Markdown Viewer

Summary

A standalone application that renders and displays Markdown files (no editing nor any fancy note taking feature) on Windows 10 (installer or zip) and Debian/Ubuntu Linux (AppImage) clients.

This application is based on the Electron framework: a free and open-source software framework used to develop and build cross-platform (Mac, Windows, and Linux) desktop apps with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.

You may encounter some well-known issues (see "Known issues" below), while installing or running the Electron based applications.

Markdown

The application renders standard markdown (see Basic Syntax) formated files and supports additional features as provided by the following markdown-it plugins.

• markdown-it-abbr
• markdown-it-container
• markdown-it-emoji
• markdown-it-footnote
• markdown-it-headinganchor
• markdown-it-mark
• markdown-it-katex
• markdown-it-sub
• markdown-it-sup

Development

The tool is currently developed and tested under Windows 10 (X64).

Requirements

An actual Node.js and NPM version (usually installed together with Node.js) are required to setup a development environment.

You may also prefer to use NVM on windows and on Linux. See:

• Install nvm, node.js and npm on Windows
• Install nvm, node.js and npm on Linux, unix, macOS, and windows WSL

Source code and project setup

Clone the github repository and install the project dependencies:

git clone https://github.com/khatastroffik/mdview.git
cd mdview
npm install

To start an instance of the application, type npm start.

To generate the different application packages/binaries, type npm run dist. This will generate the artifacts (installer, AppImage or compressed archive) depending on your Operating System. MacOS binaries cannot be generated at the present time due to builder settings/properties related issues. Pull requests are welcome!

To re-generate the icons under Windows, use the script generate-icons.cmd provided in the icon folder. This script rely on ImageMagick, which thus needs to be installed.

Debugging

The main process can be debugged with Visual Studio Code. A launch.json is provided in the .vscode folder within this repository.

The renderer process (implemented in index.html and index.js) must be debugged with help of the Electron development tools by calling in the main menu 😂 "Tools" 🡒 "Developer tools" or by pressing the [F10] key.

Contribution

Please see the Contributing guideline.

Known issues

The following "potential" issues are well-known:

Windows installation and download security

An issue may occur due to some browser download security features or Windows SmartScreen technology. Anyhow, the provided package should be safe, though prefer to check them using an antivirus scanner like VirusTotal.

Startup speed

The application may have a delay at startup. This delay may be caused by Windows Defender.This may be due to your virus scanner e.g. Windows Defender.

Build error ERR_ELECTRON_BUILDER_CANNOT_EXECUTE (development)

You may encounter some issue when trying to build the electron distribution (binaries) i.e. the build may (partially) fail.

A possible fix is described here not able to build installer/uninstaller (ERR_ELECTRON_BUILDER_CANNOT_EXECUTE)

Credits

The original application has been created by Christian Dreier: many thanks for your inspiration!

This application is based on version 2.0.0 of the above mentioned application. See the repository containing the original code of this application on GitHub.

Copyright and License

This application is provided under the MIT license.

A K11K production.

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