Comment by OlaProis
15 hours ago
Thanks! The end-goal is a fast, native Markdown editor that "just works" - no Electron, no web tech, instant startup. v0.3.0 will extract Mermaid as a standalone crate and build a custom text editor widget to unlock features egui's TextEdit blocks (proper multi-cursor, code folding). Long-term: potentially extract the editor as a headless Rust library since that's missing in the ecosystem. See ROADMAP.md for details
Do people still use $language editors?
My impression was that everyone uses their $EDITOR and integrates languages support via plugins. The only exception to this rule I know is Emacs (org mode). I really doubt a standalone md editor will get traction, no matter how good it is.
Valid skepticism! A few counterpoints:
Market exists: Obsidian has 1M+ users, Typora is popular, iA Writer has a loyal following. These aren't VS Code users who wandered off — they're writers, PKM enthusiasts, and note-takers who find IDE-style editors overwhelming for prose.
Different audience: Developers might prefer VS Code + Markdown Preview Enhanced. But Ferrite targets people who want a focused writing tool, not a general-purpose editor that happens to support Markdown. Think "writing app" vs "code editor with Markdown support."
Native advantage: Most Markdown tools are Electron (Obsidian, Typora, Mark Text). Ferrite offers instant startup, lower RAM, and native performance — appeals to the "I want my tools to feel fast" crowd.
You might be right that it won't achieve mass adoption. But there's a niche for "Obsidian but native and lighter" that I think is underserved.
My impression was that Obsidian is more than an editor: personal wiki, todo tracker, database, etc..
The currently offered feature list in Ferrite — code blocks, mermaid — suggests you are targeting developers or tech people here, hence, not really iA Writer... Typora — never heard of it, can't comment.
Anyway, thanks for seeing this as skepticism, and not criticism. With my comment, I tried to subtly suggest that there should be more to it, than an editor.
Regardless, good luck!
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Completely non-accusatory, just wondering. Did you write this post using an LLM? I sort of feel the typical "voice" if LLM writing here and wondering if I should calibrate myself a bit in this.
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Sometimes it is nice to have a separate application for notes compared to the editor being used for code. It means they can be customized for their individual purposes. Sometimes there are minor inconveniences (I miss multi-select/change in Obsidian sometimes), but even when I used an editor for my MD notes, I found myself using SublimeText for that while I used VSCode or IntelliJ for coding. Just a 1 of 1 experience, but as mentioned elsewhere, there is a large adoption of note taking apps separate from code editors, and a few of them use markdown as the underlying file type which I require for anything I use for portability.