vmd

Preview markdown files in a separate window. Markdown is formatted exactly the same as on GitHub.

Features | Installation | Usage | Examples | Command-line options | Configuration

Features

• GitHub style: The markdown content is rendered as close to the way it's rendered on GitHub as possible.

• File watching: Local files opened in vmd are watched for changes and the viewer will automatically update when a file has been changed. This makes it ideal for writing documents in your favorite text editor and get a live preview.

• Standard input: View any markdown text from other programs by piping another program's output in to vmd. Check out the examples for cool use cases.

• Drag & Drop: Drag files from your file browser or desktop on to a vmd window and render it. Hold the Shift key while dropping to open the file in a new window.

• Navigation: Navigate within linked sections in a document, open relative links to other documents in the same window or in a new one (shift-click), and always be able to go back in the history. And open links to directories in your file manager and external links in your default browser.

• Clipboard: Copy links and local file paths to the clipboard, and even copy images in binary format to paste them in to your image editing software.

• Emoji: Displays emoji, such as :sweat_drops:. Take a look at the Emoji Cheat Sheet for a list of available emoji.

• Checklists: Renders GitHub-style checklists.

   - [ ] List item 1
   - [x] List item 2
  

  • List item 1
  • List item 2

• Customization: Select different themes and provide your own styles to make vmd look the way you want. Take a look at the Options for an overview of available customization options.

Installation

$ npm install -g vmd

Usage

vmd [FILE] [OPTIONS]

If no FILE is provided it will try to read from standard input, or automatically look for "README.md" if in a TTY.

Examples

Read a file from disk:

$ vmd DOCUMENT.md

When no path to a document is supplied, "README.md" will be opened by default:

$ vmd

It reads from stdin so you can pipe markdown text in to it:

$ cat README.md | vmd

For example, you can see the readme for browserify like so:

$ npm view browserify readme | vmd

Or from a GitHub project:

$ gh-rtfm substack/node-browserify | vmd

Options

• -v, --version: Display the version number.

• --versions: Display version numbers of different internal components such as Electron.

• -h, --help: Display usage instructions.

• -d, --devtools: Open with the developer tools open.

• -z, --zoom=NUM: Set a zoom factor to make the content larger or smaller. For example --zoom=1.25

• --document=FILENAME: vmd will look for "README.md" by default if no file path has been specified. This can be changed to something else.

• --list-highlight-themes: Display a list of available syntax highlighting themes.

• --styles-main=FILE: Provide a custom CSS file to display the content.

• --styles-extra=FILE: Provide a custom CSS file to do additional styling. For example to override some CSS properties fr the default style.

• --highlight-theme=NAME: Use a different syntax highlighting theme for code blocks. Run vmd --list-highlight-themes to get a list of available themes.

• --highlight-stylesheet=FILE: Provide a custom CSS file for syntax highlighting in code blocks.

Configuration

All Options that contain a value can be persisted in configuration file in INI, YAML or JSON format. The configuration file can be in any of the following locations: $HOME/.vmdrc, $HOME/.vmd/config, $HOME/.config/vmd, $HOME/.config/vmd/config, /etc/vmdrc, or a custom location provided using the --config=FILE option.

If you wish to change some of the default settings create a config file called .vmdrc in your home directory or in ~/.config/vmd.

Here's a sample config file:

zoom = 1.2
highlight.theme = monokai
styles.extra = /my/custom/vmd/style-fixes.css

Options provided as command-line arguments will always have precedence over the values in the configuration file. So --zoom=1.5 will set the zoom factor to 1.5 regardless of what's in the config file.

Authors

• Yoshua Wuyts
• Max Kueng

License

MIT