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MultiMarkdown Composer Is My Markdown Based Text Editor

Secondly, Composer is designed for more than the individual document creation that most of the minimalistic Markdown based writing applications specialize in. This is an application which lends itself to the production of long form documents with images, tables, footnotes and citations if you so wish. It includes math support, automatic cross-referencing, glossary entries(LaTeX), and document metadata when you need it.

Conceptually, Composer is a Markdown based text-editor for writers who want to go beyond the constraints of the Markdown designed by Gruber.

If you look at the market of text editors, the two main categories were:

Readers of the blog know that my workflow consisted of writing and editing in iA Writer and managing files in Sublime Text 3. There have been two changes to the workflow. I have given up on managing my text files through a text editor. Don’t need that. The Finder does a good job of that. So, iA Writer became the mainstay of my writing. It is a great Markdown based text editor. But Composer is better at certain things and has now joined the workflow. I now write in Composer and the final edit is done in iA Writer.

Composer provides the following advantages over iA Writer:

What are the advantages of iA Writer over Composer?

So, I switched the writing function to Composer. I have been writing in it for about a month now and I must say that I am falling in love with the application. It feels like an application designed by a writer of Markdown. And it is. Fletcher Penny the developer is also the man behind MultiMarkdown. He designed the markup language with inspiration from Gruber and he wrote the application MultiMarkdown Composer to write in it. There are little touches across the program which make it easy to write in Markdown and it is a pleasure to live in.

What does MultiMarkdown Composer version 4 bring to the genre of Markdown based text editors that make it special?

When you type the first part of the syntax for Markdown, the application automatically completes the pair. You can also select text and type the first character of the Markdown syntax and the application surrounds the highlighted text with your Markdown code.

This is difficult to explain, so, I am going to quote from the MultiMarkdown Composer website:

Menu commands with assigned keyboard commands lets you move highlighted lines of text up/down/left/right.

I don’t think any of the other Markdown editors do this.

You can take any text and easily add or remove Markdown markup. You can convert any instance of Markdown formatted text to Blockquote, or a Ordered List or an Unordered List, and so on. A convenient and useful feature.

Composer has a slew of commands you can use to clean up text, as well as commands to clean up the formatting of Markdown and MultiMarkdown structures. This is another feature which I haven’t seen in any other Markdown editor.

Composer helps you write by providing some formatting help. If you are writing an ordered list, Composer takes care of the numbers. If it is an unordered list, the bullets are taken care of by Composer. Have a link on the clipboard? Highlight the word you want to attach to the link and press ⌘V. Turns into a formatted Markdown link.

Composer goes against the accepted ethos of minimalistic text editors in its handling of preferences. Most of the competition strive, sometimes going to extraordinary lengths, to keep its preferences to a minimum.

The logic being that if you give writers things to tweak, they will tweak things and not write. Composer shows a lot more respect to writers and gives you a full set of preferences to tweak and set up your text editor the way you want. It is a window into two facets:

Composer gives you the ability to specify where exactly you want the typewriter scrolling to be situated on the page. Most applications stick it in the middle. Ulysses gives you a variable spot and Composer lets you choose the exact spot you are comfortable in. Makes it a pleasure to write in.

The editing preference pane shows some nice features. Smart pairs lets you type the opening character of a pair and the application completes the pair. This is something I have in Sublime Text 3 but don’t have in the minimalistic Markdown editors like iA Writer or Byword. Composer also lets me apply “Title Case” capitalization to headings automatically, giving me one less thing to worry about.

Composer lets you choose to stick to the Original Markdown specifications when you are writing or adopt the full suite of MultiMarkdown.

You get to, in Composer, choose the nature of the syntax you want to use for bold, italic, list markers and specify the behavior of tabs. Lets you stick to the syntax you are used to and not dictate a syntax to you.

Having it included in Composer makes it accessible and usable. It is a great system for tracking changes and incorporating editor comments.

Another feature which I am fond of is Synchronized Scrolling. Specially useful in long documents, it helps to be able to see the finished document exactly where I am editing.

You have the option of adding headers and footers when you are printing your document. Makes the final printout look professional and neat.

Composer auto-saves your documents. So, that is one less thing for you to be worried about.

Along with auto-save, Composer supports the built-in macOS feature of Versions. That gives you the ability to go back to any state of the document you prefer. This is a feature it shares with iA Writer.

Composer goes beyond the system undo feature giving you something it calls History Mode Undo. History Mode Undo allows you to move backwards and forwards even if you typed something new in the meantime. In other words, it keeps all changes to the document until the document itself is closed. This is a great feature when you are editing your document.

Basically, the free version is somewhat hobbled. The Standard version removes these constraints and the Pro version includes automatic text expansion, custom keyboard shortcuts and custom macros, the ability to share configuration files, History Mode Undo and the ability to limit depth in the TOC.

Composer is a mature product which makes writing in MultiMarkdown a breeze. However, it still has some areas it can improve:

This is the best Markdown based text editor in the market. If you are looking for a full-featured tool to address your text editing needs and you live in Markdown, you need to consider this product.

If you are not particularly geeky and are happy to avoid excessive customization, the Standard edition should suffice. But if the idea of total customizability along with History Mode Undo strikes you as features which you want to explore the Pro edition is recommended.

The developer provided the author with a free Pro edition for efficient bug-hunting during the beta phase of this product.

Composer is recommended without reservations. It is the editor I live in.

macosxguru at the gmail thingie

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