We're making changes to the Community, so you may have received some notifications - thanks for your patience and welcome back. Learn more here.

cbaspree's avatar
cbaspree
Explorer | Level 3
5 years ago
Status:
Closed

Import markdown files for edition or auto formatting text pasted from an external markdown file

It's great that the paper support markdown, but it's frustrating not being able to see or edit the code that allows the document to render nicely.

Today if I paste text from another markdown file, Paper doesn't format that text and I need to remove and re add symbols like # or *. Because of that, it would be a great feature for Paper to allow the auto formatting of pasted text, this alone would make me happy, but the full feature could be to allow the import of markdown files to be edited, not just saved as .md in Dropbox.

Thanks for your consideration.
Best regards

 

  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    Status changed:
    New
    to
    Gathering Support

    Hi cbaspree; thanks for using Paper and helping us improve it!

     

    This idea is going to need a bit more support before we can share your suggestion with the team so I’ve just updated the status to encourage more users to back you up by giving a pinch on the like button (upvote). 

     

    Let us know if you have anything to add or ask in the meantime. 

  • ZoserLock's avatar
    ZoserLock
    New member | Level 2

    As someone who use a lot of documentation as markdown files, I Support this idea.

  • Orcomp's avatar
    Orcomp
    Explorer | Level 3

    Yes would be good to be able to open MD files in Paper.

     

    I understand that might be too difficult for now, but if it could convert MD to .paper for now that would make life easier for everyone. (Paper would need to suck in images as well.)

     

  • lukehm's avatar
    lukehm
    New member | Level 2

    Format-on-paste for paper is a critical feature

  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    Status changed:
    Gathering Support
    to
    Not for right now

    Thank you for your idea, while we can’t take every idea forward we do regularly re-review and will update you if anything changes!

  • court74's avatar
    court74
    Helpful | Level 5

    +1 for this. Dropbox has the option to be a leader among people who write in Markdown, then collaborate with non-Markdown people for edits, etc (then export back to Markdown).

     

    It seems like hyping the Markdown aspects of Paper could be a valuable strategic move, as this workflow does not seem to be available in such an elegant way, elsewhere. But... to work, it needs better markdown import and paste integration. Most Markdown writers are very attached to their editing platforms, so this will be needed for Dropbox to win, here--but it's so close!

  • court74's avatar
    court74
    Helpful | Level 5

    Update: Not super-elegant, but pretty fast trick to 'import' Markdown into Paper I just discovered: 

    1. Copy markdown text from any markdown (or plaintext?) editor
    2. Paste into new or desired .paper file using right-click>paste as plain text* - Paper then seems to format the Markdown syntax as if I just typed it manually.

    *I'm doing this with Chrome browser's 'paste as plain text' right-click contextual menu item--possibly not all browsers have this. I'm going to post about this trick as a new thread, too. People need to know about this!

  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    Status changed:
    Not for right now
    to
    Closed
    This idea has been closed as it has reached the end of the Share an Idea process.
     
    Thank you for your suggestion, and if you have another idea to share, please do!