+1 for using “my favorite external editor” with EagleFiler. In my case, it is Byword.
I have Byword and Finder windows open side by side in the upper left left corner of my screen and a double-wide EagleFiler window open just below them. The three windows together make one big excellent app.
It is hard for me to imagine that EagleFiler could implement a Markdown editor that would make everyone happy. That is why I like to choose my own editor.
Hello,
I would really like this feature, I love Markdown.
For me, this could work like this
But the last message in this thread is old, perhaps the idea has been abandoned?
Not abandoned, just not implemented yet. Thanks for sharing how you’d like this to work.
I really don’t see the need! Already I double click an item in my EagleFiler list and it opens in my Byword editor app, which offers beautiful Markdown support. MacOS is famous for having an abundance of Markdown editors. Use whichever one you like. I can also right-click and open an EagleFiler item in the very fine Marked app and have a side-by-side MarkDown preview. Isn’t the idea of plain text and MarkDown to keep things simple, flexible, and modular?
I would like to be able to click markdown links within EagleFiler.
This should already work—if you right-click on the URL and choose Open Link.
Yes, I was aware of that. I’m just hoping for full markdown preview, much smoother workflow.
OK, thanks for explaining.
What happens when you open one of your Markdown documents stored in EagleFiler (for example, by double-clicking it)? Doesn’t it open in the Markdown editor of your choice? Don’t you have full access at that point to all the features of that Markdown document?
Yes it does. I would always create or edit markdown documents in my editor of choice (Typora).
But most would have links to other documents or web addresses.
Within EagleFiler I would like to see the rendered markdown with live links, you know, one click gets you there. Opening it in an external editor = more work.
I’m involving NValt for notetaking and I have guided my NValt organizer toward an envelope within an EagleFiler library.
For Markdown see, I’m utilizing the superb Marked2 application by Brett Terpstra.
In any case, having markdown delivering straight in the report watcher would be gold!
Ideally styled like Byword/Ulysses and so forth for example language structure featured however not changed/went along totally.
You can also highlight the link text in your plaintext EagleFiler document, right click (CTRL+click) the highlighted text, and choose the Open Link command from the context menu.
If Markdown support can be added to EagleFiler without “junking up” the user interface, I would not be opposed.
However, I thought I wanted Markdown support back when I was still using DEVONthink, but when it finally came, I hated it. It complicated something that didn’t need to be complicated.
I’d like to point out to those asking for Markdown support in EagleFiler that Markdown is a syntax meant to be readable as plaintext!
And that there already exist many fine Markdown editors that can be accessed simply by opening your plaintext document that happens to contain Markdown syntax.
I’m not a writer, I’m a technician. If I work with a computer, I edit documents in 10% of all cases at most, in 90% I look for information, read specifications, documentation and my notes. I take notes in markdown. And yes, a document written in markdown can be understood with a little effort, but if I want to interpret the content reliably, I need a preview of the document and I often need to quickly switch between multiple markdown documents. If I have to double click on each of my notes to open the document in an external editor (forget QuickLook, it has a lot of bugs, it doesn’t work), then my work is not efficient at all.
More than a year ago I wrote in this forum that I think a decent viewer would be enough, and for editing everyone can choose an editor according to their taste. Since even this minimal option is not available and the markdown format is obviously ignored in EagleFiler, I have switched to DevonThink, which supports markdown preview pretty well (after some CSS tweaking). For editing I use my favourite external editor. Pity, because otherwise I quite like EagleFiler.
I do intend to provide (optional) built-in Markdown previewing in EagleFiler, but I’m curious about your experience with QuickLook. Which editor/plug-in were you using? Are you aware that if you enter this Terminal command:
defaults write com.c-command.EagleFiler NonTextExtensions -array md
Update (2022-01-13): See below for a probably better way.
You can get the Markdown QuickLook preview directly in the EagleFiler viewer pane (for .md files)?
Well, DEVONthink cost you a whole lot more than EagleFiler ever did! And when I quit DT to adopt EagleFiler, one of my reasons was disappointment with the clunkiness of the DT Markdown implementation. (Not to mention being tired of dealing with corruption warnings for each database that was open in DEVONthink at the moment some other program managed to crash my Mac.)
This works just great. Thank you.
I have installed this free, supported, open source QuickLook extension. Took about 5 minutes (since I already have Homebrew installed on the Mac):
That gives Quicklook a much more robust Markdown viewer and, in conjunction with the command you supplied, a fully rendered Markdown preview within EF.*
If I’m editing MD I’ll usually want to open an editor anyway so editing funtionality is not an issue and a big ask. Like @karlnyhus , even in DT which had rudimentary editing support I ended up using a more fully featured MD editor anyway.
*It only seems to be working on new MD files. Not sure why. Haven’t taken time to find out.
Files imported before using the defaults write command were imported as text, rather than as generic files to be displayed using QuickLook. To change the type of an existing record you would need to rebuild the library. Alternatively, instead of using the NonTextExtensions setting, you could use:
defaults delete com.c-command.EagleFiler NonTextExtensions
defaults write com.c-command.EagleFiler TextFileTypesForQuickLook -array md ics graffle
This will make the files import as text but display using QuickLook, so it will also work for previously imported files. This is probably a more future-proof choice, too, based on how I’m likely to integrate Markdown support.
That works perfectly.
I love that there are lots of ways to do things and that we all do them differently. For instance, all my text files have a “.txt” file extension, including my so-called “Markdown” files. When I want to see a text file as Markdown, I open it in Byword for editing/preview or in the Marked 2 app for preview/export. When I want to see a text file as plaintext, I open it in BBEdit. (Or simply view it in EagleFiler if it is indexed there. 
)