[Octoth0rpe]

I'm _really really_ not a fan of the app insisting on defining a 'project' before allowing you to open a file. I recognize that project-oriented management is probably a requirement for something like this given that markdown files usually do exist as a collection of related documents, but I regularly want to just open a README.md.

[simonw]

Right - one of my favourite things about VS Code is I can just type "code README.md" and start using it - or "code ." to open my current working directory. Effectively it lets me treat directories as projects without fiddling around with any project configuration.

[dyates]

I wrote a short blog post[1] about this pattern a few years ago. I still don't understand why so many apps use this workflow, especially ones that previously didn't. Just let me deal with the project creation stuff on the first write instead of requiring all this up-front commitment!

[1]: https://davidyat.es/2018/03/01/project-wizard/

[divan]

You'll like Drafts app. Open the app and start typing. Only then decide what you gonna do with the text.

It's a native macOS app, so it starts instantly. I use it for everything – from writing articles to comments/messages, where I care a bit more about not making typos or accidentally sending before proofreading.

[CharlesW]

Why not just use Notes instead of paying $20/year? (Not a dig at Drafts, trying to understand the value.)

[tqwhite]

Finding stuff in Notes is bad. You cannot scope a search to a subset of the collection. It's terrible. Drafts is very fast and, as plain text, is very simple. The automation is fabulous. Good support for widgets. Its sync is instant. It's a good program.

That said, I have returned to it and am abandoning Drafts. Turns out that, once you have a substantial amount of stuff, finding stuff is just as bad as Notes and I do not actually use the automation.

Also, I want Rich Text, too. I believe in plain text but, in the end, I cannot live without being able to easily set text to be bold, colored or large so that I can see the important parts. Still, I am mad at Notes for not supporting Markdown because I do README and such often.

[CharlesW]

> You cannot scope a search to a subset of the collection.

Since you're back to Notes, you might be interested to know that you can now scope searches in a bunch ways — folders, Smart Folder, tags, kind (i.e. limit to notes with checklists), date range, etc. You can even search "notes created last year" to see all of your notes created last year, etc. https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/notes/not18ab658ed/mac

[chefandy]

I haven't looked at Drafts, but I stopped using Notes because I started doing work that requires Windows and it lacks native cross-platform support. The in-browser experience just doesn't cut it for me for something I need as much as a notes app.

[tqwhite]

One other, slightly off topic thing... Even if a program has a free version, if I use it in my daily life, as I have done with Drafts, I pay for it.

It is my view that the current market has coerced programmers to have free versions even though programmers cannot buy food or pay mortgages with free versions.

I consider it unethical to gain a benefit in my daily life without giving something in return. $20/year is almost too little.

[bobbylarrybobby]

Drafts is really about the automations you can do on your text in order to get it out of Drafts. The idea is you throw some text into Drafts — because it's quicker to create text in Drafts than in pretty much any other app — and then use an automation to do some minor parsing, reformat, add metadata, etc before sending the data to its final destination.

[divan]

I don't use Pro version and never had a need for.

Notes is clumsy – I never can find what I want there. With folders, pinned notes, named notes, synced/unsynced etc, it's just a mess.

Drafts is just a super-reliable and fast editor that is better than any other textbox/editor. So I mostly use it for copy pasting. Even use it for HN comments that are longer than 10 lines.

[brandonhorst]

If you don't want the automation stuff, it's perfectly usable for free.

[oneeyedpigeon]

I'm with you — same issue as Obsidian.

[jwells89]

Haven’t tried Marker so I don’t know how it works, but at least in Obsidian “projects” are just folders. At least for my usage, this isn’t really an issue because most of the Markdown files I create are going to be in one of a few locations (blog posts, mind dumps, etc).

It’s still useful to have a one-off editor but there are several programs that can fill that purpose well.

[oneeyedpigeon]

Obsidian isn't terrible, I just wish I could open a single Markdown file. README.md is pretty common; any arbitrary location can contain a .md file that I might want to open.

Marker looks a lot worse, though. I gave my 'project' a name and selected a folder—one containing a big hierarchy, tbf, but the app gave no guidance. All I get now is a blank window, even when I restart. There doesn't seem to be any menu item that will let me create a new project or recover from this state. I guess I'll have to reinstall...

This is the problem with the 'project' (or 'vault') approach, IMO—if I'm just opening a file, I know what that is, what it means. When your app revolves around some bespoke notion of whatever a 'project' is, and that's the first experience of your app I get, that's not great.

[PurpleRamen]

Obsidian is vault-centric and has some harsh limitations in what workflows it allows because of this. It doesn't matter whether vaults are folders, because there is more to this than just the folder. This is really annoying, because Obsidian is a one of the best markdown-editors at the moment, with a good plugin-community, unlike others.

[chambored]

It is a great editor. Your points are spot on. The vault-centric use of Obsidian is limiting, and has stopped me from using it as my main editor. I use it only for a single synced vault. All other md files are edited using other tools.

[Muller20]

Obisidian is not a text editor, and it never claims to be one.