Could Bear 1.0 remain as a separate application?

Beta Beta Feedback
1

Hi, I’ve been really enjoying the experience of using Bear 1.0 and recently been checking out Panda and the community. I’m quite excited about some of the new features such as footnotes, tables, ToC, Toggle, etc. I’d like to send applause to hardworking and brilliant developers.

(I know that there have been quite some discussions on this subject and it has somewhat died out.)

However, I cannot help but be disappointed by the decision to shift to a regular markdown and remove Bullets, Numbers, Quotes, To-Dos from the Gutter. It was the main feature of Bear with a tag-based organization that made me settle into it after bouncing around tons of note-taking apps(Evernote, Obsidian, Notion, Workflowy, etc.)

To me, all those in the gutter were a key factor in offering a seamless writing experience, with the beginning of all text/paragraphs aligned perfectly but distinguished by markers in the gutter. Markdown never offered that kind of experience, small gaps at the left / numbers and bullets beneath the heading were always annoying. Outliner apps were better in that sense but always felt limited and didn’t offer true-writing experience along with block-based apps like notion and craft.

I understand the decision by developers to switch to a standard markdown as it was requested by many and that it offers better inter-operability among various apps, may appeal to a larger audience. However, I feel like the decision is somewhat taking its uniqueness, seamlessness away from Bear. I cannot help but question, ‘How much is this version of Panda different from Upnote or Evernote without toggle?’, just taking general stuff into account.

Anyways, that was just some disgruntled ramblings on my part and I know what’s done is done. So, my main request/feedback is

  1. Would it be possible for a user to choose between the original editor of 1.0 and the new one in Bear 2.0? (I saw others asking this previously but couldn’t find a direct answer to this)

  2. If not, could Bear 1.0 remain as a separate app to download and use from bear 2.0 for users who prefer the original editor? It would be really nice to maintain current experience of writing.

But again, thank you for the hard work.

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2

Hi there,

Thank you for taking the time to leave us a post, and thank you for your support of Bear!

Regarding both questions above, I can confirm that the answer to both would be no.

If you’ve any other queries or questions about Bear or Panda please let me know (or @ me) as i’d be happy to help!

In the meantime, hoping you’ve a Beary nice day :bear:

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I think the developers might want to take a look at this again.

Bear 2 is technically morphing into “just another note app” like Evernote and countless others.

Can’t believe this is where we end up; losing all the quirkiness that made bear notes stand out from the entire pack.

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I can’t share your judgment. In bear 2, you can recognize bear 1. Time just brings progress with it. In another 6 years, Bear will not be the same program as it is today. It has remained what it always was. But it has grown up.

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