I am interested in this for editing on Stack Overflow, integrated somehow with Edit Overflow (see below). How feasible is it with Markdown Monster?

One way would be using the clipboard to transfer information to and from the text edit area on Stack Overflow and Markdown Monster. Another, some kind of API.

There used to be only a read-only API for Stack Overflow, but now there is write-support (for instance, editing an answer).

The clipboard method could be the first step, followed by an API approach.

Stack Overflow uses, as far as I know, a strict subset of Markdown ("code fencing" seems to be different though).

Background

I have built my own tool, Edit Overflow, mostly for spelling corrections of technical terms, but it uses the clipboard. It also has other features that are used very frequently, such as removing trailing whitespace.

I have an AutoIt script (on a keyboard shortcut) to partly automate the mechanical process of using the clipboard between the browser and Edit Overflow, but it is still required for every word to be corrected in a post (as Edit Overflow does not have a built-in editor or is able to handle more than one word at time (I think this really requires some visualisation, as in an editor, as the number of false positives would be very high if automatically applied to every word in a text)).

Future

It would be nice to be able to use Markdown Monster in a similar role and so that a maximum of only one clipboard transfer is required per post, instead of one per word. Perhaps as a Markdown Monster add-in?

I would rather prefer to integrate with Markdown Monster than adding an edit capability in Edit Overflow.

Trivia

I discovered Markdown Monster through podcast .NET Rocks, episode 1395.

Hi Peter,

You can certainly build either type of interface with a Markdown Monster add-in: Clipboard pasting or API upload style. Either of those would be fairly easy to implement.

I would think that to start the Clipboard approach might be easier to work with as you can simply cut and paste between the browser and MM unless you can figure out a way to automate between the two (with a Chome Addin and WebSockets/SignalR perhaps?).

For add-in documentation and getting started with it you can check out the Add in Documentation - it's pretty straightforward to create an addin that is hooked to the UI.

Feel free to ask questions here or to discuss your idea further. This is what this forum is supposed be here for.

Aloha,

+++ Rick ---