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Markdown, the light and human-sized marking language we know well, was created to make us write better for the web. In theory, for blogs and more. There are many solutions to use it for example for your blog or to manage a website, but almost always they bring with them the need to go through an intermediate stage, an extra step (rendering of the contents, copy-and-paste of the text converted to html or in the blog editor on the browser). Instead, Byword, who is an old acquaintance of the Apple world, decided to veer decisively towards the small but extremely functional app by enhancing what was already there rather than trying to expand further (as others have done, for example, like Ulysses).
Maintains a greater lightness of functionality than for example iA Writer, but at the same time enhances its ability to interact directly with online content. And it eliminates the in-app payment filter that previously veiled the desire to be used in this way.
What Byworld looks like today
Available for all versions of macOS from OS X 10.8 up (therefore requires a totally 64-bit operating system) the Byword app now in version 2.8 is very simple and complete, with a rich integration for iCloud and for the RTF document format, which the authors consider the main export mode next to that in HTML. It is not only possible to export to RTF, but also to copy directly in this format to the clipboard from the text of the documentio, saving an entire export step to the outside, if for example you want to paste the content of the text written in an email or in a CMS online.
Also Byword follows a minimalist approach to the “classic” iA Writer, to which it has remained faithful, but with some differences compared to the iA Labs model which are what make the rather intriguing software today. First of all for the completeness of the writing platform: Byword exists only in the Apple ecosystem but for both Mac and iPhone and iPad. It uses iCloud as its main sync system but can also use other systems like Dropbox. The problem of how to deal with the latter system arises only with regard to iOS because in reality Byword on Mac simply opens and closes documents on the local filesystem.
The minimalist settings management
Byword then has a minimalist but very powerful margin adjustment system, font and theme, which is different from iA Writer. You can choose two themes (light and dark) and you can choose all the fonts you want (the first that is proposed is the excellent San Francisco of macOS with a preset size of 17 points, for other privileged fonts the option is always preset at 15 or 17 points) and three types of pagination with narrow, medium and wide margins. Or, if you want, you can choose to work in RTF instead of markdown and live happily as if you were using a simpler but powerful version of TextEdit.
Byword on macOS always keeps ” gray ”and shaded both the upper part of the window, while you are writing, and the lower one. It wastes some space, but the approach makes sense: in this way you not only focus more on writing the text rather than managing spaces, but you also have a coherent eye on the information: below you can see if you are working in markdown and how many words / characters have been written, or in preview mode you can see the export modes, ie Copy HTML, Export and Publish. The keyboard shortcut to get there is logical: as for printing (Apple-P) but with the additional option key (Apple-Option-P).
However, all that is not gold glitters
Two problems: you only export HTML, because to have RTF you have to do another round, that is, File menu, Export, where there are also all the other formats (HTML , RTF, Word, Pdf, Latex), but only a few with keyboard shortcuts. And then there's the integration part with online publishing sites plus Evernote.
We only tried the version with Blogger, which is rarely presented as an option, and saw the setting of the other systems without publishing anything. There are a number of problems that are then common to all apps of this type that work with the Google blog and suggest that it is a service API problem. In practice: you cannot choose whether to publish or leave in draft, you cannot retrieve the tags but you have to remember the ones you usually use (and this is very inconvenient). The same thing does not happen with Medium or with WordPress for the status of what we publish but it happens for the tags.
Common to all instead is that the window with the title and publication of the post it covers the text and makes it impossible to scroll through what has been written (rather inconvenient) and finally there are often absent conversion errors instead of exporting to HTML format. For example, parts of text in italics, which markdown indicates with an asterisk at the beginning and end of the sentence, when you wrap and close the tag in a second paragraph are no longer converted correctly, but in HTML conversion they do.
The great advantages of a small app
If you look at the usual working methods, the first quality of Byword for Mac is stability. Which should never be forgotten because it has become a problem for iA Writer in recent versions, for example. Instead Byword, with whom we are writing his own review, goes away which is a pleasure.
Second advantage, the flexibility of the windows, which can be resized as much as you want without compromising functionality. Other apps (like the usual iA Writer) had in the Classic version a very convenient and very uncomfortable way at the same time: they scaled the font size together with the window but left the margin blocked and did not allow to reduce the size beyond a certain proportion.
Third advantage: keyboard shortcuts are there (almost) for everything. Byword is a true text grinding machine, with Mac-typical shortcuts and Markdown industry shortcuts. In addition, the new rendering style sheets (which can be included with the exported document) are more readable and well formatted.
In conclusion
There are two or three keyboard shortcuts that change from other similar apps (and I'm mainly referring to iA Writer, a true benchmark in the sector) and other things that are missing, such as the ability to assign the title level to a row simply by indicating with Apple -1 … 2 … 3 which title you prefer (h1, h2, h3 etc). Inserting links in a section of text also works with keyboard shortcut (Apple-K) but does not insert the content of the clipboard if it is structured as a link (ie starts with “http”). Finally, the things you need are available: Line or paragraph focus, and typewriter mode (which is more liberally referred to as a “typewriter) which allows for much more precise handling of the text input mode.
These are three things in the cross, but it's amazing how often they are missing in the other free and paid apps that are on the market. And speaking of payment, the price of this software is not high but it is definitely not popular either: almost 11 euros, which however are a good investment since now the purchase of the blog publication in the app has become free.
Is it worth buying? If you also own iPhone and iPad and use Byword in that context too, then purchasing on a Mac is a must. It really isn't strictly necessary, because you can use as many apps as you want, as it makes sense for those who want to use markdown, which is an open format based on text-only files.
Price and availability Byword costs 11.99 for Mac from this Mac App Store page, and is also available for iPhone and iPad on the App Store for 5.99 euros.
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