Notes from making mori.
Releases worth explaining, and the decisions behind them. For every version, see the release notes.
Tools change, but writing goes on. mori is a Markdown editor built to make that time easier and more trustworthy.
Have you ever switched branches only to find that an open document had turned into a blank screen? We saw that happen in our app while taking screenshots for the blog, and while fixing it, we caught another, quieter bug too.
What happens to your document if your laptop shuts down at the moment you save? In mori, the answer is “either before the save or after the save—one of the two.”
Have you ever seen a table you did not edit appear in git diff? mori treats the file, not a document model, as the source of truth, and writes only the bytes you typed to disk when saving.
There is nothing to verify in a claim that something is lightweight. mori commits to eight numbers that speak for it, and publishes the methods, conditions, and raw data alongside them.
The editor stays open all day, but the time actually spent typing is only a fraction of that. For the rest of the time, mori schedules neither frames nor timers, and enforces that through two layers—code inspection and measurements on real hardware.
What you really want to know when buying a tool is not the price itself, but when the next bill will come. Once you buy mori, you will not be charged again within that major version.
Have you ever clicked Find, only to feel the top of the screen become two rows heavier? That was the case with our Find card, so after opening three other editors, we reduced it to a single row.
Have you ever pasted in a screenshot, only to watch the folder fill up without knowing where the file was created or what it was named? mori asks once before writing an image to disk, and records what it is writing and where on a card.
The reason the same app can look slightly different across distributions is usually not the app itself, but the version of the toolkit installed on the system. Starting with beta.2, all four installation formats carry the same libraries.
Have you ever fixed just one word in a table, only to see the entire table show up in git diff? Tables are where Markdown most often gets out of alignment.
Have you ever placed the cursor to edit a single bold word, only to have the entire paragraph revert to raw Markdown? mori reveals only the markers of the syntax touched by the cursor.
Have you ever moved the cursor over a list item, only to see all the text shift sideways for a moment? It happens in almost every editor that hides and reveals symbols.
We built a lab so we wouldn't have to say, \"It works on my machine.\" We launch virtual machines that combine Ubuntu versions, sessions, input methods, and installation formats, run the same tests, and view the results in a single table.
When you write at length in Korean, there are moments when the final syllable disappears or a word splits apart. That is not a typo, but a matter of where the editor handles composition.
mori's first public beta is now available on Linux. We believe the job of a first release is to document not only what is included, but also what is still missing.
Many apps carry around an entire browser engine just to render a single equation. That path was closed to mori, so we had to find another way.
Have you ever pressed Enter once in a Markdown editor only for the cursor to move down two lines, or seen paragraphs that looked separate on the screen merge into one block on GitHub? They are two sides of the same question.
Any editor is fast for short notes. The difference emerges as documents get longer, and that difference comes down to whether the cost of a single keystroke follows the size of the edit or the size of the document.
Have you ever noticed that Hangul looks fine, but only the Chinese characters look somehow unfamiliar? When we decide not to draw text ourselves and leave it to the platform’s text engine, our job becomes not “what to draw,” but “which font to ask for.”
There is a way to build the UI only once when releasing the same editor for three operating systems. We went down that path once, then turned back and placed a set of thin, platform-specific shells on top of a single core.
Does opening a preview split the window in two, and does switching modes feel like reopening the document? Mori’s Live, Source, and Reading modes are three views of the same buffer, so switching involves no conversion, saving, or reparsing.
If the fan spins just because a Markdown editor is open, it's not because Markdown is expensive. When the same document is measured under the same conditions, the cost comes from the rendering engine and clock-driven loops.
There are already plenty of Markdown editors, so why make another one? Not because they lack features, but because the values they keep open, the traces their saves leave behind, and the way they feel at your fingertips have never all come together in a single product.