The songbird document editor will be open source: starting with but not limited to markdown

writing  | Dadong

Produce | OSC The open source community （ID：oschina2013)

Whether it's writing API Document or output technology blog , Technical writing has become the most work of programmers after writing code , The handy document editor may be second only to IDE Dinner guy thing .

In fact, the earliest computer technical documents can be traced back to 1944 year , Harvard University Mark 1 ASCC Member of the research and development team of automatic sequence control computer Grace Hopper Wrote an operation manual for the early computer they developed .

There is another saying that “ The world's first electronic computer manual ” yes BIAC Operation and maintenance manual of binary automatic computer , from Joseph Chapline On 1949 Year compilation . The manual creates a series of computer manual standards , And became the template for many other computer manuals that were born later .

Although these two cases can be traced back to 1940 years , But it was not until the 1960 Late S , With the application of process oriented programming language in the third generation micro integrated circuit computer , It makes code comments and technical documents become the standard configuration of software development .

From this period , In order to unify the format standard of text on different computer software and hardware ,GML、TEX、LaTex、HTML、Markdown And so on , These markup languages combine the text in the computer and other information related to the text , Computer text coding that shows details about document structure and data processing , Set standards for the format of computer text . These markup languages have also become necessary skills for software engineers in different periods to write development documents .

among ,Markdown As the youngest markup language, it has been widely used so far , Become the best choice for many developers who are used to pure keyboard operation for technical writing .

Why developers like Markdown？

Most of the popular developer tools today support Markdown, Include GitHub、Gitee、Trello、Slack etc. . Most developers will also support Markdown Editor's open source tool to build your own personal blog .

However, the blog scene is still in its infancy 2000 In the early s ,WordPress and TypePad And other platforms do not provide much convenience in editor function , At this time, developers still need to use HTML To handle text formatting , Technology bloggers and UI The designer John Gruber Is one of them . although Gruber Like writing online and sharing your technical content , But he's really fed up with using HTML The trouble of formatting everything .

▲ John Gruber

Inspired by the aesthetics of plain text email communication , stay Reddit cofounder Aaron Swartz With the help of ,John Gruber On 2004 year 3 month 19 The first version of Markdown.

Markdown comparison HTML And other rich text formats are more portable , Contains only hierarchical titles 、 Bold font 、 Italics 、 quote 、 Add code blocks 、 Insert a picture / Document functions commonly used by programmers such as hyperlink , And the format is very simple , Typesetting can be realized + Write at the same time , And there is no need to use the mouse to click to adjust the format , It is very suitable for programmers who are used to pure keyboard operation .

On the other hand ,Markdown The concise syntax is very easy to parse by the browser , This makes Markdown It applies to almost anything Web scene , This is also the reason why it will be widely used in code hosting platform in the future Readme、 Open source project online documentation 、 One of the important reasons for scenarios such as developers' personal blogs .

Thanks to these excellent features designed for technical documents ,Markdown It soon became popular among developers .

Began in Markdown Language bird

at present , In addition to self built blogs , All kinds of support Markdown The writing platform has become the preferred document and knowledge base building tool for domestic developers , for example Notion、 Language sparrow 、 Graphite document 、 Impression notes, etc .

among , As an internal incubation project of ant group , Gained a good reputation in the developer community . According to statistics , Insert the most popular document into the function card , The number one user is the picture card , Now there are 7100 m , The second most used is the code block , achieve 2500 m , It can be seen that the developer group accounts for a large proportion of YuQue users .

Yan Wang, a research and development engineer from YuQue, told us , YuQue was originally developed by an ant programmer in his spare time Markdown Editor .

2016 year , Ant financial cloud needs a tool to host its documents , The Engineer in charge of the work makes use of his spare time , Built this document tool , That is, the rudiment of the language bird . The beginning of the project , There is no support for people and resources , At the same time, it is also to quickly verify the prototype , The lowest cost scheme is selected in the technical selection . among , The application layer client selects React Technology stack , Combined with ant open source Ant Design, And USES the CodeMirror To achieve a powerful 、 Experience elegant markdown Online editor .

2017 year , As YuQue is recognized within the team , The goal of the project is not only the documentation tool of the financial cloud R & D team , Instead, it will become a knowledge management platform for all Alibaba employees . therefore , YuQue is facing technicians Markdown Outside the editor , Rich text editors are also provided to non-technical creators , And chose a more “Web” The route of the , Formula added to rich text editor 、 Text drawing 、 Mind mapping and other functions .

During this period , The front-end editor of the language bird starts from codeMirror Migrate to Slate. In order to better realize the function of the sparrow editor , Within the project team fork 了 Slate In depth development , At the same time, it also customized a separate content storage format , To provide more efficient data processing and better compatibility .

As the editor gets more and more complex , stay slate On the basis of the development of more and more problems , YuQue team finally embarked on the road of self-developed editor , And browser based Contenteditable Implemented rich text editor , adopt Canvas Implemented table editor , adopt SVG Realized mind map editor .

since 2018 Since the official provision of services to the outside world in , The language bird team used the editor to develop itself , The underlying services are fully in the form of cloud , adopt JavaScript Full stack R & D , Provide knowledge creation and management tools for enterprise users and personal knowledge workers in the form of cloud services .

Editor factors that developers like

Yama —— This famous and domineering technology brother's experience in writing is similar to many technology bloggers in open source China , In addition to being a developer of YuQue R & D team , Spare time is also a technical self media , use “ Brother moustache ” This pseudonym is a technology blog that has been written for more than ten years .

“ Brother moustache ” At first, I did content sharing in the blog Garden , Later, I bought ECs and built my own blog , I have also migrated the blog as a whole to GitHub On , Go around in 2016 In, I first came into contact with YuQue , Became an early user of the finch .

Introduction to the king of hell , There are three states in your daily writing ：

• reflection , One is to record the contents of the brain , At this time, there are almost no requirements for tools , As long as you can input ;

• Arrangement , The second state is to organize your thoughts , In fact, the most complicated process of writing an article is in this link , We need to integrate what we have in mind with what we already have , Let fragmentary knowledge produce structure and relevance , In the process , Some drawing tools are often used 、 Data statistics and analysis tools ;

• expression , Write the sorted content in a written form , When you hit the keyboard , Will keep thinking , Suppose I am a reader at this time , I'm reading these words , How do I feel , Keep trying to transpose , In this way, it is possible to write an article that others are willing to read .

For most technical writers , What is needed is the editing tool that can meet the second state . Take YuQue as an example , Yama believes that the reason why YuQue can attract developer groups , Thanks to its product design, it has done a good job in understanding the needs of technical writing .

The first is the code block function of YuQue . Early bird talk was simple Markdown Code block rendering . After iteration , The sparrow code block is enhanced in style and supported languages , Support nearly 100 common programming language styles ; In addition, the naming of code blocks has been added 、 Topic switching 、 Height adjustment 、 Function folding and other functions , It can meet the needs of most code presentation .

The drawing board function of YuQue is also very easy to use , Not only support text drawing , It also combines mind mapping and flow chart , Provide very rich drawing elements , It provides the ability to quickly make technical architecture diagram .

Use the open interface of the language bird , Developers can synchronously push the blog on YuQue to GitHub My personal warehouse ：

besides , YuQue also has a document editor that can operate with a full keyboard 、 Knowledge base directory 、 Creation index, green wall and so on , These are very friendly elements for the developer community .

Last but not least , Yama also revealed that the team plans to open source the code of YuQue document editor , Looking forward to the open cooperation mode of the community , Make the songbird editor better and stronger .

Writing is a very good habit for every developer , Can help us achieve the goal of lifelong learning , An easy-to-use documentation tool can help us build a knowledge base , And benefit for life .

“ In the programmer's daily life , Not only does our code run on the machine with high concurrency , The brain is the same , Every day we have to deal with a lot of things , What if you can't handle it ？ At this time, there needs to be a transfer station for information , Control the speed of information flow , At the same time , In this transfer station , Eliminate invalid information , Then classify them by category , Finally, it will be handed over to the brain for processing , In this way, we can do things one by one with ease . This idea is also well reflected in YuQue .”

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