Right now, Spectrum has a hybrid WYSIWYG <-> markdown editor. I appreciate the choice made for a WYSIWYG (aka RTF) editor, because it simplifies the formatting of messages and thereby improving the accessibility of Spectrum for the non-technical audience. Yet, because the choice was made to implement a hybrid WYSIWYG <-> markdown editor, things don't work as expected, both for those familiar with markdown and to those who expect WYSIWYG functionality. In its current implementation, both WYSIWYG and markdown are crippled. The two editor types don't mesh; some examples: WYSIWYG: Typing text between ⁎s results in italics formatted text, typing ⁎⁎s in bold text. While is is expected with markdown, it is NOT expected WYSIWYG behaviour: because the ⁎s do not show up as intended by the WYSIWYG user. In fact, getting a '⁎' to show up requires UTF-8 trickery. Markdown: When I type format my text using markdown, I normally have a good deal of control on the formatting of the text. However, markdown is not really supported, only some subset of markdown is; What's more, when I format my text using markdown, save and then edit my text, the markdown is suddenly converted into RTF and the user cannot see the original markdown any more. My suggestion: Add a button that lets the user switch between WYSIWYG and Markdown (and honor the choice: don't interpret WYSIWYG edited text as markdown and vise versa); Support full markdown (do yourselves a favor and don't implement markdown yourself, pick the CommonMark standard library instead: http://commonmark.org and safe Uncle Sam CIG some dollars, eh?).