Sublime Text vs MacDown

Sublime Text has a minimap on the side that provides a top-down view of the file and keyboard shortcuts for most actions. It also supports a large number of languages and general text editing features out of the box.

Sublime Text is very lightweight by default. Customization occurs on the fly thanks to Package Control.

Sublime Text uses TextMate's syntax declaration files to support new languages, it has all its menus and keybindings generated from JSON files, and it can be scripted to add new features using Python.
If Sublime Text doesn't support a desired language or feature, it's usually not long before someone implements it themselves - examples include the plugin package manager and the 'open in browser' command.

When you start using Sublime Text, it doesn't drown you in keyboard shortcuts or non-intuitive use-concepts. However, high-level functionality can still be easily accessed when the need for it arises.

Multiple cursors and column selection allows for versatile ways of editing.
ctrl + d will select the current word and each time the command is repeated, it adds the next occurrence of the word to the selection.
ctrl + click or middle-mouse click will place another cursor in the place that's clicked. Cursors can then be controlled together. This also permits selecting vertically.
ctrl + shift + l will place a cursor on every highlighted line.

Sublime Text looks consistently the same across Windows, OS X, and Linux.

Sublime Text allows for all sorts of customization to help users change almost everything in the editor: Key Bindings, Menus, Snippets, Macros, Completions, and many more. Essentially, just about everything in Sublime Text is customizable with simple JSON files. This system gives the user flexibility as settings can be specified on a per-file type and per-project basis.

Sublime is quick to start and never slows down. The UI is always responsive and you know what is happening in the background.

The package manager is a plugin and can be swapped with something else custom.

Sublime Text, while being lighter-weight than an IDE, still supports many IDE features.

• Text from the current file is used to provide autocomplete.
• Project Support (folder browsing, scoped history, build-system declarations).
• Refactoring support is emulated through multi-select, project-wide find and replace, and regular expression search.
• Syntax-aware selection and GoTo for quickly jumping to locations in the project.
• Snippets and Macros.
• A Python console for everything else.

Command Palette allows for fuzzy searching all available settings, snippets, etc.

All you need to do when starting up is to install a package manager and modify user configuration.

Regex commands help describe a certain amount of text.

From menus to commands, assign key maps to almost anything.

Settings are modular and can be shared.

Distraction free editing takes over your screen and removes every UI element so you can focus on code.

Choose from many build systems or craft your own.

A Sublime license can be bought but it can still be used for free. However, a pop-up appears when you save multiple times.

Open Goto Anything by pressing Ctrl or Command + P and by using fuzzy search you can look for a file in your project. The file will load even without pressing enter, so you can make sure you've found the correct file without committing.

Both of these programming interfaces are cross-platform, open source, and easy to use.

Provides command line shortcut for server upload.

Vintage mode is Vim-style editing that's already built into the text editor.

Sublime Text compatibility with Textmate bundles is good, but excludes commands, which are incompatible. In general, Sublime Text syntax definitions are compatible with Textmate language files (.tmLanguage extension).

Create your own theme with online editor.

With lot of functionalities, where other editor even not think to provide.

MacDown is a free and open source editor influenced by Mou. It's released under the MIT license.

MacDown's main view is split into two panels. The user types on the left and the Markdown is rendered on the fly in the right panel. This helps users to better understand the way they are formatting their document.

You can use a CSS file to customize the rendered output and the file preview you are working on will display the rendered Markdown with the custom CSS styling on top.

MacDown has syntax highlighting support for various languages when writing code in fenced code blocks.

MacDown has a good built-in auto-completion engine for Markdown symbols.

Using MacDown for the notorious README.md use case gets you going without reading any manual or requiring any configuration values. Think of it as a sort of TextEdit for MarkDown files. Thus its shortcomings - neither powerful nor versatile - turn out to be a PRO for novices trying to jump on the MarkDown bandwagon. Open its help and you'll immediately find yourself editing the MacDown's MarkDown help file, a MarkDown primer with some MacDown menus and configuration added.

Unlike a few other editors, MacDown lets you link between markdown pages.

This is especially useful for Markdown novices