Substance.io 0.2.1 released — it's web-based document authoring

[Michael Aufreiter]

Just wanted to give you a peek on what we're working on for the last 6 months.

Substance.io is an open source document editor. It's different from traditional word-processing, by focussing on structured content, while leaving the layout part to the system not the user. Because of the absence of formatting utilities, it suggests structured content-oriented writing.

http://substance.io

Well, and of course it's built on Node.js, using Data.js for client-side data manipulation and server-side persistence (with CouchDB in the backend).

Pls. tell us what you like, and what could be better.

Happy writing!

-- Michael

[Bradley Meck]

I am getting some errors while trying to make a document. Seems the AJAX response is a 500 Internal Server Error.

[Tim Caswell]

Neat stuff, though the code style in the text blocks is unusable.  It would be super neat to embed little ACE widgets in there.  Also, is there a way to disable the TOC?

On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 1:25 PM, Bradley Meck <bradle...@gmail.com> wrote:

I am getting some errors while trying to make a document. Seems the AJAX response is a 500 Internal Server Error.

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[kuzzertuz]

Freaking fast, good looking, documents look well formated on MAC OSX/
Chrome

Will keep an eye on it :D

[saurabh verma]

Great work . ( I’m going to donate some cash too ) .

Filed a bug also :) .

~saurabh .

[Michael Aufreiter]

Thx!

Yeh, I'm aware that the rich text editor has some flaws. The code style is not supported by the HTML Command API (contenteditable), that's why I needed to use DOM manipulation for this. The tools around contenteditable are a pain to work with. You simply can't ensure the markup doesn't get messed up, especially when it comes to copy and paste actions. That's why I'm going to rewrite the editor (http://quasipartikel.at/proper/) completely so it uses its own layouter, just like google did with Kix, the backend for Google Docs. I just need to wait until I get some funding for this - will take me a few weeks at least. Or is there someone interested in helping out? Maybe I should talk with the Cloud9 guys. :)

Enabling/disabling TOC is on the list. There will be options like "Include TOC", "Use section numbering" etc. Also I want to get rid of document types (article, manual, q&a). Instead you can enable and disable content node types within the document, just as you need them.

Sure, integrating ACE could be an option, however, next priorities are:

- Reader comments (responses) on content nodes.

- Markdown support (a command line utility that watches a markdown file and pushes it to substance when it gets changed)

- Collaborative editing (multiple users on one document)

[Michael Aufreiter]

Glad you like it :) 

However, we're still at an early stage.

Please feel free to submit issues as you discover flaws during using it. 

[Michael Aufreiter]

An example, showing how it can be used for API docs. 

http://substance.io/#michael/data-js

[Michael Aufreiter]

Not to forget. PDF/LaTeX rendering... http://letterpress.substance.io