It is pretty clear how we all use text editors in our everyday computing. From writing articles, school assignments, resumes, posters, to creating legal documentation. There are several text editors that most of us use, like Pages and Word, but once in a while a new application pops up, trying to bring something new and innovative to an already crowded market.
One of the latest text editors which became hugely successful is iA Writer, which brought many new things that we didn’t even know were possible in an application of this kind. Following a success on Mac OS, iA Writer also became instant hit on iPhones and iPads as well.
In this article we’ll review a new text editor which has been around for a while, but its second version brought completely overhauled application. It is called Markdown Pro, and is made by RADSense Software.
Markdown Pro is basically a text editor which lets you write plain text and use tags to format it, so you will have a fully formatted exported version. It is somewhat similar to iA Writer in terms of formatting, but this application was created using a completely different idea.
Markdown Pro comes with a very simple and intuitive interface. Besides having a somewhat standard toolbar on the top, the rest of the window is separated into two parts: one is for typing a plain text with tags, while the second part of the window shows how a formatted document look like. It is important to note that while you type and use tags, formatted text will be updated live, so you can always keep track on how the finished product will look like. Also, Markdown Pro offers several templates (and you can find a few more at markdownpro.com), so you don’t have to bother with formatting at all.
A good thing is that you can start using this application even if you don’t have any prior knowledge of formatting a text using tags. For example, while you’re typing you simply need to add # to get a heading, or add * around your words to make them italic. There are just of few basic tags to get you started, but there are quite a few new ones that you can learn by using Markdown’s help section.
While it seem a bit complicated while you read about this application, it is actually made to be a time saver, and that’s exactly what it is. You will learn its basic commands in a minute, and once you start typing you will learn any other tags you might need.
Markdown Pro uses all of the features which come with Mac OS X Lion like full screen support which lets you focus on your writing. It also saves your files automatically, so you can “go back in time” to revert to a previous version.