If all goes well, you won't notice that anything has changed yet and can carry on. But, we've swapped out our markdown editor and will unveil its new powers in stages.
As of this release, what you see when you click preview now is a WYSIWYG (think Google Docs) with editing disabled. In a very near future release, we will enable editing of what you see in preview, allowing you to format posts and comments, and do everything markdown wizards can do on SN, without any knowledge of markdown. At the same time, the existing markdown experience will not change, because @sox has triumphed and created a bidirectional should-be-lossless mapping from markdown to WYSIWYG and WYSIWYG to markdown.
Some of you will remember the wysiwyg experiment I teased years ago. The reception for that was so poor that other bitcoin founders were sending me condolences via DMs and we shelved it. At the time, I didn't realize that nearly all hybrid markdown-wysiwyg systems suck, and my editor sucked, because they have unreliable mappings from one format to another (typically relying on regex and other kludge). In our research, we found that literally all hybrid markdown-wysiwyg systems, even multi-billion dollar reddit's and ones that do wysiwyg to markdown well, cannot map reliably in both directions. @sox made an editor that does.
What this will mean soon is that you can write something in markdown on SN, switch to the WYSIWYG and see how your post will look, edit it in the WYSIWYG, then switch back and see all the WYSIWYG changes in the markdown, edit the markdown, and so on. While many of us will continue to write markdown, there are things like tables that are more comfortable to create in a WYSIWYG and features like image size and alignment that markdown doesn't have a clear standard for. This editor will also allow us to add lots of nonstandard SN-specific features to posts and comments (at the fancy end you can imagine widgets) without requiring stackers read documentation.[1] And, with markdown still first class, if we ever do anything tasteless with our WYSIWYG, you can simply use markdown instead.
Anyway, as I said, you won't notice that much has changed yet and can carry on. But, I'm super excited about this new editor and solving a problem that's been haunting me for years.
Sox and I will be standing by to fix any bugs you find. Also, No Trust November is slated for release tomorrow (after I do the newsletter to not mess with anyone's expectation of being a top post).
This is also a huge win for SN's developers because a reliable mapping between formats means that storing posts and comments in either format allows us to generate the other. More specifically, we can store all posts and comments in SN flavored markdown yet display them with features you only expect to see in rich text. ↩
@k00b and @sox , take a look at #1357566
This string appears to be getting intrupted strangely:
$88.8 million and Mastercard about $78.7 million
When I am in the write tab it looks fine but when on the preview table it is different
about $88.8 million and Mastercard about $78.7 millionThe editor thought you were writing a formula lol
Anyway, probably you should escape the
$dollar sign, but more importantly maybe we should only support double dollar signs ($$).$test$
test
$test
$test $test
$test$test
... yeah, definitely make it so that only
$$starts a latex environmentalignright$ 🤔🤭
Alignments will come in a later stage! Unless you mean LaTeX alignments, they should work iirc.
Pushed 🫡
Fixed!
I'm personally shaking because what you're reading right now is the product of hand-made Markdown mapping. This is completely new.
Feel free to mention me wherever you find inconsistencies, bugs, whatever!
This is a huge day for writers, and I can't wait to let you try what we're now capable of doing.
Thanks @sox 🫡
The next stages are going to be fun!
Nice work!
I don't understand the footnote. Don't you already store all posts and comments in their raw markdown and display them fully rendered?
Yes, it's a weird point to make. The main thing is that most systems that allow rich text editing do not store the result as markdown (because it's lossy), and instead store html/json.
Also
Ah, yeah, that's what I figured after writing my post: your reversible markdown renderer lets people create in WYSIWYG mode, but still let you store it as markdown.
I think @siggy47 uses it too!
Ah nice! I wish more people to use it
This editor now speaks AST!
translation from italian: abstract syntax tree
Christmas comes 6 days early! I'm very excited about this.
My respect for @sox increases to new heights. Most impressive.
Noticed an odd change on the mobile PWA.
After I make a comment the zoom automatically increases to get back to my normal zoom level I have to zoom out or close the app.
The auto correction seems to be worse.
The first letter isn’t always capitalized automatically
I’ve been noticing all these weird behaviors too.
Working on a fix, even though we’re probably talking about fixing Lexical, the framework we used to create the editor. 🫡
Will you open source it?
SN is FOSS my dude: https://github.com/stackernews/stacker.news
Legends!!
in its early stages, it works, will insanely document it yes, it clipped
why did you use shrunk text?
for folks who wish to learn these black arts, using "quote reply" from the three dots menu reveals that @sox had HTML superscript tags,
<sup>and</sup>, enclosing each line separately.The way you write can reflect the way you speak with your voice!
In some cases I think it's counterproductive; e.g. superscript without any normal text in the same comment is confusing, not to mention hard to read when the normal font is already small.
obviously it is at the edge of "sounds like a you problem", and I don't mean to draw attention away from the good work you're doing on the site.
I agree! The intent was to make it hard to read, signaling that I'm shy about my code. Anyway, I'm also always using an hidpi monitor, which makes sub/superscript easier to read... while making me a bit insensitive about the topic :P
Hey thank you! I appreciate it ^^
Is it possible that links in comments made using the new editor do not go to
target="_blank"or whatever the cool kids use for that nowadays?oops D:
wip https://github.com/stackernews/stacker.news/pull/2681
Great work!
I wanted to crack a joke about your use of the phrase "other bitcoin founders" as though you're accidentally outing yourself as Satoshi, however, highlighting those words and clicking
quote replydidn't copy them into the comment box.new bug?
Fixed it tonight, but misremembered the original behavior. Should be live later today!
does this work on mobile?
why wouldn't it? :P
if you're referring to wysiwyg capabilities, that's gonna come in a later stage.
Yeah I don‘t see a wysiwyg button to push
there isn't one yet
`preview' is an uneditable wysiwyg that we will make editable in a future release
Thanks for clearing that up
We're fragmenting the new editor in various stages, this allowed us to focus on some really important details, like this new bi-directional engine that's creating my words!
I understand now