UberWriter Vs. Mark Text

sohail -

Nice sunny day, hello Linux readers! I’m glad to have you back here as I ramble about the goods and the bads of these two markdown editors: UberWriter and Mark Text. If you haven’t tried both of them, great! This article can help you a bit as you read on to discover what makes each editor unique and special. Both of them are great and I’ve used each of these two editors in turn for some time as my primary way of drafting articles for this website.

Look and feel

UberWriter

UberWriter look and feel is geared towards GNOME desktop so GNOME users will feel right at home with another new GNOME app collection on their drive.

Mark Text

Mark Text does not have any resemblance to GNOME, KDE, Cinnamon, or other desktop environments, rather it looks unique on its own. People who do not prefer GNOME app can use this editor as a replacement.

Document drafting

UberWriter

With UberWriter, you get a feel of actually typing on a typewriter machine, considering how fonts are mono-styled and the document body is centered at A4 paper breadth size. You have to be familiar with markdown commands because you are going to be working with raw markdown document before you can start seeing the actual output of what it would look like after exporting.

Mark Text

Whereas, Mark Text is modern and richer in its document output as you draft. You don’t see markdown commands but the actual preview of your document as you type along. It’s like using another word processor program.​

Editing process

UberWriter

The editing process is OK since it’s just like a text editor supporting basic normal operations: cut & paste, copy & paste, simple keyboard shortcuts to insert markdown commands, etc. By the way, UberWriter features less formatting style than Mark Text.

Mark Text

Over here, simply cut and paste operation is a bit of a nightmare and the app doesn’t handle input really well. I guess those are some of the software bugs. Moreover, the app doesn’t scroll down the page automatically after Enter key is pressed when the text content is trailing at the bottom.

Aside from a few problems outlined above, Mark Text has tons of formatting features than UberWriter, which is great if you are a professional content writer.

Formatting

UberWriter

For formatting documents, you can use either markdown commands or keyboard shortcut keys. Below are two common shortcut keys to format your document and the same works on Mark Text app too:

Ctrl + b – Make text bold
Ctrl + i – Make text italic​

There are unique shortcut keys that only work within this app. You can view it on the Keyboard Shortcuts window from the options button list.

Mark Text

You can either use markdown commands or keyboard shortcut keys to format your document. But I find shortcut keys more efficient because of my hard-wired muscles writing documents using LibreOffice. You might notice that LibreOffice Writer and Mark Text has similar commands, for instance:

Ctrl + 1 – Heading level 1
Ctrl + 2 – Heading level 2​and so on for other heading levels.

In case you forget the command to insert a table or some formatting style that you rarely use, you can type ‘@’ on an empty new line to list all the possible formatting options.

Multi-editing

UberWriter is a single-window-per-work app. You cannot have multiple windows open at the same time. Try opening document B while working on document A, the latter will be replaced by document B.​Mark Text by default too is a single-window-per-work app but you can enable tab mode through its options list. So if you like multi-editing capability, this editor is for you.

Exporting

UberWriter

This markdown editor supports multiple file formats for exporting your document, the three most popular being PDF, ODT, and HTML. ODT is one way to keep your document re-editable in case you are collaborating with another party.​You can go to the Advanced tab in the export window to choose other supported format of your preference.

Mark Text

You have only two formats for exporting your markdown document: PDF and HTML. However, for content writers who own their own work will have no problem with distributing PDF version of their work. Same goes for web content authors exporting to HTML.

Conclusion

Hope you already have a clear solid ground by now on which markdown editor might be for you. GNOME UI lovers might gear towards UberWriter while generalist ones might go for Mark Text. But you can always switch between the two if either one of them doesn’t work out right.