The move to MostlyText

In short

MostlyText began as MacDown 2, a rewrite of the open-source MacDown editor. This chapter is the visible crossover: the app’s name, icon and identifiers change, your settings and documents carry over, the command-line tool becomes mostlytext, and the code moves to its own repository.

The identity is decided, but the app is still called MacDown2.app. Renaming it safely is the work: fresh installs and upgrades from MacDown 2 must both keep preferences, sessions, recovery files, recent folders, snippets and custom themes. The MacDown lineage, its MIT licence and its copyright stay intact.

It also covers how official builds will reach people. The direction is open-source MIT code with affordable paid official builds, sold directly without DRM and through the Mac App Store, as a one-time purchase with no subscription, account or activation. Timing and channels are still being reconciled; today’s testing alpha is source-only, with nothing to buy.

Why the name and icon don’t match yet

For now you’ll see two names. The website, the alpha’s release page and this roadmap say MostlyText; the app itself still opens as MacDown 2, installs as MacDown2.app and keeps its settings under that name. That’s deliberate.

The identity came first. In September the Slant mark was chosen: an M and a T sharing one stem, leaning forward, in a single colour, ink on light and white on dark. The website uses it already because a website has nothing to migrate.

The app has a lot to migrate. Its name and identifiers decide where macOS keeps its preferences, recovery copies, sessions, snippets and themes, and which app opens your Markdown files. Change them carelessly and an upgrade could seem to lose all of that. So the rename happens once, in this chapter: tested on fresh installs and on upgrades from MacDown 2, and done before the interface and its translations are frozen, so the new name is only translated once.

The icon follows the same path. The development build still has a placeholder icon generated by a script. In September the Slant mark went through Apple’s icon tool once, to prove the production icon works in the real Dock and Finder; that test was then taken out again. The brand rules treat colour and gradients on an icon as styling rather than identity, because the mark has to stand up in one colour first. The final icon, built from this same mark, is fitted and checked in Finder, in the Dock and at small sizes as part of this chapter.