StackEdit

I’m trying out a new app. It’s specifically designed for Google Chrome, and it’s called StackEdit. What it is is an in-browser Markdown editor that syncs with Google Drive, Dropbox, and Blogger… so, instead of using the Blogger interface to write a post, you can do plain text. It even has an easier way to do tables than in Blogger itself. And you can save a copy to Google Drive.

I’m exploring it because I’m a big Markdown booster, obviously. But also to see if it’s a better way to write blogposts while retaining a copy to eventually make its way into a zine or PDF. And I’ve noticed two immediate flaws:

1. Like every alternative way to post to Blogger I’ve tried, there’s no way to schedule posts in advance. It’s now or never, dQQd. I’m not even sure you can tag posts before they are published. (Correction: Turns out you can specify the tags in a YAML block, but you won't know about this until you try to publish. Read the link they give, then cancel publishing to Blogger so you can add the block.)
2. Because of the weird way Blogger handles images, you can’t just add images to your document, then publish, unless you are linking to an image that’s elsewhere on the web. You have do add the image in the Blogger editor. Which wouldn't be so bad, if you could “publish” as a draft, but see #1.

But still, you get a live preview of what it will look like as a web page, and you can click to view the HTML code, copy the code, and paste that into the Blogger editor. And when you upload an HTML version to Google Drive, you can use Google Docs to convert to PDF, so it’s a simple pipeline for those who want to do combined blogging and amateur RPG publishing.

Written with StackEdit.