Compared
Notula and VS Code
For an engineer, VS Code with a preview extension is a perfectly good Markdown editor, and this page is not going to pretend otherwise. The question is who else has to touch the document.
What VS Code is better at
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It is already open on the screen
Every engineer has it, with the repository already cloned into it. Both applications are free, so the cost of a second one is not money - it is one more thing to install, update and explain. For a team where only engineers touch the documents, that is not worth paying.
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You can read its source
The editor is built in the open, on a public repository under a permissive licence. Notula's source is closed. What is public instead is everything it writes: the documents are ordinary Markdown, the comment log is a plain file committed beside them, and the workspace schema is published - so nothing you have is trapped if the app goes away.
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Extensions
Preview, linting, spell check, mermaid, table formatting, and a full git interface. Assembled well, it does most of what Notula does.
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It edits everything else
The code, the config, the docs, in one window. Notula opens documents and deliberately hides the source files.
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Extremely good git tooling
Branches, staging by hunk, rebases, blame. Notula deliberately exposes none of that, which is a limitation as much as a feature.
What Notula is better at
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The product manager can use it
No terminal, no branch, no rebase, no conflict markers. You open a folder, write, and publish with one sentence about what changed. That is the entire reason this exists.
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No syntax on screen
Not a live preview beside the source - the document itself, with no hashes, no asterisks and no table pipes, not even on the line the cursor is on.
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Comment threads in the repository
VS Code has comments on a pull request, which is the wrong place for a discussion about a paragraph and the wrong moment for the people who are not reviewing code.
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Documents, not files
A tree with the source files left out, quick open across documents, per-pane back and forward, and the whole repository's documentation as one navigable thing.
Side by side
| Capability | VS Code | Notula |
|---|---|---|
| Free | ||
| Source you can read | — | |
| Documents, comments and schema in open formats | ||
| Already installed on every engineer's machine | — | |
| Edits code as well as documents | — | |
| Full git tooling | — | |
| WYSIWYG with no syntax on screen | — | |
| Usable by someone who has never opened a terminal | — | |
| Comment threads on a passage, in the repository | — | |
| Tree of documents with source files left out | — | |
| Conflicts as a choice between two paragraphs | — |
Both columns are filled in, including the rows Notula loses. A table where one column is ticks all the way down is an advert, and the first four rows of this one are things the other tool does and Notula does not.
Which one to use
Use VS Code when
Everyone who edits these documents writes code for a living and is happy in an editor. Then VS Code is free and already there, and a second application is overhead.
Use Notula when
The people who need to write and review the documentation are product managers, designers, support and technical writers, and asking them to learn a code editor is why the documentation is out of date.
Try it against a real repository
Free, with no account and no server. Open a repository you already have and the documents in it are a tree in about a second.
Apple silicon and Windows x64 above. Intel and Arm builds, and what to do if Windows blocks the installer.