Also with Micropublish.net, Articles (long form posts) do not work. That’s a real bummer. Leaves Linux and possibly Windows without an HTML WYSIWYG editor UI.
@simonwoods Quill probably does, but no WYSIWYG HTML editor UI like on Wordpress. That would be nice for longer essays. There does not appear to be a software client like MarsEdit for Win or Linux that will work with MB either. At least I have not found one.
@simonwoods For me Markdown work just fine for short micro posts. For long posts I kinda prefer HTML with an editor. I do have BlueGriffon and I can copy paste from that. It's just a bit more friction.
@bradenslen I totally forgot Quill is pure Markdown. Also had no luck in finding MarsEdit for Windows, and even if it is out there the fact it is not as easy to find as Apple software bothers me at a fundamental level.
It's fair to say I'm passed the point of trying to find writing and publishing software from smaller third parties; yes, there are issues with the Mac and Apple in general but the promise of high quality third party options in such depth is too much for me to ignore. Maybe by the time I can afford to switch there will have been a breakthrough of some sort on Windows but I'm not going to hold my breath for that event.
@simonwoods @bradenslen have you tried Open Live Writer. I remember briefly trying Windows Live Writer, probably a decade ago, and it had Mars Edit type functionality.
@johnjohnston @bradenslen I was using it, yep. Unfortunately it was quite buggy and the lack of updates makes me uncomfortable; it seems like something that needs to be messed around with to maintain. I need something that is either rock solid regardless of updates or actively supported.
@johnjohnston @simonwoods This is on my list to try. I switch back and forth, weekly between my Win. laptop and my Linux laptop and this week is Linux week.
Since moving my main blog here to Micro.blog, my thought was to write all long posts and pages in HTML so that if I ever have to move again it would be more compatible with any future blog/CMS i might use without having to rely on a Markdown plugin. That is the main reason I was looking for editors.
I'm going to check Open Live Writer. My other thought was trying Abiword a light weight open source word processor which will output to HTML to write my longer posts. That has the advantage of having both Linux and Win. versions and it's actually meant for writing. Will try that.
@simonwoods @johnjohnston That sounds bad. It seems like a lot of Windows software seems to fall short, even the paid stuff.
@simonwoods I'm going to try Abiword a word processor that can save as HTML. I'm thinking that might work for MB?
@bradenslen Writing everything in HTML sounds like a pretty intensive approach to blogging. Why not just write in Markdown? You can use an editor like Visual Studio Code or Atom with decent Markdown extensions.
Micro.blog seems to handle Markdown pretty well.
Writing in HTML sometimes seems like the lowest common denominator but Life is easy to short to get caught in the weeds with HTML.
@pauljacobson It's not really intensive, after all that is pretty much what I was doing with Wordpress. After all, I'm not designing a page, just formating the text bits.
The thing is, I started this blog on Micro.blog in Markdown then transferred it to Wordpress which does not read Markdown. Yes there is a WP markdown plugin. But I'm just thinking that not every blog/CMS platform is going to have a plugin. But I think most any CMS will handle HTML. I guess that's my reasoning.
Now, that said, if you don't have a basic WYSIWYG editor like Wordpress uses, then Markdown is the way to go. It's simple enough even I can remember it. I just have a lot of years of write it then highlight it then click to format writing flow that switching to Markdown kinda messes with me. Not huge but it's there. I'll look at those editors Thanks.
The thing is, I started this blog on Micro.blog in Markdown then transferred it to Wordpress which does not read Markdown. Yes there is a WP markdown plugin. But I'm just thinking that not every blog/CMS platform is going to have a plugin. But I think most any CMS will handle HTML. I guess that's my reasoning.
Sure, fair enough. Bear in mind that if you install the Jetpack plugin on a WordPress site, you can enable Markdown support without other plugins. Here is more information about this: Markdown