A basic markdown mode for LibreOffice writer would facilitate the use of markdown among users that do not understand markdown. If I want to ask for input to a markdown document today I cannot send it to users that do not work in text. If they could open it in LibreOffice then they could edit and send it back without feeling like they are out of their normal workflow.
It would be nice to pick a markdown flavor like the one used in Pandoc or github
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I know this petition requires a monumental effort … but… Would it be a bad idea to:
Have a general public markdown editor?
Anyone with only “Standard Office Suite” knowledge to edit .md files?
Avoid everyone installing another text editor Typora, haroopad, joplin, etc.?
For all of them to generate a set of files with a consistent style?
To collaborate with many people of any age, plumbers, architects, programmers, economist, etc. for everyday projects (construction of powerplants, bridges, refineries, hospitals and even for student homework)?
To have standard tools like spellcheck and collaborate?
Save countless of hours formatting?
Stretching a lot… even automatic table of contents…
I know it doesn’t seem relevant …
Just asking 3 people to create a file with info gathered from www with consistent style (paragraph, line, font, etc) is such a pain…
For us everyday users that do not post on this forum you’ll save us …
I’m out of space to explain more. Have mercy… pls.
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Thank you @trosendal for initial suggestion and @iqgustavo for poetically contributing your vision of the bigger picture.
The LibreOffice software and its ecosystem are a wonderful creation, also from ideological point. I wish it can become this one and only “Standard Office Suite”. But I’m afraid it might loose ground among the user types of the technically-versed, the researchers (knowledge synthesizing) and the creatives.
An elegant markdown mode in LibreOffice would help to keep the technical & research-types on board.
The creatives are operating in other spheres, but at least during their forming years in school and university there’s a propensity that they may be (guided to) using LibreOffice, if it was “The Standard Office Suite”.
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Personally I use LibreOffice on Linux as a Markdown editor (save as Text) mainly because LibreOffice of the LanguageTools plugin and a decent spelling check. While it is not ideal, from my humble point of view it 500% better than any Editor (online/offline) which or offer markdown support or grammar tools. I also, often write in French which lower even more the chance of finding a better product than LibreOffice for my need and expectation. But yes it would be awesome if natively LibreOffice could support Markdown and/or a LibreOfficeMD as light editor/version of LibreOffice.
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This feature would be great, since I use markdown in Obsidian and i could use it in our nextcloud to organise our Restaurant Team. But not everyone wants to use Markdown for their own files and an easy conversion in odt files would be very helpful.
Unfotunately there isn’t even an extension for this.
Does anyone know one? Or knows who yould write one?
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Not an extension to LO, but the conversion can be done: SĂ©e the answer by @fbertoldi three years ago.
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The documents are all in XML format. If you need such feature, you can write an XSLT and include the filter via Tools > XML Filter settings.
Or you write an extension. I think, that Markout import/export is not a needed feature for an office application. If it turns out, that people like such tool and use it, than it can be integrated later. The presenter console (where you can see notes, while the projector shows slides) has started as extension and is now integrated, for example.
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XSLT only works on XML documents. Hence, the Markdown would need to be XML encoded.
However, Pandoc can do a lot of things with Markdown, I think it also exports to ODT. Or one could export the Markdown to HTML and import that into Libeoffice.
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I haven’t checked the implementation, but http://www.asciidocfx.com/ allows export to odt (If people require LibreOffice).
If you prefer markdown, as your colleagues to use GitHub - rhiokim/haroopad: Haroopad - The Next Document processor based on Markdown
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=markdown&list_id=1612283 provides 94978 – (Markdown) [Request] Save as Markdown.
94978 – (Markdown) [Request] Save as Markdown explains well why Markdown support is desirable in LibreOffice.
In the meantime, I suggest that you use Visual Studio Code. Markdown editing with Visual Studio Code and advanced syntax highlighting make editing and previewing it a breeze. It adheres to the https://commonmark.org/ standard.
It is possible to convert an md file to odt almost perfectly, with pandoc, as I explain here
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