Canvas: [Suggestion] Integrate better mardown editor

[karlmonson]

I would love to see a better markdown editor integrated into this platform. Right now it's painfully difficult to write in markdown with the current text editor. Perhaps something like http://ghosditor.herokuapp.com/.

[austintoddj]

Good suggestion @karlmonson. Having a dual-pane editor and preview mode would sure be an enhancement. Currently yes, you can either paste your markdown into the </> code view in the WYSIWYG or you can just write it verbatim.

[fergthh]

:+1 to enhancement editor. But the _ghosditor project_ is inactive since a year. I would suggest perhaps see a more active project such as Showdownjs.

[Swader]

Showdown is really good and easy to extend, we use it internally at SitePoint. It also plays well with PHP's commonmark if needed.

[foxted]

I just installed Canvas to use for my personal website, trying to write my first post, I noticed the editor feels really bloated.

I would suggest an editor in a Medium fashion, to be able to focus on writing. No need for font customization, alignment, etc... Just simple editor.

I will try to search see if I can find a decent Medium-like editor.

[austintoddj]

Great thoughts guys. Looking forward to seeing what we can do to improve the project as a whole. I agree, a minimal, strictly markdown editor would be far more appropriate for Canvas.

[foxted]

@austintoddj Are you open to pull-request on this? Seems like this library might be good for the job https://simplemde.com/.

[austintoddj]

@foxted Yes, that looks like an excellent solution. If you wanted to make a PR that replaced Summernote with SimpleMDE, I'd certainly pull it in.

[austintoddj]

UPDATE: Just created a develop branch in which I replaced Summernote with SimpleMDE. Looks nice so far, just a few more tweaks from here before we can merge. If any of you JavaScript ninjas want to take a stab at it, please feel free.

Outstanding issues:

• The Full Screen feature works, but it sits right behind the navbar on top, causing some text to be hidden.
• The Split Pane editor is doing the same thing, sitting behind the navbar.
• The ? help button brings us to a new page with help topics. Can we just make the help topics pop up in a modal like the Summernote editor had?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

@foxted @karlmonson @fergthh @talv86 @RDelorier @tirjok

[austintoddj]

@karlmonson @Swader Hope you guys like the new Markdown editor, should be much more pleasant now writing with Canvas! :)

[karlmonson]

@austintoddj Thank you! Giving it a try now.