Add to ChromeWhen comparing Gitbook vs Caret, the Slant community recommends Caret for most people. In the question“What are the best Markdown editors for Linux?” Caret is ranked 17th while Gitbook is ranked 21st. The most important reason people chose Caret is:
The single pane formats your MD as you write it but retains the markup so you can see what's going on.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Ability to accept donations for books
If donations are set up, users have the ability to choose if and how much they want to spend on a book. It's limited to $100 per donation.
Pro (planned) Ability to automatically distribute books to online retailers
Gitbook plans to soon release a feature that allows easily distributing your books to Amazon, Apple's App Store, Google Play, Kobo Store.
Pro Includes good analytics
Pro All authors keep rights to their books
Pro Includes promotion tools
Pro Versioning with Git
Version control is based on GIT scm.
Pro Free support for custom domain names
Pro Single-pane hybrid interface
The single pane formats your MD as you write it but retains the markup so you can see what's going on.
Pro Has a heading navigator
Hit ⌘ G to see document titles in a hierarchical view, type and use the arrows to navigate.
Pro Has a file manager
Hit ⌘ T to browse current folder, navigate the file system and manage your files and folders, type to search, right click to create / move / rename / delete items.
Pro Supports multiple cursors / selections
Make ten changes at the same time, not one change ten times - lets you edit multiple lines at once, perform quick and selective find and replace, etc.
Pro Supports context commands
Hit "Enter" to fix spelling, convert list to ordered/unordered/task, convert reference link to inline, jump to reference link definition, jump to footnote definition, visit links, etc.
Pro Supports auto-completions
Auto-completion for paths of links and images, keywords in fenced code blocks, emoji, etc.
Pro Offers inline preview for LaTeX math expressions
Renders LaTeX math expressions as soon as you have finished writing them.
Pro Supports "select more" / "select less" commands
Hit ⌥ ↑ to extend the current selection to the next biggest element and ⌥ ↓ to shrink the selection.
Cons
Con Wire transfers are US only
Ability to automatically deposit revenue in your bank account is limited to United States. PayPal deposits work internationally.
Con Donations are buggy
The form for donations automatically changes to a credit card information form as soon as any amount of money is entered in the form field for donation amount. In addition to the process being jarring, it also does not allow you to finish entering the amount and there's no way to change the amount after the form has changed. Also, the site says they limit donations to $100 USD, but higher amounts can be entered with no indication that they wouldn't go through.
Con Not free
No longer free, try and buy
Con The shortcuts don't toggle formatting
Pressing cmd+B, for example, will begin a bold segment of text, but pressing it again doesn't end that bold segment, it retroactively turns the boldness off. This interrupts writing flow tremendously.
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