Utilities

Excellent Utilities: Abricotine – open source Markdown editor

Last Updated on May 22, 2022

This is a new series of reviews highlighting best-of-breed utilities. We’re covering a wide range of utilities including tools that boost your productivity, help you manage your workflow, and lots more besides. For this article, we’ll put Abricotine under the spotlight.

Abricotine is an open source, cross-platform Markdown editor built for the desktop with inline preview functionality. Let’s recap about Markdown.

Markdown is a plain text formatting syntax created by John Gruber in 2004. It’s designed to be easy-to-read and easy-to-write.

Readability is at the very heart of Markdown. It offers the advantages of plain text, provides a convenient format for writing for the web, but it’s not intended to be a replacement for HTML. Markdown is a writing format, not a publishing format. You control the display of the document; formatting words as bold or italic, adding images, and creating lists are just a few of the things we can do with Markdown. Mostly, Markdown is just regular text with a few non-alphabetic characters included, such as # or *.

Markdown has a much more basic syntax than HTML, leaving aside things like opening and closing tags, and instead uses punctuation and characters that all users will already use in daily writing. The punctuation characters have been carefully chosen to resemble what they mean. The intention is to ensure that the syntax does not stop the flow of writing, allowing the author to focus on content, rather than how it looks. In this way, Markdown shares a common bond with LaTeX, a document preparation system for high quality typesetting, which also encourages authors not to focus too much on the appearance, but to concentrate on the right content.

Installation

The developer provides 32-bit and 64-bit packages for Debian / Ubuntu. There’s also binaries available for Mac OS X and Windows operating systems. If you’re like me, you’ll prefer compiling the source code for yourself.

Clone the project’s repository with the command:

$ git clone https://github.com/brrd/Abricotine.git

Navigate to the newly created directory and use npm to install the software. npm is a package manager for the JavaScript programming language. It’s the default package manager for the JavaScript runtime environment Node.js.

$ cd Abricotine/
$ sudo npm install

Now we’re ready to rumble.

Next page: Page 2 – In Operation

Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction / Installation
Page 2 – In Operation
Page 3 – Other Features
Page 4 – Summary


Complete list of articles in this series:

Excellent Utilities
AES CryptEncrypt files using the Advanced Encryption Standard
AnanicyShell daemon created to manage processes’ IO and CPU priorities
brootNext gen tree explorer and customizable launcher
CerebroFast application launcher
cheat.shCommunity driven unified cheat sheet
CopyQAdvanced clipboard manager
crocSecurely transfer files and folders from the command-line
DeskreenLive streaming your desktop to a web browser
dufDisk usage utility with more polished presentation than the classic df
ezaA turbo-charged alternative to the venerable ls command
Extension ManagerBrowse, install and manage GNOME Shell Extensions
fdWonderful alternative to the venerable find
fkillKill processes quick and easy
fontpreviewQuickly search and preview fonts
horcruxFile splitter with encryption and redundancy
KoohaSimple screen recorder
KOReaderDocument viewer for a wide variety of file formats
ImagineA simple yet effective image optimization tool
LanguageToolStyle and grammar checker for 30+ languages
Liquid PromptAdaptive prompt for Bash & Zsh
lnavAdvanced log file viewer for the small-scale; great for troubleshooting
lsdLike exa, lsd is a turbo-charged alternative to ls
Mark TextSimple and elegant Markdown editor
McFlyNavigate through your bash shell history
mdlessFormatted and highlighted view of Markdown files
notiMonitors a command or process and triggers a notification
NushellFlexible cross-platform shell with a modern feel
nvitopGPU process management for NVIDIA graphics cards
OCRmyPDFAdd OCR text layer to scanned PDFs
Oh My ZshFramework to manage your Zsh configuration
PaperworkDesigned to simplify the management of your paperwork
pastelGenerate, analyze, convert and manipulate colors
PDF Mix ToolPerform common editing operations on PDF files
pecoSimple interactive filtering tool that's remarkably useful
ripgrepRecursively search directories for a regex pattern
RnoteSketch and take handwritten notes
scrcpyDisplay and control Android devices
StickySimulates the traditional “sticky note” style stationery on your desktop
tldrSimplified and community-driven man pages
tmuxA terminal multiplexer that offers a massive boost to your workflow
TuskAn unofficial Evernote client with bags of potential
UlauncherSublime application launcher
WatsonTrack the time spent on projects
Whoogle SearchSelf-hosted and privacy-focused metasearch engine
ZellijTerminal workspace with batteries included
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

7 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
sid_sloth_1st (@sid_sloth_1st)
sid_sloth_1st (@sid_sloth_1st)
4 years ago

You mention that the app is installed using npm — but how does one launch the app? Is it installed as a regular GNU/Linux app on the system, or…?

joie
joie
4 years ago

Do we really need to use another markdown editor with electron-based app? I’ve already see 4 electron-based markdown editor article in just two weeks. Seriously folks… why do we need a full-fledged google chome web-browser only to use a markdown editor? Isn’t it better just to install the markdown plugin from Chrome Web Store ?

I really don’t get the electron-based developer mindset. It really beyond my comprehension.

Joshua B
Joshua B
4 years ago
Reply to  joie

Complaints like jole’s are rarely justified. He might not need *another* Markdown editor, but that’s irrelevant.

Markdown is very popular for documentation, so it’s not surprising there’s many Markdown editors available. In the same way, there’s 900+ Linux distributions. Critics will cite duplication of effort. Of course, there’s some, but again that’s largely irrelevant. Each Markdown editor offers different functionality, uses different toolkits etc. With more choice, there’s more likely something that meets the specific needs of an individual. And Abricotine is a very good editor with great inline preview.

Should anyone be criticized for developing open source software? It’s a great way of learning to code, collaborate with others, learn how to lead a project, etc etc.

Why should we be restricted to using a plugin for Chrome? A big proportion of users don’t even use Chrome / Chromium.

joie
joie
4 years ago
Reply to  Joshua B

“Complaints like jole’s are rarely justified. He might not need *another* Markdown editor, but that’s irrelevant.”

I complaint about using Electron as a the base of the application. Not about creating another yet Markdown Editor. Please re-read my comment.

“Why should we be restricted to using a plugin for Chrome? A big proportion of users don’t even use Chrome / Chromium.”

You’re already contradict yourself here. Don’t you know that Electron is based on Chrome? So the Abricotine is using Electron internally, and then eventually the user is restricted with Chrome. And didn’t you know that Electron is also using Node.js which is a full framework for web server development? Do we need a Web Browser + Web Server only to use a markdown editor?

Joshua B
Joshua B
4 years ago
Reply to  joie

Thanks for clarifying your opening ambiguous statement.

I made no contradiction. I’m fully aware Electron uses Chromium and Node.js, save your patronizing diatribe for someone else. I’ve been a developer for 30 years.

The point you failed to grasp is that recommending a Chrome plugin restricts the end user by forcing him/her to use a specific web browser, one that is proprietary (did you know Chrome is mostly based on Chromium, which is open source? — see I can be patronizing too 🙂

And you’re NOT running a web browser / web server with Abricotine.

And Abricotine’s RAM requirements are modest, nothing like the much bigger RAM dollop required by Chrome or Chromium.

Sorry to expose your fallacies.