A tale of Mardown and browser based code editors.

I like Markdown. I want to use Markdown as much as possible. I also enjoy embedding LaTeX and graphs. I like using a chromebook.
First, I used visual studio and Mads’ Markdown editor extension for it. I usually had a copy or three of visual studio open so that didn’t matter much. But I started extending Markdown with my own javascript functions. I also started trying to embedd LaTeX.
An example of LaTeX:

\Gamma(z) = \int_0^\infty t^{z-1}e^{-t}dt\,.

Which renders as:

$$\Gamma(z) = \int_0^\infty t^{z-1}e^{-t}dt\,.$$

Then I found Markdown-plus which, is pretty awesome. I bought a copy. It works great in windows. I started writing LaTeX and graphs fluently. So I had to figure out a way to make it work on my chromebook. I started running Linux on it. Linux on a chromebook deserves a post or more in its own right. It is a very cool thing.
I got many things set up on the Linux-chromebook, and I learned many cool things. I pulled the markdown-plus code from GitHub and served it up to localhost. I learned how to start a web server from the command line. I learned how to use yarn, and npm. I started learning modern javascript functions and extensions, like ‘require’ and ‘let’, among others. I then forked the code and began dissecting it to see if I could add the “Save” functionality that would make it a viable tool on my chromebook. I ran into CodeMirror. I was awed by CodeMirror. I added “Save” capability, that seemed to be missing from markdown-plus. Perhaps the author didn’t want it competing with his 15$ windows app? Perhaps I was just missing something. Anyway, I created a pull request and called that piece done-ish. I now had a good flavor of Markdown running on my awesome chromebook. I was feeling pretty good about that.
However, then I ran into StackEdit. It is also open source on GitHub. It is also dissectable. From it I’ve been learning about even more javascript stacks. For its editor it uses prismjs. I also see Gulp, Bower, and some others that I’m not yet familiar with.
Anyway, so much awesome here, so little time. I’ll probably be abandoning markdown-plus in favor of StackEdit. Ahhh, there’s an easter egg here when you type ‘StackEdit’.

Written with StackEdit.