They are somewhat hard to read because some characters need less space (eg, lowercase i) and some characters need more (eg, uppercase W). 1 For example, check this out: Name Abilityīut there is a reason we don’t use monospaced fonts everywhere. If you’ve ever tried lining up text with “regular” fonts, then you will know it’s frustratingly impossible without using the appropriate tools. That means you can reliably line up text. The effect of this sameness is that multiple lines of characters are automatically aligned in neat columns. Programmers often use monospaced fonts in their code editors, which gives monospaced fonts an association of being computer-y text.Ī monospaced font is one where each character takes up the same amount of horizontal space, even punctuation and spaces. We’ll discuss what this does below.Monospaced fonts are the kind that most folks probably associate with a typewriter. Paste the following code into that file and hit CMD + S to save. Unless you’ve made a few changes, this file should be blank. This is the JSON view of all your settings. Then we’ll want to open the JSON view by clicking the icon with the page and arrow in the top right of the application. To get to the settings tab hit CMD +, or click the cog icon in the bottom left of VS Code. Once you’ve installed VS code and the related extensions, we’ll tweak the settings to improve the writing experience. Ideally, the feature can be toggled with a shortcut. I would love something like this for VS Code. It highlights complex sentences, passive voice and suggests phrases with simpler alternatives. Hemingway is a decent editor with one killer feature. Word Count adds a small word counter when working in a Markdown file. Maybe this is a good interaction in the long run? However, it didn’t take long to get used to, and even the best writers need spellcheck.Īn interesting side effect of this type of spell check is that I try and guess the correct spelling of the word instead of right clicking and selecting the first option. The implementation is a little strange-a light bulb appears above the paragraph with an issue. It’s useful since VS Code does not have spellcheck installed by default. The extension adds keyboard shortcuts, sane formatting for tables of contents and lists, Markdown tables and a few other enhancements.Ĭode Spell Checker catches common spelling mistakes. Markdown All in One is a requirement for anyone that wants to write in Markdown. Simply search for the ones below and hit the green install button when you find it.Īlternatively, clicking install from the links should prompt you to open and install the extension in VS Code. This should open an extension search bar. To begin installing them you can click the blocks icon in the bottom of the navigation bar or you can hit CMD + Shift + X. I’ve listed the extensions we need below. They are little pieces of software that enhance another app. ExtensionsĮxtensions in VS Code are similar to browser extensions. Once you do that, we’ll install extensions and tweak a few settings. It’s an excellent tool for writing.įirst you’ll need to Download VS Code from Microsoft. It’s what many engineers at my company, SalesLoft, use to create software. If you’re not an engineer, Visual Studio Code is a text editor. It’s pretty customizable, right? I was pleasantly surprised. Then I decided to see if I could wrangle VS Code into a decent writing experience. There were tons of bad fonts, contrast or typesetting. I tried many free tools, but none of them felt like a decent writing option. Unfortunately, dealing with the Mac App store is a giant pain on work computers. Despite my effort to disable it, I could not fix this issue. It was fine until it began playing zen music on startup-an odd feature for a text editor. Previously, I had Typed, a now discontinued product from RealMac Software. My old 2015 Macbook Pro couldn’t hold a charge. The trigger for me was a new work computer. If you’re considering a new Markdown editor, it is worth a try-especially if you’re an engineer. However, it is free and the experience is quite good. Writing in VS Code doesn’t have the features of Ulysses, the Syncing of Bear App or the polish of IA Writer. However, with a few tweaks VS Code can become an excellent tool for writing. This entire post was written using Markdown in Visual Studio Code.
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