On Sat, 09 Feb 2013 09:51:46 -0700, Bill Meahan
What made the difference is a little editor, written entirely in Python so it is cross-platform, called ReText. It is less powerful than Emacs but has the advantage of almost-real-time preview of what the produced document will look like in plain HTML. It's not quite WYSIWYG but it _is_ the next best thing and satisfies my needs. You can find ReText at http://sourceforge.net/projects/retext/ As I said, it (should) work for Windows and Mac users but you must have WebKit installed for the preview feature. Mac users have it by default since Safari uses it. Actually, Apple wrote it. Of course, you need Python installed as well.
I never heard of retext before, so I spent some time with it... thanks for the reference! Unicode support seems solid, even bidi (via Qt). OTOH it's waaay too geeky for the average citizen to install -- too many steps (python, pyqt,...), have to search for your .conf file through a python interpreter and you still can't find it after that etc. Then in Windows it turns out to be an .ini file, not a .conf file! Then you have to make a .bat file to start it with a mouse click, etc. Now you previously mentioned working with colleagues etc. For Windows users MarkdownPad -- http://markdownpad.com/ -- has most of the same features as ReText (e.g. custom css) and is trivial to install. Best wishes Idris -- Professor Idris Samawi Hamid Department of Philosophy Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523