Apostrophe
Version: 2.2.0.3 Web: https://gitlab. gnome.org/somas/apostrophe
There are at least a dozen various text editors for Linux. Various toolkits, design approaches and extras make them a bit different from each other and in the end choosing the right one is merely a matter of personal preferences. This month’s text editing Hotpick is a markdown editor. Most such editors are simple to use and minimalist in their approach, and
Apostrophe (former Uberwriter) is no exception. Yet it has a couple of great features that make it stand out from the crowd.
Apostrophe is a markdown text editor with a Gtk3based interface and the Pandoc text parsing backend under the bonnet. When you start typing, Apostrophe hides away the header bar so that you see nothing but the blank document you’re writing into. To further reduce distractions, Apostrophe offers a ‘Hemingway Mode’ (find it under the hamburger menu). When enabled, the editor ignores the backspace and delete keys, forcing you to write more without looking back.
The Markdown rules have always been simple, but it’s always good to have a cheat sheet at hand: use the built-in tutorial to look up certain markup tweaks.
Apostrophe also shines when it comes to previewing a document. By default, there’s an inline preview for many text elements, but if that’s not enough, just Ctrl-click anything to see what it’ll look like. Images or formulae will be shown in quick pop-overs, too. Of course, there are dedicated modes for full-document preview. You can display the synced document preview either as a vertical or horizontal half. Changes in the source are applied to the preview area on the fly.
Despite the fact that Apostrophe looks so simple, it has lots of useful extras, such as spell-check support and a turbocharged export module. The latter is hiding under the Advanced Export menu and can turn your documents into PDF/ODT/DOCX/HTML5 files, and plenty of other formats including Latex and Epub. So, if you’re fond of markdown, don’t miss Apostrophe!