Lucien

A minimal, cross-platform, graphical Markdown text editor

Features

• GitHub Flavored Markdown
• Smart punctuation with SmartyPants
• Programming language syntax highlighting in HTML
• Markdown/HTML split view with
  • Live-updating HTML
  • Synchronized scrolling
  • Automatic orientation (horizontal/vertical) based on window layout (portrait/landscape)
• Open file with dialog or drag & drop
• Optional auto-hiding menu bar (toggled with Alt)
• Export to standalone HTML file
• Way less than 1K SLOC

Anti-features

Things that have been left out intentionally:

• No toolbar or buttons. Functionality is invoked from the app menu and through keyboard shortcuts.
• No WYSIWYG interface for Markdown text (buttons for bold, italics, etc)
• No syntax highlighting in Markdown text
• No file browsing
• No tags or categories. Files may be organized in filesystem directories instead.

Installation

Fonts

Lucien uses the Hack and Open Sans fonts for the Markdown and HTML view respectively. To install them in Ubuntu/Debian Linux, issue:

sudo apt install fonts-open-sans fonts-hack-ttf

If the fonts are missing, it will fall back to the system's monospace and sans-serif declared fonts, but the visual end result may not be as good.

With a pre-built package

TODO

Or manually with Git

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/agorf/lucien

Enter the checked-out directory:

cd lucien/

Install the dependencies:

yarn install # or npm install

Run the app:

yarn start # or npm start

Running

Write the following in a new file under ~/.local/share/applications/lucien.desktop to have your application launcher find Lucien:

[Desktop Entry]
Exec=/path/to/lucien
Name=Lucien
Type=Application

Don't forget to change the Exec property to the path of the Lucien binary in your system.

Alternatively, you can run Lucien from a terminal, optionally passing the path of a single Markdown document:

./Lucien /path/to/my-file.md

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcut	Functionality
Ctrl+N	new file
Ctrl+O	open file
Ctrl+S	save file
Ctrl+Q	quit app
Ctrl+C	copy selected text
Ctrl+V	paste selected text
Ctrl+X	cut selected text
Ctrl+A	select all text
Ctrl+Z	undo last change
Ctrl+Shift+Z or Ctrl+Y	redo last change

Acknowledgements

Lucien was inspired by the following projects, resources and cats:

• Notable (has many of the "anti-features" and is no longer open-source)
• Dillinger (web-based)
• Steve Kinney's "Electron Fundamentals v2" course
• Lucien, the cat

License

MIT

Author

Angelos Orfanakos