A Little Tip for Using Typora with Pandoc
I have only been using Typora for about a day, but I already love it. If you do any serious editing with Markdown, then I strongly recommend that you try it. I especially recommend that you try it now, while it remains free, and that you subsequently give the Typora production team money when they ask you for it. I recommend giving them at least 50% more than they ask for; I like it that much.
(No, I have no affiliation with the production team, but if they launch an affiliate program, then I will join it.)
Typora offers a hybrid WYSIWYG approach to editing: as you type Markdown syntax, you see Markdown syntax; and then as you type past it, it becomes rendered as HTML. I love it. You just have to try it. I’ve never used any Markdown editor that so wonderfully combines the experience of real-time preview with the transparency of a “source mode”, for when you absolutely need to tweak the Markdown source to get it just right. I love it.
Of course, the only thing better than a perfect tool is a tool that is perfect except for one small flaw that we can pick at all night. I have only found one in Typora, so far, and it has to do with nested lists and the Markdown specification.
After Installing Typora, Do This!
Once you download Typora and install it, open the Preferences, and then look for the option “Indent Size on Saving”. If the default is not 4 spaces, then change it to 4 spaces. If you don’t, then your nested lists will not always look right, depending on how you process your Markdown. I ran into this problem when I published an article on one of my other blogs. I had composed it in Typora, then processed it with pandoc in order to publish it. When I published it, my nested lists were not so nested. I managed to track the problem down to this: the Markdown specification requires 4 spaces to nest lists within lists, and although many processors treat this with leniency (that worked so well for browsers and HTML, so why not?!), they ought not to do that. In particular, pandoc does not like you using only 2 spaces to nest lists. Don’t do it.
Since I changed the default setting in my Typora installation, I can nest lists with total confidence that the lists will look right even when I process the final Markdown with pandoc for publication. Yay!
References
https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues/137 The Github issue for pandoc that discusses this very point, and the reason I assume that Typora, not pandoc needs to change.
https://twitter.com/jbrains/status/785144020683067392 Me asking the very nice Typora people to consider changing the default setting since, after all, they are currently not respecting the Markdown specification.