Proof-reading oriented preview

[maccadia]

Hi,

Thanks for your work. I use preview to proof-read my work and I think some features would improve UX in this regard :

• click on preview to go to source (markdown mindmap package does that : when you click on a node, it goes to the related section in md source)
• synchronise scrolling between preview and source
• making editing possible in preview like HalloJS in order to correct typos

In my investigations to find the markdown editor I want, I found these if you want to have a look :

• SimpleMDE
• Calmly
• Gingko

I wish I were able to contribute to your work but I'm lacking Web tech / JS proficiency.

Best,

M.A.

[Galadirith]

@maccadia Thanks so much for all your research, it's really appreciated and its great to learn about what MPP is used for, we want to make it a great tool for everyone:

1. Its definitely possible and that package will be a great source of ideas. I think this would be a great addition and simply reduce the number of clicks required to sync on demand.

   The first issue that comes to mind is that in the mindmap package, there are well defined hotspot regions and well defined empty space. With a complete markdown preview should everything be clickable? Headers, paragraphs, bullets, code? What happens when you click on a link in the preview? I think they're all quite solvable issues. We're working towards our 2.3.0 and 2.4.0 release but I will update this issue when I've figured out where to fit implementing this into our roadmap.

2. This is actually on our roadmap Roadmap to 3.0.0 #89 for our 2.4.0 release. I think its probably our most requested feature, so hopefully we'll hit that target.

3. This is much more tricky. The immediate issue I see is that HalloJS doesn't have to handle equations and I don't see and easy way to edit them inline. But an easy way around that is to restrict preview editing to simpler elements like paragraphs.

   Right now I'm afraid I wouldn't have the time to implement this so couldn't commit to adding this to our roadmap.

Thanks again @maccadia really great stuff. I'm sorry that I can't promise to all your feature request, but hopefully we can improve on MPP as it is. Please post back with any other info or questions you have and I'll update you with a candidate release date for 1 as soon as I can.

[maccadia]

@Galadirith I'm glad that all of this makes sense to you and I really appreciate your answer.

Making the preview editable is a deeper design change as it tends to turn MPP into a WYSIWYG. Thinking about this feature entails thinking about what is bad with WYSIWYG and what is good (crazy as it might seems !).

A design I would suggest for 3. is that clicking on an equation turn the <div> into a text-editor mode allowing direct editing in LaTeX.

I have other design ideas but let's focus on what could be improve now in MPP without changing too much its spirit. If I have time, I will take a look at this tutorial to try my hand on markdown preview in JS.

I'll definitely keep an eye on MPP.

[lierdakil]

WYSIWYG might be possible with HTML contentEditable and turndown. But probably need good (or, at least, better) source maps for this to work well, so it's not possible for Pandoc, and probably not very nice for markdown-it either.