Experimental Mode

[kmwallio]

😰 In the next release of ThiefMD, we're adding an Experimental Mode.

This will have feature's we don't want enabled by default that potentially come with some risk.

Experimental Mode will have the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + M.

The first thing we're hiding behind this is the ability to hide markdown link syntax.

Through our extensive research and crawling of social media, opinions seem pretty mixed on "hiding certain syntax makes Markdown documents more readable" vs "I typed it, so I want to see it". I used to fall into the latter camp, but the more documentation I write with links, the more I like the thought of hiding them.

The editor uses 2 buffers behind the scenes. One for what's visible on screen, and the other with the raw markdown. I'm pretty sure we updated all the buffer references to the correct ones, but there's always a chance one critical location wasn't updated.

On themes without a color difference between text and links (and in focus mode), we show the square brackets as visual indicators for link text.

I'm currently prepping the next release for shipment, so the mode should be available soon. Please let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions.

[kmwallio]

Just saw an article shared on /r/bear.

If you want Markdown, show the Markdown. Trust me, it’s meant to be shown.

-- John Grubber

Which is in response to Jason Snell's search for the perfect iOS Markdown writing tool. I find it interesting that on /r/Markdown, people love recommending Typora.

It makes me really wish I took a User Experience course. 😅 .

[kmwallio]

What's also interesting is seeing how John Gruber writes/formats his markdown. He uses reference style links, which help separate URL's from the content.