Why would you use markdown to take notes? Markdown is designed to be displayed as rich-text (headings, lists, etc) after authoring. If you only ever view it in plaintext as an editor, what's the point?
Coming from someone that uses markdown for taking notes on a daily basis, I have spent so much time reading markdown in Vim that my mind now interprets the syntax semantically, besides many text editors provide syntax highlighting that provides contextual clues and hints.
The syntax is easy to type, it's not verbose, and it actually makes sense in plaintext. Then if I ever want to I have the option to open it in a full-fledged markdown viewer, and sometimes I even copy/paste sections into actual markdown-compatible apps.
It provides a standard method of plain text note organization. If I want to create a list or a subheading, I now do it the same way every time, so I'm internally consistent with all my notes.
In fact, for certain types of greyhairs like myself, it is extremely readable in source because it is based on the conventions people used in Internet forums that didn't support rick text.
BBS's, Newsgroups, all of the social "networks" adopted a core set of syntaxes that people still use today, such as _emphasis_.
The history behind that is interesting. We started with underlines to suggest emphasis because that was something you could do on a physical typewriter: Back up and add underscores to what you'd already typed.
When typesetting arrived, we switched to italic because it's way easier to read. But _emphasis_ stayed as a way to suggest _underline_, even if we prefer to render it as italics.
There are similar stories behind other formatting choices, like
> Some quoted text
It resembles a way that people typeset quotations, and people got very used to reading that in newsgroups and email editors before it became a thing to create rich email ransom notes in Word.
Nit: Markdown was designed to look good both when displayed as Rich Text, and when displayed as plain text.
The overriding design goal for Markdown’s formatting syntax is to make it as readable as possible. The idea is that a Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions.
I frequently take notes in markdown even though I rarely view it non-plaintext myself. But I use markdown because it's well-suited to conversion to other formats through pandoc, and I sometimes send notes to others (who don't like plaintext/markdown). It's particularly nice to convert to .doc, .docx, and .pdf (through LaTeX).
Perhaps this is a silly reason, but I use vim and I like my markdown syntax highlighting. I rather like reading my plaintext markdown + (default) syntax highlighting. I suppose it would be possible to write/use some txt syntax+highlighting (or some .note format, etc.), but I reinvent the wheel in enough other places to not want to do that here.
You should try Dropbox's Paper.
It is one of the most enjoyable writing experiences I have seen.
It's markdown compatible so you write in markdown and the text is automatically formatted while you type. It's really clever fix for the problem you are describing
Your presumption is that you only ever view them as plaintext. I author using plaintext, but one reason I use Markdown is that it is easy to make uniform looking notes. When I later view, especially longer ones, I do so rendered.
Even if you only did view them as plaintext, it sure is a handy format for a static blog generator in case you'd like to turn some of your notes into a blog post one day.
How am I supposed to read and edit my org mode notes from my Android device?
Yes, I do in fact use Orgzly. For a very specific subset of notes it's fine. But for a long bit of documentation, no good editor exists on anything but a desktop / laptop. That is, nobody's reimplemented enough of Emacs on Android yet.
Org mode files are text files so you can edit them with any editor. Place them in a sync folder and if your sync client is any good it should be able to edit.
"Long bit of documentation"? Isn't it the device that's not suited? I sure wouldn't want to do a lot of typing on a handheld device. Emacs shortcuts should be fun.
The point of that if The text is to be edited in a general purpose text editor, I would rather it be in Markdown. Org mode is pretty useless as a format outside emacs proper.
Actually, the Org format is supported by web sites like GitHub and GitLab, and there are several parsers in different languages. It's even supported by Pandoc, so you can convert to/from anything Pandoc supports.
In contrast to the actual Android apps that handle Markdown natively.
Don't get me wrong, I love org mode, but there is no real support on Android other that a damn-fine list-making app that uses a subset of org-mode format for its lists.
I have heard rumours that one can get Emacs up and running fairly well in Termux, but I haven't explored it personally yet. Orgzly is good enough for most of my Android Org needs.
