Mark Text

Post details of freeware that are found to be not portable here. Posts in the submissions forum relating to freeware found to be not portable should also be moved here.
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webfork
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Mark Text

#1 Post by webfork »

A nifty, minimalist, and cross-platform markdown editor. It's handling of Headings is awesome and it handles nested bullets better than similar tools but I struggled to get it to turn on/off nested bullets/numbers.

It's another basic text editor with a big download (79 megs) and high RAM usage (80 megs) due to it's use of Electron, but it does use less memory than similar tools.

Steps:
  1. Download the setup file
  2. Open with 7zip
  3. Navigate to $PLUGINSDIR and open either the app-32.7z or app-64.7z folder (if you're not sure, just go with the "32" choice).
  4. Extract the contents of this folder to a folder of your choice
  5. Launch Mark Text.exe
Status: Not portable. Writes to: C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\marktext

Screenshot:

Image

https://marktext.github.io/website/

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smaragdus
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Re: Mark Text

#2 Post by smaragdus »

Lately you have been pushing more and more Electron trash, why do you do that? For me it is wrong to advertise this terrible "framework".

Electron main principles:
  • Why should it be native when it can be non-native;
  • Why should it be portable when it can be non-portable;
  • Why should it be light when it can be heavy;
  • Why should it be slim when it can be bloated;
  • Why should it be beautiful when it can be ugly;
  • Why should it be powerful and rich when it can be feeble and poor;
  • Why should it be adept when it can be inept;
Electron is an enemy to good programming, it is undermining it, the more people accept such poor, bulky, heavy, ugly, non-native trash, the more unskillful developers would embrace this "framework" and would spew more and more low quality junk.

I am glad that at least you didn't provide a link for this crap.

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Midas
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Re: Mark Text

#3 Post by Midas »

For the reasons you so eloquently enumerated, I dislike Electron every bit as much as you do, my dear smaragdus. For real. But I don't think TPFC should impose a no-Electron policy.

If nothing else, we have to keep up with the ways of the world and the world is saying (well, more like shouting, really) "Electron!"...

You and I are free to shun it, but manifestly others are interested and TPFC has to cater for all.

We have been through this before with the likes of Java and DotNET and, who knows, maybe this hog of a framework may beget a unicorn someday... ;)

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webfork
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Re: Mark Text

#4 Post by webfork »

smaragdus wrote: Wed Aug 22, 2018 9:19 pm Lately you have been pushing more and more Electron trash, why do you do that? For me it is wrong to advertise this terrible "framework".
As a fan of software more broadly, I've been very pleased with some changes in the overall industry both from companies and individuals over these last ~20 years. The move towards open source, the reduced dominance of Windows, and an improved conversation on security. Certainly I've also been very frustrated by some decisions, but it's always been a gray area in terms of ideal circumstance. Portable software on the whole has fixed 4 of my most hated issues, those being:
  1. Reasonably independent from the Internet (usually)
  2. Ease to backup or sync with other machines
  3. Ability to run from inside a secure volume (like VeraCrypt)
  4. Self contained (all the files you need are inside the folder)
By virtue of #4, portable software has always had more bulky installs, which is fine with me. For example, I have at this moment 8 instances of FFMPEG.DLL on my machine, which is a little absurd, but I prefer having extra junk to dealing with the dependency hell that other platforms have to deal with. That's not to say that Electron doesn't take it to a whole new annoying level by throwing what is basically an entire copy of Chrome into every damn program, but I'm just saying it's not entirely new.

As to why I keep posting about Electron-based programs here on the site, ultimately it comes down to tools I need or that I'm interested in, and lately just coincidence I've been pigeonholed into two classes of programs: text manipulation and chat tools. Both of these have been sadly leaning on the Electron framework to do everything, with little sign of change on the horizon.

To be clear, I'm not happy with Electron and I'm not happy with this direction in development. I've brought up this topic with associated developers and continue to advocate for better, non-bulky software design, but right now this is unfortunately where the stuff I need is located. Hopefully that changes in the near future.
Last edited by webfork on Sun Aug 26, 2018 9:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: (better wording)

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webfork
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Re: Mark Text

#5 Post by webfork »

[Moderator note: posts about Justmd were given their own thread.]

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Midas
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Re: Mark Text

#6 Post by Midas »

Topic update: Mark Text v0.16.3 released 2020-12-29 (changelog and downloads at https://github.com/marktext/marktext/releases).

Mark Text seems to be in very active development, with over 100 contributors according to its Github page. There's also a rather pleasant homepage at https://marktext.app/.

Having said that, with Mark Text remaining Electron-based, I don't expect it to become portable anytime soon.

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