Similar looks, but different concepts.
First of all, Redactor comes up with a very clean and nifty user interface. Besides, its pleasant code structure and its flexible configuration options prove Redactor to be a modern and capable editor solution.
Actually, using this WYSIWYG editor wouldn’t be free of charge, but REDAXO has ordered a license to use the editor within the REDAXO system.
The icon bars of both Redactor and Markitup can be configured individually. Admins are able to reduce the feature set to a custom level. In addition, you can set up multiple profiles containing different icon bars, and you can define which one should be used for a any module.
Textile/markdown transforms shortcut codes to valid HTML when rendering the page. For instance, this
h1. Headline
(Textile)
# Headline
(Markdown)
will produce the following output:
<h1>Headline</h1>
In practice, textile shortcut codes are easy to learn. Moreover, compared to WYSIWYG editors, textile/markdown is more robust when dealing with improper user input. For instance, multiple new lines will be translated to only one paragraph.
The textile/markdown syntax is very comprehensive and supports extensions. The REDAXO website is written with textile/markdown as well.