Most people recognize that Emacs Org mode is superior to Markdown as a markup language. (Sorry Markdown partisans but it is.) The problem with Org mode is that as a practical matter it’s restricted to Emacs users. Mostly that doesn’t matter since you’re usually interested in the final exported version of the document. Sometimes, though, you’re collaborating with someone who’s not an Emacs user and you need a markup language that you can both use. There are many possibilities, of course, but most people settle on Markdown as a sort of lingua franca. That makes sense because the exporters are not associated with any particular editor—John Gruber’s original implementation was a Perl script—so everyone can work on the same source document.

Mike Zamansky is a perfect example of this. He prefers to write in Org mode but sometimes, when collaborating, he’s forced to use Markdown. Emacs, of course, has excellent support for Markdown so Zamansky—and the rest of us—don’t have to leave the comfort of our preferred editor.

In the latest video of his Using Emacs Series, Zamansky considers some of the Emacs tools for Markdown. There is, of course, markdown-mode major mode to help you write the actual Markdown source but Zamansky also wanted an easy way to preview his document. It turns out that there are a lot of packages for that and the video discusses many of them. Zamansky finally settled on grip-mode. It’s a very nice previewer that provides live updates so you see your changes as you make them. That met Zamansky’s goal of making the process as frictionless as possible.

The video is 11 minutes, 47 seconds long so it should be easy to find time for it. If, like most Emacs users, you sometimes find yourself needing to write in Markdown for collaboration or other reasons, you should definitely watch this video. Like all of Zamansky’s videos, you’ll learn a lot.