There are Markdown editors where you toggle to preview…

… and there are those that have a split-screen layout:

My issue with Markdown editors in general is that you either have to jump in and out of preview mode (not so flowy) or have two halves of your screen cluttered with identical but differently formatted content. Then there’s the part about Markdown editors not having WorkFlowy-like powers – but at least they allow you to visualize what your formatted text is going to look like. More or less.

WorkFlowy is no Markdown editor. Thank goodness. But what if you wanted to use Markdown syntax in WorkFlowy and have everything look as close to the end format as possible? There are a handful of simple dynamics below which give us the best of both worlds…

In the case of typographic emphases, you can wrap your words with single or double asterisks… and then actually italicize and bold those words as well:

We’re doubling up on Markdown and preview mode simultaneously. Before long the asterisks fade into the woodwork and we don’t notice them at all. Very readable.

How do I get # Heading 1, ## Heading 2 or ### Heading 3, etc. to show up in WorkFlowy the way I’d want them to appear in a blog post or as a subheading in a book?

You can “hijack” WorkFlowy’s Underline emphasis so that any text you underline will take on your predetermined font style:

This involves a teeny tiny bit of CSS code in an itsy bitsy Stylish style:

Since Markdown aims to provide an easy-to-read plain text format (as opposed to HTML), let’s make it a little easier and truncate our links.

Embedded hyperlinks in Markdown are delimited like so:

I have a PhraseExpress Hotkey set up to automate the formatting shown above. All I do is copy my hyperlink, select and copy the text where I want the link to be embedded and hit my PhraseExpress hotkey:

My keyboard shortcut combo is Ctrl+Shift+Alt+L, but you can change that up in the PhraseExpress resource provided.

Inline image formatting is structured as follows:

I’ve set up a PhraseExpress Hotkey (included in the .pxp file) which formats a Dropbox link correctly for viewing images inline by changing “dl=0” to “dl=1” and including the Markdown formatting I need. Here’s a demo:

Once my Dropbox image link is on my clipboard, all I do is hit Ctrl+Shift+L and it pastes into WorkFlowy as pictured above.

I’ve written 3 previous posts in this space, each of which offer a distinctly different method to view images in WorkFlowy.

For Markdown paragraph breaks in WorkFlowy, if you were working in a list’s note , you’d simply hit Enter. BUT… writing in WorkFlowy notes doesn’t give us the flexibility to shuffle paragraphs around. So how to get Markdown paragraph breaks when writing in WorkFlowy lists?..

For each bullet point/ list, you’re going to need to create a note and leave an empty space in it (Shift+Enter… Space). I have a PhraseExpress Hotkey that automates this at the time of creating each new bullet. If, however, you didn’t want to muck about with that, I’ve created a PhraseExpress Hotkey that goes through an entire outline and gives every list an empty note. It’s also in the .pxp file I provided in tip #2 above.

With the PhraseExpress Hotkey already set up, I just place my cursor at the top of my outline and hit Ctrl+Shift+Alt+B:

Note: the PhraseExpress script will loop 200 times, so you’ll need to hit Escape once your cursor gets to the end of your outline.

Exporting your Markdown is a piece of cake. The easiest method:

Markdown editors are a dime a dozen. Here are 3 that I’ve given a good working over:

No Markdown editor is going to give you the customization I’ve just walked you through (the visuals for your actual writing). Many of the tips for automation (i.e. PhraseExpress) can even be used to streamline writing in Markdown editors themselves – because Markdown editors don’t have all of the “features” I’ve showcased in this post, let alone the organizational power that an outliner like WorkFlowy has.

Hi Ron, next webinar on the 20th (just around the corner, I’ll be doing a show and tell on PhraseExpress… and providing Mac as well as Windows scripts. But for the time being, here are the Markdown scripts I use on Windows:

** You have to select your text first

Bold:
{#CTRL -chars B}{#CTRL -chars C}**{#insertclipboard}**

Italic:
{#CTRL -chars I}{#CTRL -chars C}*{#insertclipboard}*

Bold + Italic:
{#CTRL -chars B}{#CTRL -chars I}{#CTRL -chars C}***{#insertclipboard}***

Inline link:
(You have to copy your link first and then select and copy your link text before executing the following):
[{#insertclipboard -item 1}]({#insertclipboard -item 2})

Hi Frank,
Sorry, I run phraseExpress on mac, but it cannot recognise .pxp file. And when I search online, looks like it should be .pxi file for mac(see below).

Cheers

” PhraseExpress for Mac cannot sync Windows .pxp phrase files, because the Mac .pxi phrase file format varies due to the different features set. To sync with Windows, you need to initiate the connection from the Mac client.

Hi Ron,

Could you paste the script of the .pxp file here? I don’t have access to a Mac now, so I can’t test keyboard shortcuts… but in most cases what needs to happen is to change the script for Mac… so CTRL would be changed to CMD (Command). That might be the issue. Otherwise the .pxp file should load for both Mac and Windows. .pxp is a PhraseExpress file, their own language.

SO powerful and convenient ！Made me addicted to Workflowy ever deeper~~~ 😀
BTW, the preview version of WorkFlowy Desktop App had launched , It’s more a packaged website than an advanced app.
These method you found can work perfectly in a browser , can it (or will it) work on the desktop app?