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Markdown desktop

Two best free desktop markdown editors seem to be Visual Studio Code and Atom. In order to use them conveniently with LaTeX math formulas you may need to install LyX that among other things is a WYSIWYM ("what you see is what you mean") LaTeX editor (which feels pretty much the same as WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get")). LyX helps you write LaTeX formulas like in MS Word and then clipboard copy LaTeX code to your markdown text. In order to edit that code again you need to import your markdown file to LyX with LaTeX (clipboard/plain) import command.

  • I was not able to get working spell checking on VS Code. English spell checking works on Atom but I was not able to make russian and english spell checking work simultaneously. In order to make it work you should specify something like en-US, ru-RU in Locales setting and C:\Dictionaries in Locale Paths setting of spell-check module (by atom). And put en-EN.dic to that folder (you can download the Hunspell dictionary).
  • VS Code collects user data. As stated here in order to disable it you should add the following option "telemetry.enableTelemetry": false to the settings.
  • Sometimes some Atom packages break spell check or highlighting so the clear install may be the easiest option. As stated here in order to delete Atom completely you should uninstall it and then delete it's files from C:\Users\<user name>\.atom, C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\atom and C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\Atom.
  • Both Atom and VS Code can preview markdown as HTML together with LaTeX formulas. You should install markdown-preview-plus (by atom-community) package for Atom and Markdown+Math (by goessner) for VS Code. I was not able to make VS Code export markdown with LaTeX to PDF. Luckily Atom's markdown preview can be saved as HTML and then printed to PDF via Chrome or something else. And the saved HTML file renders properly! Also Atom LaTeX renderer is mature MathJax when the VS Code's renderer is much more faster KaTeX (that at the moment doesn't support all that MathJax support).
  • Some people say that VS Code works faster than Atom (I didn't notice the difference actually). But VS Code actually starts faster. Both can be used to open markdown files right from the Windows shell (from Explorer). But it's a bit unobvious in Atom: you should open Settings and click on System. You'll see checkboxes to enable it.
  • Both Atom and VS Code have packages that can automatically generate TOC (table of contents) for the document.
  • Both have packages that can insert unicode characters via LaTeX shortcuts. But Atom's latex-completions (by JunoLab) seem to be more convenient and annoying than VS Code's Unicode Latex (by Omer Sheikh).
  • Both have packages that can insert emoji. Atom's autocomplete-emojis (by atom) is more convenient and annoying but VS Code's Emoji (by Perkovec) have more characters available.

So the winner at the moment is Atom.