I’ve never been a big fan of the split source/preview workflow for Markdown. I just want to read nicely formatted text and edit it directly, without constantly switching between two views.
So I made markdown-ts-appear.
The idea is similar to org-appear: Markdown looks rendered by default, but when you move the cursor onto an element, its source is revealed for editing. Move away, and it goes back to looking nice. All in the same buffer, without modifying the underlying text.
I also wanted to go a bit beyond just hiding markup, so I ended up adding a bunch of visual improvements: prettier code fences, blockquotes, callouts, link icons, tables that wrap to fit the window, and optional MathJax previews.
It’s built on the new Tree-sitter-based markdown-ts-mode (Emacs 31.1+), so rendering stays fast and responsive. It is available on MELPA.
I’ve been using it for my own Markdown editing, and it’s pretty much the experience I was looking for. Thought I’d share it here in case anyone else has the same itch.
Feedback and bug reports are very welcome!
This is how joplin (note taking app) does it and it’s really useful. It makes it easy to parse notes and find stuff by heading, while still not having to deal with the UX pains of conventional (office software style) formatting or full html.
Rant incoming
The purpose of Markdown was that the file would still be readable as source code.
If you need tables and whatever other complex markup, just use HTML or whatever
End rant
That’s why I just use org and publish to markdown.
Org is pretty already, there’s no need for appear.I even go as far as converting markdown to org on load.
That said, I’m totally going to install this.
I see no reason to look at markdown source if it can be seen and edited as rendered, the same as org.
I never write markdown or html anymore. I mostly just read it.
This is rad. Nice job.
Very cool! I’m going to use it
