Atom Editor
Well this last week a pleasant surprise came out. GitHub released their next generation programming editor from beta Atom Editor as open source.
I had pulled down atom as a beta testor a while back but didn’t stop and really try to use it since I typically live in vim in those rare moments I find myself trying to code these days. Google Docs is where I live most of the time these days. Since I last looked their is now a vim keybindings plugin and it worked.
This post was written in Atom and the best thing ever during this is the markdown preview pane.
Now I’ve got a handy preview pane to let me know
if I’m remembering my markdown syntax correctly
and extra bonus is there is a spell checker built
into atom editor that give me the red squiggle of
of warning for me. 
Atom editor setup
Install for your platform and then do the following:
- Atom Menu → Install Shell Commands
- Gives you two command line apps: atom and apm (tool to install pcakges)
- Atom Menu → Preferences → Packages → Install Packages
-
Vim Mode Plus
apm install vim-mode-plus
-
Zen # distraction free writing
apm install zen
Find more cool packages at https://atom.io/packages/
This functionality is super handy for the other application I’ve been trying to add to my tool chest a markdown based slideshow tool called Deckset that teknofire showed me recently.
Deckset
Deckset (OSX only) takes a simple markdown document formatted just right and turns it into a slideshow. Weirdly enough Deckset is magically aware of atom and when open it will create a little preview pane overlay.
Exmple 3 slide Deckset markdown:
# [fit] Welcome Slide
---
# [fit] Second Slide
## [damnitalex](http://damnitalex.com) time
---
I find myself wondering how much more I could integrate markdown into my work related writing I end up doing.
Perhaps my next proposal I can do in the Atom Editor with Markdown.
Fun times 