mdpreview

A simple QT-based Markdown previewer, designed to be used with an external editor.

There are many Markdown previewers. mdpreview has been written to be as easy to use with an external editor as possible. Just open mdpreview, open your editor and start editing. mdpreview will automatically reload when the file changes, detect when you're viewing the bottom of the document and automatically scroll down on new content, and more.

It includes themes that closely resemble github, and bitbucket.

Screenshot: mdpreview running the github theme.

Features

• Table of Content sidebar.
• Remembers window state between invocations.
• Auto-reload that preserves scroll position.
• Theme support (bitbucket, dark, github, solarized, whiteonblack)
• Vi motion keys (j, k) (see below)
• Append detection. If the end of the document is being viewed and new contents is appended, mdpreview automatically scrolls to the bottom.
• Optional Keep-on-top window hint, to keep the preview always on top.
• Supported Markdown extensions: Fenced Code blocks, TableOfContents, Tables, Checklists, Auto-urlize.
• Save generated HTML.
• Invoke editor from mdpreview.
• Written in Python, so runs nearly everywhere.

Installation

Requirements:

• Debian / Ubuntu based OS (tested on 18.04)
• python3-pyqt5.qtwebkit Debian pacckage
• Python3 markdown and pyinotify libraries

To install mdpreview's dependencies:

$ sudo apt install python3-pyqt5.qtwebkit
$ sudo apt install python3-pip
$ sudo pip3 install -r ./requirements.txt

You can run mdpreview directly from the git repository after installing the dependencies:

$ git clone https://github.com/fboender/mdpreview.git
$ cd mdpreview
$ ./mdpreview README.md

If you wish to install it on your system, run the install.sh script:

$ sudo install.sh

This will also put an uninstall.sh script in /usr/local/lib/mdpreview/uninstall.sh.

Usage

Basic usage:

Usage: ./mdpreview <file.md>

Options:
  --version             show program's version number and exit
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -d, --debug           Show debugging info
  -k, --keep-on-top     Keep window on top
  -t THEME, --theme=THEME
                        Theme (name or full path to .html). Default: github
  --no-toc              Disable the Table Of Contents sidebar

Themes

Using a theme:

mdpreview -t bitbucket ./README.md

Specify a full path to a theme:

mdpreview -t ~/.mdpreview/mytheme.html ./README.md

The following themes are available by default:

• bitbucket
• dark
• github
• solarized
• whiteonblack

Keybindings

• r: Reload
• b or Left arrow or Backspace: Go back
• Esc, q: Quit
• j, k: Scroll down / up (vi keybindings)
• G, gg: Scroll to bottom / top (vi keybindings)
• s: Save to HTML
• e: Open current file in editor (if the file is local). The editor can be set with the MDPREVIEW_EDITOR environment variable. Defaults to gvim.

Licensing

mdpreview is licensed under the GPLv3:

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

For the full license, see the LICENSE file.