When comparing Texts vs Caret, the Slant community recommends Caret for most people. In the question“What are the best open source Markdown editors for UNIX-like systems?” Caret is ranked 14th while Texts is ranked 29th. 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
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Supports multiple Markdown dialects
Unfortunately, this is a global setting for save (it can open any dialect)
Pro Immediate Markdown rendering and preview
Texts immediately renders the formatted Markdown as you are typing it inside the text box. It's quite similar to a WYSIWYG editor.
Pro Imports and exports many formats
HTML, Word, TeX, PDF, ePUB, OPML.
Pro Works on Mac OS X and Windows
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 Overwrites standard Markdown
Editing a preexisting Markdown document overwrites standard markup in it (for example, interpreting headings marked with leading "#"s and rewriting them with a trailing underscore line), adds extra blank lines between all paragraphs, and adds extra spaces at the head of unordered-list items.
Con Spell checking is not activated by default
There's a built-in spell checker which is not activated by default and is quite hidden.
Con Limited choice of built-in themes
You can download the CSS for these themes and create your own, but would be nice to have more flavors (e.g. GitHub)
Con No word count in older versions
Word count is present in Texts 0.21, at least.
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.