that it was easy to write small little scripts to e.g. process front-matter with similar "@pov" tags etc. to let me trivially cross-reference
things.
The point I am getting at is that if an editor wants to use markdown in place of rtf, fine. But it should hide the syntax just like rtf editors do (unless you want to see it). No editor that supports markdown to date has been able to achieve the quality of editing that rtf editors already have. So in essence outside of markdowns original use case of web publishing, why bother using it?
Here is the grand total of formatting supported by RTF in use in my novels:
* headers
* italics
* maybe 2-3 instances of *bold* through the entire text.
I don't need any additional "quality of editing". Hiding the syntax is irrelevant because the needs are so limited. Hiding the user interface on the other hand, matters to me, because it's a distraction (to others it isn't). My editor color-codes the headers and the italics, and having it stand out matters far more to me than that it looks the way it will in the formatted book, because my draft looks nothing like the finished book will anyway.
If you look at interviews with writers, you'll find a whole lot of obsession over the process, and things like how it feels to write with a pen vs. a typewriter vs. a word processor, and very, very little about what their drafts look like. It's far down the list of considerations you'll find novelists care about.
Nobody cares what the drafts look like, because they are transient. In fact you'll find a whole lot of authors advocate avoiding going back and editing and arguing for things like dictaphones etc. to make going back harder or using tools that won't let scroll up in some cases to simulate the typewriter experience, and all kinds of similar obsessions with spending as little time as possible on formatting and what the manuscript looks like in preference of being able to just dump the first draft into text the fastest way possible (while other authors want writing the first draft to take longer on purpose - to some that is a reason for using pens or pencils).
You mentioned Gaiman in another reply - someone who has talked at length about how since he wrote Stardust in a fountain pen he has come to enjoy being forced to rewrite his second draft entirely instead of being able to go back and forth and editing it since he switched to writing with pen on paper.
I'm sure you can find novelists that want to see a beautifully formatted manuscript while writing it. They have tools they can use.
But to suggest Markdown is some sort of big hindrance compared to some of the barriers novelists create for themselves on purpose doesn't pass the smell test for me.
>If you look at interviews with writers, you'll find a whole lot of obsession over the process, and things like how it feels to write with a pen vs. a typewriter vs. a word processor, and very, very little about what their drafts look like. It's far down the list of considerations you'll find novelists care about.
This.
I chose emacs because I'm a programmer who uses emacs frequently. And its just damn text and I don't have to get all fiddly with everything. And like I don't want to have to fiddle around with Word, I don't want to fiddle around with some complicated markup langage like rst either. I just want to write.
I wrote my thesis is Word, I know what it can be like.
Writing a novel is definitely a 'to each, his own' practice.
I can format text all day. It's a huge distraction that allows me to also feel 'productive'; which gets in the way of actually writing. Using a markdown editor lets me do the formatting that is necessary for the work (e.g., italics) without being hugely distracted.
> But it should hide the syntax just like rtf editors do (unless you want to see it).
I'm using Obsidian and wouldn't mind seeing this feature. However, it currently offers the option of toggling quickly between edit and preview modes, or opening up a second view for preview, which can optionally be scroll-locked with the editing window. That works great for me.
I use copious amounts of notes in my fiction writing, that sometimes include mathematical/physical formulas, data, and code. Obsidian supports (various amounts of) inline LaTeX, syntax-highlighting, and mermaid. (I'm also not above abusing these things for my own purposes: I've used mermaid graph to create a quick-and-dirty character family tree for my own reference, for instance.) And, of course, I use markdown to tie all these notes together and to the novel.
This allows me to create a family tree and, when I change a character's name, the diagram---along with every other reference to their name---is updated automatically. Here's a video showing how it works:
When I write markdown, I don't even see the syntax. All I see is bold, heading, code block.
I don't need to see some on screen typeset version of the text because this all subject to change anyway when it comes to typesetting the document and that will change depending on the medium (ie. book, web, email etc.)
