mdview

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A desktop Markdown viewer and editor built on GitHub's rendering stack.

Layer	GitHub	mdview
Parser	cmark-gfm / comrak	comrak (GFM: tables, task lists, footnotes, [!NOTE] alerts, :emoji:, math)
Sanitizer	html-pipeline	ammonia (raw HTML passes through, <script> and on* attributes are stripped)
Syntax highlighting	linguist → pl-* classes	syntect (+ bat's syntaxes via two-face) → the same pl-* classes
Styles	Primer	github-markdown-css 5.8.1, embedded in the binary, light/dark themes
Math / diagrams	KaTeX / Mermaid on the client	same, embedded in the binary (assets/vendor), work offline
Window	—	wry + tao (WebKitGTK), GTK dialogs, no Node and no Tauri CLI

Build and run

cargo build --release
./target/release/mdview README.md

System dependencies: webkit2gtk-4.1, gtk3 (Arch: pacman -S webkit2gtk-4.1).

Or use the Makefile:

make              # release build
make run FILE=samples/demo.md
make check        # unit tests + smoke test of the release binary
make install      # install to ~/.local (PREFIX=/usr for system-wide)
make default-app  # make mdview the default app for Markdown files
make help         # list all targets

Features

• Menu bar "File / View / Go / Help", hidden and shown with Ctrl+Shift+M (shown by default).
• Open (Ctrl+O), new (Ctrl+N), save (Ctrl+S), save as (Ctrl+Shift+S), recent files, close (Ctrl+W), quit (Ctrl+Q).
• Modes: preview, editor + preview, editor (Ctrl+E cycles through them). The preview re-renders as you type.
• Editor: Tab/Shift+Tab indent, Enter continues lists, Ctrl+B/Ctrl+I/Ctrl+` wrap the selection, Ctrl+K inserts a link, status bar.
• Theme: follow system / light / dark (Ctrl+Shift+T), zoom Ctrl+=/Ctrl+-/Ctrl+0.
• Relative links to .md files open in the same window with back/forward history (Alt+←/Alt+→, mouse side buttons). External links go to the browser, directories to the file manager.
• File watching: external edits are reloaded automatically; if the editor has unsaved changes, a banner lets you choose. Manual reload with Ctrl+R or F5.
• Drag and drop a file onto the window. Relative images and videos are served through the built-in mdview:// protocol.
• Settings (theme, mode, menu, zoom, recent files, window size) are stored in ~/.config/mdview/config.json.

Utility flags

• mdview --dump file.md prints the rendered HTML fragment to stdout.
• mdview --syntaxes prints the list of highlighting languages.
• MDVIEW_WINDOW_SIZE=1200x900 sets the window size.
• MDVIEW_DEBUG_SCRIPT=test.js runs a script in the page after every load (for automated tests under Xvfb).

Layout

src/main.rs     window, mdview:// protocol, IPC commands, GTK dialogs, config, file watcher
src/render.rs   comrak → highlighting into pl-* classes → ammonia; theme CSS assembly
assets/         github-markdown.css, index.html (shell), app.css, app.js
assets/vendor/  KaTeX and Mermaid (versions in VERSIONS), embedded via src/vendor.rs
samples/        demo.md showcasing every feature