[FEATURE] Easy toggle for markdown rendered view vs current default editor text view

[mYnDstrEAm]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

When wanting to read a markdown document in the rendered view (sometimes called note preview), one has to first learn how that can be done via some workaround (most will fail at this) and then use that workaround and then remember how to use that (I fail at that last step).

Describe the solution you'd like

Please add a simple intuitive/self-explanatory easy-to-find toggle to switch between current (default) editor view and rendered markdown view of the markdown-syntax text document.

Describe alternatives you've considered

How to see rendered markdown in Qownnotes (shortcut)

I found a workaround by asking an AI which told me this:

Unfortunately, there's no direct keyboard shortcut to toggle between the editor view and the note preview panel in QOwnNotes 26.8. This has been requested as a feature multiple times by users, but it hasn't been implemented yet.
Your best workaround is to create two separate layouts:

• Go to Window → Layout → Add new layout and create one called something like "Preview"
• In that layout, go to Window → Panels and disable the note edit panel (keep only the preview panel visible)
• Keep your main layout with the edit panel visible
• Now you can switch between them using Window → Layout and select which one you want
  This lets you toggle between editor and preview by switching layouts, though it's not a single-key shortcut.
  Alternatively, if you have keyboard space, you could use Window → Unlock panels and manually resize/drag the preview panel to be much larger on demand, then shrink it back when needed.

and

No, QOwnNotes 26.8 doesn't have a "render markdown" toggle that switches the editor between plain syntax view and rendered markdown display within the same panel. This was requested as a feature back in 2020 (GitHub issue #1662) to work like Typora does, but it was marked as "Importance: Low" and "Effort: Very high" and hasn't been implemented.

So to conclude: use shortcut alt+shift+p to switch back and forth

Additional context

Not an important issue but I think it now be quick to solve and would be useful to many - after setup if you remember that shortcut, things are working but that's not easy to find and most will just use the nonrendered view which is still quite readable. When using the shortcut, there is still a small panel for the editor view instead of the entire view getting replaced by the rendered view. I hope the above guide for the workaround can help some who are looking for this functionality.

Output from the debug section in the settings dialog

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[pbek]

Are you talking about the Note editor panel and the Preview panel?
There is no simple switching between that because everyone has their own concept how and where and when those panels should appear.
Just head over to the layout settings and define as many layouts you want and then switch between them.

[mYnDstrEAm]

Indirectly yes I guess. This is about a toggle to replace the editor panel with the preview panel (or alternatively a toggle to have the editor panel show the preview) .
The above solution / learning that markdown rendered view is possible and can make documents easier to read (most probably did this) + learning that panel switching can be a solution to this and spending some time to get this set up despite not important (most probably don't proceed this step) + learning how to set up and switch between panels + switching between panels via remembered shortcut doesn't have such but is a functional workaround.

[pbek]

About 12 years ago this is exactly what I implemented and then feature request started pouring in will people have completely different opinions on how the previous should be placed and layouts in general. After implementing five different layouts i stopped doing it and created the layout system with presets. The preview is just a panel and the editor also is just a panel. There even is a shortcut to switch between the last two layouts. That's basically what you asking for.

[mYnDstrEAm]

Thanks for the context and info. Still the problems with that in short are that people first need to learn that this can be used to get this functionality and that this feature exists. Various things could either solve (the proposed easy-to-find&understand toggle for example as a new context menu entry in the Window dropdown) or mitigate it somewhat (such as setting up an extra layout by default for whatever layout user has configured where editor view is replaced with markdown view which would make shortcut alt+shift+p work by default even if just having installed qownnotes).