Reder Tseng

My Markdown solutions on Mac

A continuous updating version, please see: http://reder.jottit.com/my_markdown_solutions_on_mac

One day I decided to keep all my notes in the text format with Markdown. The reason is another story, but the main reason is I want to keep my data in a convertible and transferable way.

Here are some things I use daily for this content management system.

ClipMenu

ClipMenu is a clipboard manager for Mac. I use it everyday for multiple clipboard. It is also very useful because of the action. It has a build-in action that translate Markdown to HTML, so I can copy a Markdown text and paste it into HTML code just like other things in the clipboard.

Also, you can create custom actions with JavaScript. I write a simple custom action to help myself for pasting images in Markdown way.

To create custom actions, first you need to create a folder at:

/Users/USERNAME/Library/Application Support/ClipMenu/script/action

The custom actions should have .js extension, since it is merely a JavaScript.

My mdImg.js is just one line:

return '![](' + clipText + ')';

HumaneText.service

(2010-10-25 update: Thanks vranx for sharing this service! )

HumaneText.service is a Mac OS X service which add two new services: XTHML to text and text to XHTML. You can assign hot key to each service as normal services. A nice alternative if you don’t use ClipMenu and it also add XTHML to text function, which ClipMenu way does not offer. You can download it from here.

VoodooPad

VoodooPad is like a personal wiki for Mac. You can write down notes and thoughts and lots of data. I like the slogan “you put your brain in it”.

VoodooPad does not support Markdown directly, but there is an option to convert your text from Markdown to HTML when exporting. Thus, it’s quiet convenient that you can just write Markdown in VoodooPad and convert it into static web pages for publishing.

2010-10-5 Updated : I found there is a HTML Tools plugin for VoodooPad (you can find it on the 3rd Party Plugins page) which let you convert Markdown to HTML and also offer a preview of current page. This makes VoodooPad a really good place to write in Markdown. Highly recommended!

Also worth to mention: if you are going to write plain text in VoodooPad, remember to check the option “Create plain text pages” in “Document Info”. This will disable the rich text feature in Mac editing areas and make a true “plain text wiki”.

Notational Velocity (with Markdown preview)

Notational Velocity is the main part of this system. Actually, the decision starts when I finally got the concept of Notational Velocity. The author of NV recommends you to create one detail per note, and make quick search whenever you need it. And thanks Steven Frank build up a fork of the original NV with Markdown preview. So I can write my notes with Markdown and also preview the format simultaneously.

S9

S9 is a Ruby gem that generates S5 slideshow with Markdown (also Textile). Therefore, I can write my slideshow in NV and quickly generate the slideshow when I need it.

Others

There are other software that I don’t use daily but may suit you needs.

• Droplr is a simple Mac menubar app for you to share things quickly. You can write notes with Markdown format.
• Fraise is a powerful text editor for Mac that support Markdown live preview.
• Scrivener not only supports Markdown but MultiMarkdown. I would buy one if one day I need to write something large and structured.
• html2text is not a Mac app but a web site. It can convert HTML to Markdown. Also you can download the Python file for offline usage. Make.text has similar approach, but it is written in JavaScript. Using Aardvark before these bookmarklets to get rid of useless contents.
• For publishing, Tumblr and Posterous are both very simple and easy to use platform. Currently my choice is Tumblr just because it support Markdown earlier and has lots of elegant themes.
• Jottit is a wiki with Markdown support. I like the wysiwym editor. If you want a more powerful wiki, a self-hosting DokuWiki is my first choice. It does not support Markdown originally, but can be enhanced easily by the plugin.
• peg.gd is a simple one page sharing service supports Markdown. I like the “Last updated” in the end of the page and the possibility to change the page later if you want. So it will be more useful than the Droplr page support and make it more like a wiki page.