#LIGHTPAPER EDIT WYSYWYG HOW TO#

#LIGHTPAPER EDIT WYSYWYG HOW TO#

With the ability to edit locally and use git tools to push our changes live to the Wiki, we are now faced with how to preview our changes before we push our changes live. If I edit in wiki/, commit, and push, the Wiki is updated. If I edit in src/, commit, and push, the SilkJS repository is updated. I now have two directories: src/ and wiki/. If you have commit rights to a repository, you can clone it and its Wiki and edit locally and then commit and push related files in one operation.įor example, to clone the SilkJS repository, I use this command: What may not be all that well known is that not only can you git clone a repository, but you can also git clone that repository’s Wiki. The same issue applies where you may want to save related pages in one operation. The “Preview” button is at the bottom, below the editor, which means you might have to scroll down to click on it to see if your Markdown renders as you really want it. The form at the bottom doesn’t have the “commit summary” text field. There’s a tool bar at the top to help insert Markdown codes. That’s not the Ace editor with all its editor friendly features, but something looking like a plain old textarea. What if I haven’t written that page yet? What if that page needs editing before I really want to commit changes to this README.md file?Įditing Wiki pages on GitHub is a different experience.įrom the Wiki page you want to edit, click on the “Edit Page” button and you get a very different editor: This is fine, but on line 26 there is a link to a page on the SilkJS Wiki. Notice there is a form below the editor required to commit and save your changes. Above the editor is a “Preview” button so you can toggle between editing your Markdown and seeing what it’s going to look like once you save and commit. Note there is an “Edit” button above the display.Ĭlicking on this button opens the file in an in-browser editor (Ace Editor) where you can edit your Markdown source. Here I’ve clicked on the README.md file link in the SilkJS repository.

GitHub does provide some in-browser editing features, which are an improvement. You are also subjecting potential visitors to your repository with in-process edits to your Markdown files. “tweak README.md” type messages, when you really are doing one big edit to README.md and one logical commit. At the same time, your commit history becomes filled with You edit, commit, push, reload, repeat – until you’re satisfied with your results. The development cycle described so far is rather awkward and time consuming. For example, when you Markdown source contains: This is a title Markdown syntax is close to natural language, but you really don’t know what your text will look like on GitHub until you commit your Markdown file edits and look at it rendered in your browser. In creating the Markdown files, I basically just used my editor or IDE. I do know my own experience is that my README.md file for SilkJS started out with just a paragraph or two, and then I added to it over time.

I don’t see people write much about how they create their README.md files or maintain their Wiki pages. One thing I notice about the vast majority of these and others I view there is that many have long involved README.md files but have no Wiki pages at all.

Over the years I’ve starred a couple hundred repositories on GitHub. GFM does not support this, so you will see the actual characters in your page and not a table of contents – you probably don’t want that. For example, some flavors of Markdown support and will automatically generate a table of contents in its place when rendered. Note: the risk of using any editing tools that support extensions to Markdown beyond GFM is that you include these extensions in your Markdown. However, I’m going to focus on tools that are ideally suited for GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM). There are a number of Markdown variants, including some with very neat features like automatically generated tables of content. In this post, I will introduce a few tools that facilitate the creation and maintenance of Markdown source files that are intended to be shown on GitHub.

Lightpaper edit wysywyg