So I was happy spending a couple of days working on a Markdown pipeline. One that would allow me to process Markdown files, perform automated tasks, then produce 2 results: The swift-markdown package wraps the cmark CommonMark parser and offers a really nice to use API. Also Marin told me on every other occasion that I should try it, it’s good :)
In Emacs Org-Mode, the default key binding to “highlight” or “format” the selection is C-c C-x C-f. This will then ask for the org-mode syntax thingie to use, i.e. */_~=+. Literally, that’s the prompt. So you have to know which character to use to embolden text. That’s *. But which one is code? It’s ~. And = is for verbatim text, while + is for strike-through.
This is a note from 2022 I found by accident today. Teaser: It will become relevant again, soon, so I want to share the rough idea with you today. JSON data containing nested object lists within object lists, namely, arrays of objects within other arrays, cannot be mapped directly to a 2D table representation.
I noticed that on mobile phones, wide tables wouldn’t scroll horizontally – instead, they broke out of the content container and everything looked a bit wonky. My goal: wrap <table> in <figure> and add figure { overflow-x: scroll; } to make the table scrollable inside its container.
I stumbled upon this page: http://ratfactor.com/cards/um Dave Gauer describes how he has a shell script, um, that he can use as a man replacement to help remember how to use a command. Dave’s implementation uses the cards} from his own Wiki, because the um pages there are “consolidated, I won’t forget about them, it’s easy to list, create, and update pages.” (To be honest, though, I can’t figure out where his um cards actually are, and what they look like.)
I installed Treemacs the other day and found out, to my excitement!, that you can not only hit TAB to expand folders, but also to expand files! When you “expand” a Markdown file, you see its headings in the file explorer. That is bonkers, and so useful for larger writing projects to get a unified overview!
During app development, I track the tasks in an org-mode task list. And I track the stuff I finished and want to highlight in the release notes in a Markdown block right there. When I release an update, I’ll copy & paste the Markdown part to the “Release Notes” of the app and push the changes to the server online.
Today I learned about an ingenious tool called csplit on the Zettelkasten Forums. It’s available on macOS and Linux. You can use it to split a single Markdown file into multiple files, one for each chapter or section.
I don’t know when was the last time I received a Microsoft Word .docx file. However long the streak may have been: it has been broken today. The document contained links and embedded images. I was instantly taken aback by the prospect of all the manual labor of extracting the images and saving them to files, not even knowing how MS Word behaves nowadays.
I noticed that my Emacs didn’t maintain the current line’s indentation when editing code blocks in Markdown (markdown-mode). I indent the first line with 4 spaces like any sane person would. When I hit enter to continue in the next line, thanks to the markdown-mode defaults, I am presented with a new line that’s properly indented visually. Only when committing to git did I notice that Emacs inserted tabs instead of spaces. Gasp!
During the time between Christmas and New Year, which we tend to call the time “between the years” where I live in Germany, I wanted to do something fun, but not too fun so I don’t get spoiled. That’s how I turned up experimenting to use libMultiMarkdown from within a Swift app. The amount of fun I have when reading and writing C code is negligible, which made it a perfect fit.
TableFlip doesn’t sort tables by column as of yet. So we all have to resort to other solutions – like shell or Terminal commands. Let’s say your (Multi)Markdown table starts with a header (=2 rows) and has leading pipes like this: You can sort the table by the 3rd column (column “c”) like so: Explanation:
Nat Pryce released Code Guide, a tool to create interactive code documentation. See his blog post announcement. It’s written in Python and works for Python and Java code. But since Python and Ruby comments look the same, parsing Ruby code works, too.
Just a few days ago, Fletcher released the first Beta of his new and improved MultiMarkdown tool. Markup-wise, not much has changed, at least not for me. I’m going to include this newer and faster iteration of his MMD-converter in my next Notational Velocity “maintenance” release (in which I incorporate changes of the little tools I rely on—a lot has happened the past two months!).
I integrated recent changes to Zachary Schneirov’s original NV into my code base. Most issues you were reporting should be solved just by that baby step. The other new and cool stuff is: I’m constantly trying to decouple the code Zachary (“scrod”) wrote. It works fine as-is, but it’s not easy to change and add features while keeping up to date with Zachary’s code. Merging everything every now and then is a little risky. I want my code to be an easy addition, ideally not touching anything from the original. That is just plain impossible, but thinking about it should indeed help me improve my code in many ways. I still can’t grasp how easy it is to do all these small changes. Incredible!
I found out what Steve did to add Markdown preview. There are a few additions to Notational Velocity’s graphical interface components, i.e. the third pane in Steven’s case, the HUD in mine respectively. The other changes are easily reproduced and surprisingly few.
This picture shows my favorite style of previewing notes with MultiMarkdown in Notational Velocity: in a separate tool window which floats on top. I chose this so-called HUD design (“heads-up display”, like a display made of glass in aircrafts) which most of you will already be familiar with by using Apple’s Quick Look.
This is how it looks when I enable my Zettelkasten rendering mode. Bonus: another note featuring my current naming conventions is visible at the top of the list. A “Zettelkasten” is an German term describing an archive which mainly consists of annotations on literature, quotes and excerpts. Also, notes with synthesized information are allowed.
Theres a new Notational Velocity fork available on the interwebs. What makes it unique? So far, it’s the MultiMarkdown support–and you can choose if you want MultiMarkdown included in a bundle with Notational Velocity or rather a Notational Velocity binary which supports your local setup, assumed to reside at ~/Library/Application Support/MultiMarkdown/.