7 votes

Online markdown editors that are capable of handling loads of text

I have discovered hackmd.io a few months ago and started digitalizing my massive mess of handwritten nodes together with all the terrible notepad/word mixed notes into one big personal "wiki" of knowledge. But I ran into a problem. HackMd can only handle ~50k characters before starting to lag and 100k characters is the limit per note, this doesn't even fit my one summary/tips note on one programming language. Do you know any alternatives? I really like markdown, since all of the notes look clean and organized, I can insert pictures and link to websites easily, but also love to work with them online, since I have to switch between 3 computers between university, home and my laptop.

5 comments

  1. [2]
    cfabbro
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    Why not just use a standard (not browser based) markdown editor, note taking app or even an IDE, and then just use a cloud storage solution to keep them in sync between your devices? Because I...

    Why not just use a standard (not browser based) markdown editor, note taking app or even an IDE, and then just use a cloud storage solution to keep them in sync between your devices? Because I genuinely suspect there is no online markdown editor that won't lag on massive files... but at least dedicated software tends to fare a bit better than browser based in that regard.

    6 votes
    1. [2]
      Comment deleted by author
      Link Parent
      1. cfabbro
        (edited )
        Link Parent
        Ah, well in that case the world is your oyster since there is a boatload of good markdown editors, as well as text editors, purpose built note taking apps and even full IDEs with solid markdown...

        Ah, well in that case the world is your oyster since there is a boatload of good markdown editors, as well as text editors, purpose built note taking apps and even full IDEs with solid markdown support. That subject may be worthy of a new topic though, since I am sure opinions will vary as to which is the best and why.

        I personally use Notepad++ for most of my note-taking, since it's extremely lightweight and handles massive files like nobody's business. Its regex find/replace is incredibly fast, even on said massive files too. However it doesn't have native markdown syntax highlighting, so you need to add that yourself. Thankfully that's made pretty easy though: https://github.com/Edditoria/markdown-plus-plus

        I also use VS Code for writing the occasional markdown note as well, since it has amazing native markdown support (including a super handy live preview), as well as code completion features and git support. It does struggle a bit loading incredibly large files, but once they're actually loaded it performs perfectly fine though.

        1 vote
  2. mrbig
    (edited )
    Link
    If you're not into things like Vim and Emacs (my personal choice), Sublime Text is a good option that will handle large files well (unlike VS Code's Electron base, Sublime's core is pure C++)....

    If you're not into things like Vim and Emacs (my personal choice), Sublime Text is a good option that will handle large files well (unlike VS Code's Electron base, Sublime's core is pure C++).

    People say it's not free, but, in practice, it is "pay if you want". It'll nag every few hours in a very non-intrusive way. Just Google "Sublime Text 3 markdown setup" and you're good to go.

    Sublime also has a bunch of plugins that can come in handy and is multiplatform.

    4 votes
  3. mrbig
    (edited )
    Link
    Emacs with Markdown Mode is excellent. If you don't wanna learn Emacs from scratch, there's Spacemacs (I recommend choosing traditional Emacs keybindings if you're not comfortable with Vim)....

    Emacs with Markdown Mode is excellent.

    If you don't wanna learn Emacs from scratch, there's Spacemacs (I recommend choosing traditional Emacs keybindings if you're not comfortable with Vim). Having Markdown and Pandoc on your system is a must.

    It's reasonably straightforward, but you'll need to get used to the keybindings, at least. There's a built-in tutorial for that. And also a reference card.

    3 votes
  4. mystickphoenix
    Link
    I bounce between markdown editors/note solutions on the regular. A couple options you may not have run into: https://gingkoapp.com/ web app, tree-style markdown notes. I'm nowhere near your scale...

    I bounce between markdown editors/note solutions on the regular. A couple options you may not have run into:

    • https://gingkoapp.com/ web app, tree-style markdown notes. I'm nowhere near your scale in terms of word count but so far it's worked well for everything from D&D campaign notes to ETL pipeline notes for work.
    • https://workflowy.com/ web/desktop/iOS/Android app, tree-style notes, markdown support isn't great. This is much more of a checklist style app but you're able to put long form notes on each checklist item.

    Agreeing with some of the other commenters, I'm currently using Dropbox for sync in combination with offline editors, both VSCode and nvAlt (notational velocity) on desktop, and iA Writer on Android.

    Unfortunately I haven't found my "Goldilocks" markdown note taker yet but nvUltra has caught my attention even though it's not been released yet to my knowledge.

    Looking forward to seeing what others are using!

    1 vote