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App idea: a word processor that doesn’t expose every single possible possible formatting option permanently in a huge top bar. Create headings, write text, mark important sections, insert images, and that’s it. Export as a PDF and move on. In contrast to a note taking app / markdown editor, this would actually be intended as a simpler and more focused alternative to #Word, #LibreOffice and such.
I personally think the current word processor paradigm, and the resulting underlying technology, performs badly UX-wise: many of the formatting options don’t have any semantics at all, and have to be applied manually. What’s the semantic difference between bold and italic text? Why are both options exposed at all? The current state-of-the-art apps are full of quirks like this, and I think it’s time to challenge the decades-old workflow that has lead us to this.
#LaTeX has already addressed a lot of this, so I guess what I would really like to see is a modern, general-purpose app incorporating the same ideas.
Introducing Sentence: an adaptive word processor for the 21st century. The intention of this is not to fully replace every single thing you can do with a traditional word processor, but I'm confident that the vast majority of things you've used them for can be done way quicker and more conveniently with this.
It's currently only at the mockup stage, but @fkinoshita is exploring the technical aspects of it. What are your thoughts?
The image is unfortunately a little low quality, but the SVG file can be found here: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Design/other-app-mockups/-/tree/master/sentence
@bragefuglseth LaTeX is also regularly abused to make it look “right”, both by using the wrong semantic, and by forcing behaviour (like this figure that really should come right after that paragraph and not at the end of the chapter). Even “experts” do it and will teach you to do it.
@bragefuglseth Is LyX close to what you're thinking of?
@nowster As I’ve already said in this thread, Lyx seems to somehow resemble what I have in mind, but the UI doesn’t look stunning to me.
@bragefuglseth @fkinoshita Cool 
The main difference to [Apostrophe](https://apps.gnome.org/en-GB/app/org.gnome.gitlab.somas.Apostrophe) is that it hides Markdown and instead presents it „rendered“?
@moonglum Markdown is just an implementation detail here. Sentence will also have a more comprehensive feature set for working with larger documents, like the ability to quickly jump between sections, displaying images inline, storing images along with the document, and so on. The intention of Sentence is to be used for things you use traditional word processors for today.
@bragefuglseth Yep, makes sense 
Apostrophe uses pandoc internally, and I immediately thought of pandoc when reading your description 
My main thought was: Is this a “2.0” of Apostrophe, or is this an entirely new thing.
@moonglum Apostrophe definitely has a good reason to exist, as the experience of writing raw markdown and formatting text with characters isn’t really comparable to using GUI buttons and shortcuts to do it. It comes down to preference, but for a lot of people, raw Markdown just isn’t it.
@bragefuglseth Yep, makes sense to me
@bragefuglseth @moonglum I doubt that markdown is a good technical foundation for larger documents. Most markdown solution's I've seen eventually build some extension system on top of it to deal with stuff that markdown cannot do (like image alignment / sizing). I wonder if @typst would be the better option.
@bragefuglseth @moonglum storing images along with the document is not even that difficult given good compression and base64 inlining.
@bragefuglseth I really like the idea! There is clearly a lack of simple and usable alternatives to something like LibreOffice Writer. I am just not shure about not exposing bold/italic to the user. There are some usecases, where you need both and you use them for different things. Bold script is for few word that need to stand out of the text, while italics can be used to highlight longer passages. In every other aspect, I love this concept!
@kuhl It seems like people have different interpretations of what bold text and italics should be used for. In your case, with the longer passages, I’d see the lack of italics as an invitation to identify what actually *makes* the passage important, and highlight that with the «important» tag. That makes the passage easy to identify later. There might be other, different problems with this approach, but those will always arise with opinionated projects like this (:
@bragefuglseth @fkinoshita I really appreciate the design 
but honestly if it doesn't have a few more options like text alignment, advanced formatting (colours, strikethrough, underlining..) or image attachment, it will never replace my regular word processor 
@ireneethirion Image attachment is a goal with this! The plus button is for inserting things. As for "advanced formatting", that's the kind of thing we're trying to avoid here, as the core idea of the app is that most people don't really need it. I could see some kind of global styling for the document happen, though, e.g. changing the font, global alignment and header color through a dialog. The most important thing is to avoid this happening inline.
@bragefuglseth I totally agree that most word processors are too complicated for the average user. More simplicity and efficiency wouldn't go amiss 
However I wonder if not highlighting some fairly basic formatting options in the UI might be a barrier for many users... for example in my class many students frequently use highlighting / italics / underlining / colors to make lectures clearer and more pleasant to read (and the more you have to type, the more formatting becomes an advantage)
@bragefuglseth @fkinoshita Oh!! i LOVE this. I have been thinking about this myself. I would 100% use this!
Love it! It would be a decent replacement for my main use of Obsidian (A nice WYSIWYG editor for basic formatting with a simple format behind).
I would definitely love to give a hand if you need it btw 
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@bragefuglseth @fkinoshita my thoughts don’t fit here. But it’s a complicated problem full of legacy.
@bragefuglseth @fkinoshita An abstemious application that does the 5% of functionalities that we use 98% of the time deserves to exist 
might i suggest using djot instead of markdown for the backend format?
it's by the creator of commonmark and pandoc, to address some shortcomings of markdown, while being simpler, clearer, easier to maintain, and easier to extend (see the generic span and div constructs in the syntax/cheatsheet page).
website: https://djot.net
syntax/cheatsheet: https://djot.net/syntax (the link on the home page hasn't been updated)
@bragefuglseth uhm what exactly do you mean with "the vast majority of things people do with word processors"? People use them for letters (biggest use), forms and contracts (often strict formatting requirements), invoices (complex content, letterhead), academic papers and theses (very precise formatting requirements)... Markdown doesn't cut it for any of these. Google docs comes close but in reality people want Word because they need Word.
(Also file format compatibility)
@gcampax Sentence will have the capability of exporting documents to a selection of file types (PDF, HTML, and so on), so we’re not expecting everybody and their dog to handle markdown. For things with specific formatting requirements, we could e.g. have a way to change the global styling of the document. Invoices, contracts and similar corporate stuff is probably best suited for specialized software anyways (maybe word processors *is* that specialized software?)
@bragefuglseth well, part of the popularity of word processing is that to some extent everyone has to deal with that stuff... eg. small businesses, freelancers, landlords need to make contracts and can't afford specialized software.
Ultimately, who would be the target user of such app?
And it's not about the export format, it's about the complexity of formatting and the internal representation. Markdown doesn't have alignment or margins, so even a letter can't be formatted correctly...
@gcampax The need for specific layouts is a great point, and traditional word processors may be better suited for those cases. Sentence is more focused on producing textual content than the layout and looks of it. Some example use cases are creative writing, school assignments (without layout requirements), informal letters, and simply just getting something written down and stored. This is *possible* with today’s tools, but it would be great to have some more focused options :)
@bragefuglseth @gcampax frankly, i've seen people struggle with properly using docx/gdoc files a fair bit at my last workplace. they used to make an absolute mess out of it, and despite the fact that i haven't used them myself for years, i would be the one formatting them correctly (both visually and semantically). and as a designer and web enthusiast, i know that they're a pain for typesetting and layout.
@bragefuglseth @gcampax with this app, requirements for a specific layout would include a layout/theme file shared by the institution or such, similar to how certain tech institutions share latex themes.
edit: this could be achieved by creating a layout/theme editor to be shipped separately or together.
@gcampax @bragefuglseth Maybe frontmatter header could fill the base formatting needs as the metadata of the underlying markdown format? Not to go wild with customization, but for basic formatting needs like, document type and margin.
Wow, this is *exactly* what I want to use for school, looks great!
@bragefuglseth Looks super nice, I can see it also being used for non technical people to write a blog post and output to markdown to post in static site generators. The main barrier is usually learning markdown vs transforming it in a full CMS.
@bragefuglseth I still feel like Apple's word processing app, Pages, does the best job with this. They hide away most of what you don't need. I seriously hate the ribbon design of M$ Word which spreads out all the things you need across multiple tabs filled with things you rarely need.
I understand that Pages is more complex than what you're talking about too, but my point is moreso that I think it's UX does a good job balancing ease of use with powerful tools
@bragefuglseth strong disagree on the need to restrict to one of italics or bold. I often find myself using both for different semantic purposes. I use bold for emphasis, and then italics for a range of other meanings, most of which are listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italic_type#Usage (mostly names of stuff and foreign language expressions).
@bragefuglseth I always ponder reworking AbiWord UI to be less clone and more itself.