Klevernotes V1.1: Just a touch of WYSIWYG!
https://lemmy.kde.social/post/2107543
lemmy.kde.socialKlevernotes V1.1: Just a touch of WYSIWYG! - KDE SocialI ended my last post by saying that the next version is coming soon, well here
we are 3 months later (better late than never) and I am happy to announce that
KleverNotes v1.1 is finally out. ## What’s new? ### New parser The previous
parser was a C++ reimplementation of marked.js that I made to easily integrate
my plugins and extensions. While it was great for that aspect, I will be the
first to admit that it was far from perfect and required a lot of maintenance.
For this reason, I decided to switch to a proper Markdown parser, in the form of
md4qt [https://invent.kde.org/imironchik/md4qt]: > md4qt is a header-only C++
library for Markdown parsing. > > md4qt supports CommonMark 0.31.2 Spec and some
GitHub extensions, such as tables, footnotes, to-do lists, strikethrough, LaTeX
math injections, GitHub autolinks. It’s fast, reliable, customizable and easy to
use. A perfect combination! ### Better toolbar and editor With this new parser,
it is possible to know exactly where the Markdown tags are in the text. Thanks
to this, and the new access to the underlying text document, the toolbar is more
precise in removing specific tags but also in applying them. In addition, the
toolbar now tells you which tags are already applied on the text under the
cursor or the selected text. bold, italic and strikethrough are checked
[https://lemmy.kde.social/pictrs/image/13019ee2-4aa1-4a7e-a259-8f02ad57fe05.png]
The editor has also gained some small bonuses. Tabbing/untabbing blocks and
auto-adding list items are now more reliable, but you now also have the ability
to add an HTML line break (<br>) before a new line with Shift + Enter or a
horizontal rule using Alt + Enter. ### Optimization 🚀 - Parsing is now done on
a separate thread, so parsing very large notes should still be smooth! -
Rendering is now disabled if preview is disabled, saving resources! - Using the
toolbar will now add or delete text in a single undo block, no more
double/triple Ctrl+Z to go back to your previous state. 😆 ### WYSIWYG-like
editor Now the big news, you read it correctly! Again, thanks in large part to
the new parser, the editor now has the ability to be “WYSIWYG”, bold text will
be bold, highlighted text will be highlighted, etc… By default, Markdown tags
will be 50% smaller than the rest of the text, this can of course be changed in
the settings, a value of 1% makes them practically invisible. These tags will
revert to their normal size depending on the position of the cursor/selected
text, this way you can see which tag is responsible for a style. Give credit
where credit is due, this way of doing things was inspired by Marktext
[https://github.com/marktext/marktext], it brings the best of both worlds.
However, this does not mean that the preview will be removed anytime soon, it is
still in my opinion the best way to view Markdown, and if you don’t like it, as
you already know, you can disable it. 😉 WYSIWYG editor
[https://lemmy.kde.social/pictrs/image/36f4b952-1cb5-4286-bb11-5eca67545987.png]
## Special Thanks I would like to thank Igor Mironchik, the creator of md4qt. I
contacted him to ask if he could help me integrate his parser into KleverNotes,
and he not only helped me do it, but also listened to my requests throughout the
process and added features to make my life easier. Credit where credit is due,
the main part of the syntax highlighter belongs to him as well, although he gave
me full copyright on it, all I did was customize it to fit my vision, it would
have been much harder for me without his help! Finally, thanks to his years of
experience, he taught me a lot about C++ and software development in general,
and continues to do so today. I really grew up working with him and I can’t
thank him enough for that. I clearly made a good choice in asking her for this
collaboration and I sincerely hope that it will continue. 🙂 ## md4qt and
markdown-tools As I said: > md4qt is fast, reliable, customizable and easy to
use. And it is now part of the KDE Incubator program! So if anyone wants to try
it or needs a good Markdown parser to work with Qt, feel free! Igor also uses it
for some pretty cool personal projects, check out Markdown-tools
[https://github.com/igormironchik/markdown-tools] it’s worth a try! 😄 ## Final
note I’m back at school and my schedule is busier than last year, this will
obviously impact development. However, this doesn’t mean I’m abandoning the
project, things will just move a bit slower. The next release should overhaul
the way the sidebar works, and I’ll start working on it soon. 😉 I’m currently
publishing this version on flathub, you should (hopefully) be able to get it
soon! ------ As always, feel free to tell me what you think of the app, I’m
always happy to hear criticism, good or bad, as long as it’s productive. Link to
the repo: https://invent.kde.org/office/klevernotes
[https://invent.kde.org/office/klevernotes] Mirrorlist:
https://download.kde.org/stable/klevernotes/1.1.0/klevernotes-1.1.0.tar.xz.mirrorlist
[https://download.kde.org/stable/klevernotes/1.1.0/klevernotes-1.1.0.tar.xz.mirrorlist]
