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Add to SafariWhen comparing typora vs Roam Research, the Slant community recommends typora for most people. In the question“What is the best cross-platform note-taking app?” typora is ranked 15th while Roam Research is ranked 27th. The most important reason people chose typora is:
Typora immediately renders what's typed on the screen in Markdown format. This helps users to have a better understanding of how their document is being formatted.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Live preview
Typora immediately renders what's typed on the screen in Markdown format. This helps users to have a better understanding of how their document is being formatted.
Pro Hybrid interface
The editor and preview dual-pane setup typical of desktop Markdown editors are gone; instead, a singular interface makes for a WYSIWYG experience. This streamlines the workflow and encourages direct manipulation.
Pro Support for LaTeX expressions
It supports LaTeX expressions, with an easy-to-use MaxJax panel.
Pro Syntax highlight for fenced codes
It supports GFM's code fences, with syntax highlight support for C/C++, java, etc.
Pro Custom theme support
Typora has clean yet beautiful built-in themes and allows for users to create new themes using CSS.
Pro Support for tables
It supports tables for Markdown Extra. And also provides a GUI to make it easy to insert and edit them.
Pro Inline images
It won't display image like , But shows the image content inside the editor.
Pro Free during beta
Pro Shows table of contents for the document
It supports an outline for the document, by showing a table of contents on the left side of the screen.
Pro Cross-platform
Currently works on Windows, Mac and Linux.
Pro Natural typing experience
Editing in Markdown, either in WYSIWYG mode or in markdown code mode, feels natural. It never gets in the way.
Pro Make charts and diagrams with Mermaid, FlowChart and Sequence
Use fenced code-blocks to render diagrams using syntax from Mermaid and FlowChart.js.
Pro Sidebar with a list of files
You can open any folder in sidebar and see a list of other markdown files.
Pro Syncs with iCloud
Pro In place page creation / linking with brackets or hashtags
Pro Rename a page and all everything that references it renames as well
No broken links!
Pro Each bullet point can be either linked to, or included in full in any page (including the page it originated on. Yay transclusion!)
Pro Shift click on a link pulls up the link in a side panel without navigating you away
Pro Each bullet point on a page is zoomable as it's own 'wiki page'
Pro Helpful slash (/) commands while editing for autocomplete, TODOs and more
Pro Easy page merging.
Pro Explicit linked references included on every page at the bottom
Pro Supports markdown
Pro Bi-directional links
Pro Graph overview allows you to easily see how nodes relate
Pro Supports in place datalog queries
Pro In place editing
Pro Supports hiccup syntax for HTML snippets
Pro A default place for "Daily Notes" means not having to worry where a new note *should* go.
Cons
Con No mobile (Android/iOS) apps
Con In beta
Typora is still in beta and may be prone to changes or bugs.
Con Unusable image management
Con The immediate rendering of Markdown is hard on the eyes
Having Markdown immediately render causes text to jump into formatted text, which is distracting and hard on the eyes.
Con No portable version (Windows)
You need admin rights on a managed Windows computer to install it. There currently is no portable version available.
Con No mobile app
You can port Roam to Hermit, but there is no offline capacity.
Con No established pricing model, this could get expensive later
Rumored to be upwards of $30/month
Con No offline mode
The information can be accessed on the browser offline, but you cannot edit it.
Con Very expensive pricing model, no 'free' tier
For what still feels like beta-software, it's pricing model is very expensive in comparison with competitors that generally offer free tiers for example.
Con Forces you to edit with markdown, rather than wysiwyg
This issue is made worse by super basic formatting bugs, like if you want to for example unbold some text with control/cmd-b, it rather double-bolds it (e.g. it becomes bolded text), making the non-wysiwygness even more messy.
Con No vim mode
