Textastic is a great plain text editor; I think it's the BBEdit for iOS!

I use Textastic for writing and reviewing Markdown documents. However, it's not a perfect solution. One major omission is a snippets function; for example if you want to format a block of text you have to mark up the text before and after the selected text and often this can be difficult. Snippets is an enhancement I've often requested for Textastic.

Now I've found a workable solution.

There is an iOS app called Text Case. Its primary function is to change the case of selected text (a useful feature that Textastic does not include). But Text Case is extensible and you can add your own functions ("flows" in Text Case speak) using a large number of built-in functions. Two such built-in functions are "add a prefix" and "add a suffix" to a selected text block.

So you can add, for example, your own Markdown underline function. The custom function building process is very simple. The attached screenshot shows several Markdown "flows" I've created. Then you simply select and copy the text to be underlined, app switch to Text Case and choose the new "Underline Selection" function, app switch back to Textastic and paste the marked-up text. For example:

This text needs to be underlined.

Follow the process above and you get…

This text needs to be underlined.

This is not perfect but it makes applying Markdown syntax to Textastic documents much easier.

If you have a better way of applying Markdown syntax in Textastic, please let me know.

Regards,

Peter

I unintentionally deleted a folder. Is there any way to recover it?

Hello. On ipad pro 12.9 in Split View mode (2 to 1, where 2 for Textastic) there are buttons to revoke/return the action in the horizontal position. But in the vertical they disappear, but there is enough space for them. This is inconvenient, because in order to cancel the action you need to turn the tablet to a horizontal position. Please fix this in the next version. Thank you. Respect for a very cool application.

vertical

horizontal

Improve search function of Textastic iPadOS app, where user can search for “multiple consecutive empty link breaks”.

During Edit in left pane, selecting folder works properly, nd selecting "move" folder icon correctly open new pane with "select folder" heading. But pane is empty...not folders listed.

Offloading and reinstalling app did not fix.

How to fix?

In the Edit -> Select -> Move action please add a Copy option as well. 

It would help a lot. 

This is a serious and nasty bug. It should be addressed ASAP!  It messed up my code creating almost impossible to find bugs. In Python tabs and spaces indentation are syntax after all! It took me a while to track it!

This is what happens when you copy/paste certain Python code:

On the top-right corner of the editor, we can see our current line and column. It would be better if it includes how many lines or characters the user has selected.

From the screenshot below for example, if one selected 100 lines, it can display as "Line: 6855 (100)", to indicate that the user has currently selected 100 lines.

There's a similar behaviour at the bottom bar of CotEditor on macOS, which is my daily driver for text editing on my Mac.