I didn't know where to go for official feedback so hopefully this is the right place.
I'm a programmer so I understand what I am requesting is niche and doesn't really apply to the masses, but as technology becomes more ingrained in our lives things like markdown support are being used by all skill levels; even YouTube comments and discord support
some basic markdown styling. So maybe this would apply to more users than I think?
Anyways, straight to it.
It would be great for OneNote to support markdown styling/typing. I use it so frequently that it's second nature and when I'm in OneNote I forget it's not supported and make so many mistakes because of it.
Here's what I would recommend as the vision: displaying the markdown preview
always until you click in the text box or on text in the bounds, which would then convert it to syntax. I'm talking the heavy lifting support too like anchors, images, checkboxes.
My idea of it can be visualized via the following demonstration:
Browsing or typing outside the markdown space:
And when you click inside the text it transforms to its respective syntax, naturally:
Additionally, the goal is to support the extended syntax as well [reference], with wishful/hopeful thinking on the emoji support.
Fortunately, OneNote already has all the elements necessary to make this happen visually, even checkmarks and inline images.
My opinion on this approach is that it feels very intuitive this way, having it always preview. The only caveat I can think that argues against it is: how does OneNote know to display it as markdown or not? Well, I'll leave that up to your engineers and smarter
UX members than me; but I think a good fit is just to add a specific element for md, or just have a global flag that lets the users pick to always edit as markdown to a degree (because I actually would find it more annoying to have to go to the toolbar to
'insert md element', i think it takes away from the 'shortcuts' markdown is designed around, but that could be first world problems and something, again, I think your team will figure out in a better manner than I.
Additionally, I really think this will set the bar for mobile too; it's much easier typing the style out rather than hunting it down on mobile.
I hope this request finds you well. Thank you for what you have done so far though.