I think lists needs to be reworked...

Ok, so lately I've been using nvUltra as part of my "Markdown ecosystem".
And I will write more feedback later, but wanted to get going with some thoughts on lists. 😊 

A little background

Two of the ways I use Markdown, might make me a bit of an outlier:

1. I do quite a lot of my writing and thinking in lists. So I often use Markdown editors kinda like outliners (and I also like "proper" outliners, like Bike.
2. I often jump between different programs and editors, so want solid interoperability.

I don't really have specific experience with MultiMarkdown - so I don't want to come blazing in here and crap all over conventions and stuff. This is just my perspective, as an "outsider". 🙂 Also, even though I'll be quite hard on the way nvUltra handles lists, I like a lot about the app! So please take suggestions for improvements as help out of love, and not angry complaints, hehe.

Often gets confused

I will often go back and move stuff in my lists around - and also copy and paste stuff into lists. And I've noticed that nvUltra often gets confused when I do anything other than just writing the list and leaving it be.
Things will bug out, I can't tab properly, etc. It will also break other text on the page, and make me have to restart. Here's a video of me having A Very Hard Time! It doesn't write at the bottom like I want, and suddenly text starts to render all weirdy.

Insists on newlines

I will sometimes write one list, and then want to write a different list right under it. Normally I would just add a newline between them, and start the next list. But nvUltra will interpret that as "Oh, so you want a newline between each list item? Cool." And then I literally can't make the list items on the second list not have this extra line, without doing some workarounds. 😕 And this is even if I have turned off the option for spaces between newlines.

Suggestion(s):

I'd just have it respect the option no matter what.

Doesn't do great with tabs

I saw that this was discussed in this old thread. What I'm discussing here, is the difference between these two options - let's call them Behaviour A and Behaviour B:

I've tested opening the same document in the following editors:

• nvUltra
• Bear/Panda
• NotePlan
• Taio
• MarkEdit
• Ulysses
• TaskPaper (with dashes)
• Logseq
• Obsidian

Here's a link to a giant image with screenshots of the same list in all apps, with both space and tab between the asterisks and items. MarkEdit is the only other app I could find who has Behaviour A. But that's not that big of a deal - I'm not saying nvUltra has to do something, just because others do it. What is a problem, is that using the elastic tab-trick breaks the list in Obsidian, NotePlan, Bear/Panda and partly TaskPaper.

Suggestion(s):

Now, personally I don't see why anyone would want Behaviour A over B - but I get that that's subjective. 😅 But I don't think a solution (relying on elastic tabs) that breaks compatibility with several apps, is an acceptable solution for users who want the most common behaviour.

In terms of aesthetics, I think Bear looks the best (with different symbols when you indent). But I like that nvUltra has this thing with being very true to the actual symbols that's typed. So I suggest the following:

1. Create a boolean for choosing between Behaviour A and B. (I'd also like to be able to adjust bullet left- and right-margins.)
2. Vertically center the asterisks in lists. (Like Taio.)
3. I'd also add lines, like Obsidian and Logseq - but it should be possible to turn off in theming. I'm thinking the following logic behind drawing them:
   1. Lines are drawn if an item has sub-items and the line would be at least 1 line long.
   2. The start and end points is where an asterisks would be on that line. (So, you know, centered vertically. 😉)

List item movement

I can't get the Edit➔ Move Selected Text ➔ Shift Up/Down to work with the keyboard... Anyway - I don't think it's a good idea to not have Up/Down and Left/Right the same place. The most common hotkey for this, in my (limited) experience, is Ctrl+Cmd+Arrows - so I'd go with that.
I also got an idea that I don't think I've seen anywhere, that I think would make for a great option to be able to turn on: If you outdent a list item when it's all the way to the left, you remove the asterisk, and if you indent a paragraph, an asterisk is added.

Rudimentary task list support

I know you don't like tasks, heh. But it would be nice to have hitting space in the example above create another empty task item, be able to click it to fill in/remove the x, and be able to style the dash and braces with a mono-spaced font, so that empty items (with one space) would be aligned with those who's filled in.

Lastly: What if I want to rewrite a list item?

I often use Shift+Command+Left to select the entire line - for instance if I want to rewrite a list item.
If I do this in Bear or Obsidian, the selection doesn't include the bullet, so I easily can rewrite. But if I do want to delete the bullet as well, I'll just hit the Shift+Cmd+Left again, or hit backspace twice. Easy!

Hitting the hotkey once does this:

Hitting it again does this:

But in nvUltra, It will jump straight to the last image, and select the bullet. And I can't easily not select it. This is especially annoying if I'm indented a couple of times, as I would have to type a couple of tabs and asterisks to get back to where I was. Or I would need to hit Command+Left, and then a bunch of Rights, and then Shift+Cmd+Right to select everything but the asterisk.
To be clear, I get that sometimes you do want to select the bullet, and sometimes you don't - and that how often each of them happen will vary from person to person. But the fact that it's easy to go from "Not selected ➔ Selected", but hard to go from "Selected ➔ Not selected" is a good argument for why "Not selected" should be the default. (But a toggle in Settings is always nice!)
 

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I have more thoughts about the app (text folding would also be nice!) - but that's more than enough for now. 😅 
Again, remember that I like a lot about the app, which I hope me spending quite a lot of time on this shows. 🙂

-Erlend