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I'm thinking of going primitive, with discursion into zettelkasten

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Dormouse:
Ought to be clear that my main issue isn't with markdown as a file format  - though the lack of a truly accepted standard is an issue on its own  - but about the user interface usually presented. I do want WYSIWYG and often I'd prefer to accept a formatting choice rather than typing it. Depends on what I'm doing. I always need to focus on content and words.

From that point of view,  I hope the apps develop and improve rather than being part of a movement to change the way many users prefer to work.

Dormouse:
I've been thinking about text editors for programmers and comparing them with the equivalent for writers . And practicing typing by using a pen for writing on my tablet .

As a class, text editors seem stable, feature rich and highly functional; and there's a lot of them for all devices. Nothing similar for writers.

Having been thinking about Android and markdown, I'm moving on tothinking about the editing stage. I can't see anything on Android that would do. And, having thought about it, none of the Windows options I've ever used do what I'd ideally like either. I could design my own app but no feasible way of doing it myself and no obvious market : I read a piece today saying that all text editors were for programmers because editors for writers was such a tiny niche. Low level editing isn't a problem - plenty of options for that. It's the more individual, structured stuff I'm interested in. So I naturally wondered about trying an actual text editor. Search, find, long documents not a problem. Ditto splits, folds, compare, versions, simple stats. I assume that I can scrub the coloured language syntax, and I've seen at least one saying that it would be easy to set up my own scheme for text files.

Just wondering at this stage. I'm not up for long testing because I need to limit the time I spend on a PC. Thought I might look at Editpad Pro and Ultra Edit. Nothing I've seen is an obvious fit, but neither is anything else. I'd like a sophisticated bookmark system, comments and notes essential.

I'm assuming they'd be useless for markdown files because they'd insist on showing the markdown when I'd only want the text.

Dormouse:
Personally,  I just write text. Bits of formatting added later. If needed... I don't care about document formats at this point and txt is fine.-Dormouse (May 26, 2020, 05:05 PM)
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Actually, I momentarily forgot the complete truth. I sometimes use italics and prefer to write them as I first type.

And, for some types of writing seeing and using markdown isn't a handicap.  Small part of what I'm doing at the moment though.

Shades:
AsciiDocFX has by default a preview screen enabled. AsciiDoc is similar to MarkDown regarding syntax. But the preview is handy. Unfortunately you cannot edit inside the preview window. But having a preview does help you within the text editor section. Clicking in the preview screen does scroll the text editor to the text you clicked in the preview.


Next to that, you could create your own coloring schema for specific combinations of characters in Notepad++. It is likely that other editors provide similar functionality, but I have experience with NotePad++ and this functionality is adequate in it. You must first think up what combination of characters would indicate a bookmark, or whatever else you need/fancy. Add the minimap to Notepad++ and you'll be able to scroll to colored parts with pen, mouse or keys. On a Windows PC or laptop (with touch screen) that is. Not sure what your options are on Android.

Dormouse:
AsciiDoc
-Shades (May 26, 2020, 08:22 PM)
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Mentioning this has done me a great service. Used it as a search term on Google Play. No Asciidoc but new choices in Markdown editors. Commonmark. Seems to be far more configurable than the others.

I'm not sure I'd use it for writing,  though it might be OK if I use text files and turn line numbers off, but I'm hoping it will work well for formatting text files.

Has preview + edit and edit panel options. Someone suggested adding preview alone. I'm tempted to suggest making preview editable,  which would solve most of my issues. It's the only app I've seen which looks set up to do that because it has six symbol banks for commands,  four of which are purely down to individual choice.  And up to 30 symbols on each.

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