Since working full-time I don't have enough time to develop Mathdown :-( The time I do have is largely spent on operational things like rotating SSL certs...
People don't really use it (I see 2–6 simultaneous users, and I suspect most just play in the https://mathdown.net/?doc=about sandbox).
What will happen to mathdown.net ?
Mathdown is open-source (but data backend isn't #4) and is not going anywhere. The hosting is cheap and I intend to keep it running for years. But I won't develop it much. In fact I'd like to reduce its scope, e.g. go back to static hosting, to make it easier to keep alive.
Alternatives
Collaborative:
https://hackmd.io/. dual-pane. They have many things I don't: a hosted editor, user accounts, 100% open-source backend, ... — and most importantly an active community.
UPDATE: that's no longer open-source, https://github.com/hackmdio/codimd is the open fork. But no central hosted instance.
https://StackEdit.io. dual-pane. Wonderful editor. Collaboration requires some setup.
Finally, Dropbox Paper (proprietary) is pretty neat, not markdown but understands pseudo-markdown typing including # for headers, $$ to start math, etc. — with good collab & commenting.
Single-pane with in-place styling — but desktop, not collaborative:
Instead I'd like to contribute similar abilities to other projects with more users. Mathdown has 2 essential parts:
In-place markdown styling ("WYSIWYM"). I'm happy to see this done by more and more projects.
My concrete implementation is a thin customization on top of CodeMirror.
TOCHECK: how do Abricotine / GhostWriter / Uberwriter do in-place styling & math? can it be combined into online collaborative sites?!
Feedback / help welcome
The above is just my plan, I'd love to hear what others want to happen.
Due to the choices I made to keep it anonymous with no analytics, I have very little visibility how people use mathdown.
Since working full-time I don't have enough time to develop Mathdown :-( The time I do have is largely spent on operational things like rotating SSL certs... People don't really use it (I see 2–6 simultaneous users, and I suspect most just play in the https://mathdown.net/?doc=about sandbox).
What will happen to mathdown.net ?
Mathdown is open-source (but data backend isn't #4) and is not going anywhere. The hosting is cheap and I intend to keep it running for years. But I won't develop it much. In fact I'd like to reduce its scope, e.g. go back to static hosting, to make it easier to keep alive.
Alternatives
Collaborative:
https://hackmd.io/. dual-pane. They have many things I don't: a hosted editor, user accounts, 100% open-source backend, ... — and most importantly an active community. UPDATE: that's no longer open-source, https://github.com/hackmdio/codimd is the open fork. But no central hosted instance.
https://StackEdit.io. dual-pane. Wonderful editor. Collaboration requires some setup.
Erik Demain's https://github.com/edemaine/coauthor/ is very promising for active research collaboration.
https://cocalc.com/ is great for collaborative research + computation (incl. markdown & latex editors).
Also try out Overleaf with Rich Text Mode and/or
\usepackage{markdown}.Finally, Dropbox Paper (proprietary) is pretty neat, not markdown but understands pseudo-markdown typing including
#for headers,$$to start math, etc. — with good collab & commenting.Single-pane with in-place styling — but desktop, not collaborative:
See https://github.com/cben/mathdown/wiki/math-in-markdown for tons of markdown tools that support math...
Upstreaming the technology
Instead I'd like to contribute similar abilities to other projects with more users. Mathdown has 2 essential parts:
In-place markdown styling ("WYSIWYM"). I'm happy to see this done by more and more projects. My concrete implementation is a thin customization on top of CodeMirror.
HackMDCodiMD (CodeMirror based)In-place math rendering. Also done by Gitbook editor, Overleaf, and possibly others.
TOCHECK: how do Abricotine / GhostWriter / Uberwriter do in-place styling & math? can it be combined into online collaborative sites?!
Feedback / help welcome
The above is just my plan, I'd love to hear what others want to happen. Due to the choices I made to keep it anonymous with no analytics, I have very little visibility how people use mathdown.