MD-TUI

MD-TUI

MD-TUI is a TUI application for viewing markdown files directly in your terminal. I created it because I wasn't happy with how alternatives handled links in their applications. While the full markdown specification is not yet supported, it will slowly get there. It's a good solution for quickly viewing your markdown notes, or opening external links from someones README. If your terminal support images, they will render.

Installation

Using cargo: cargo install md-tui --locked

On Arch Linux: pacman -S md-tui

For Nix users, there's also Nix flake.

Prebuilt binaries with install script can be found on the release page.

Requirements

A terminal
Nerd font

Usage

Start the program running mdt <file.md> or just mdt. The latter will search recursively from where it was invoked for any markdown file and show it in a file tree.

Key binds

These are the default settings. See keyboard configuration for configuration options.

Key	Action
`j` or `<Down>`	Scroll down
`k` or `<Up>`	Scroll up
`h`	Go down half a page
`l`	Go up half a page
`d` or `<Left>`	Scroll one page down
`u` or `<Right>`	Scroll one page up
`f` or `/`	Search
`n` or `N`	Jump to next or previous search result
`s` or `S`	Enter select link mode. Different selection strategy.
`K`	Hover. Preview where a link is going without going there
`<Enter>`	Select. Depending on which mode it can: open file, select link, search
`Esc`	Go back to normal mode
`t`	Go back to files
`b`	Go back to previous file (file tree if no previous file)
`g`	Go to top of file
`G`	Go to bottom of the file
`e`	Edit file in `$EDITOR`
`o`	Sort files in file tree
`q`	Quit the application

Syntax highlighting

MD-TUI supports syntax highlighting in code blocks for the following languages:

Bash/sh
C/C++
Css
Elixir
Go
Html
Java
JavaScript
Json
Lua
Ocaml
PHP
Python
Rust
Scala
Typescript

Configuration

The program checks for the file ~/.config/mdt/config.toml at startup. The following parameters and their defaults are written below.

Keyboard actions

Some key actions are not configurable. Like the following:

Enter
Arrow keys
Escape
Question mark for help menu
'q' to quit the application
'/' for search

If you override another default key, it's undefined behavior if that key does not get reassigned.

Actions can only be assigned to single characters. Space, fn keys, ctrl+key, backspace etc., will not take affect and the default will be in use.

# Keyboard actions
up = 'k'
down = 'j'
page_up = 'u'
page_down = 'd'
half_page_down = 'l'
half_page_up = 'h'
top = 'g'
bottom = 'G'
search = 'f'
search_next = 'n'
search_previous = 'N'
# This will search downwards until it finds one or select the last link in document.
select_link = 's'
# Finds the link 2/3 up the page. It will search then for closest in both direction.
select_link_alt = 'S'
edit = 'e'
hover = 'K'
back = 'b'
file_tree = 't'
sort = 'o'

Colors and misc

Setting color to "" will not remove it, but leave it as its default. To remove colors, set it to reset.

# General settings
width = 100

# Inline styling
bold_color = "reset"
bold_italic_color = "reset"
code_bg_color = "#2A2A2A"
code_fg_color = "red"
italic_color = "reset"
link_color = "blue"
link_selected_bg_color = "darkgrey"
link_selected_fg_color = "green"
strikethrough_color = "reset"

# Block styling
code_block_bg_color = "#2A2A2A"
quote_bg_color = "reset"
table_header_bg_color = "reset"
table_header_fg_color = "yellow"

# File tree
file_tree_name_color = "blue"
file_tree_page_count_color = "lightgreen"
file_tree_path_color = "gray"
file_tree_selected_fg_color = "lightgreen"
gitignore = false

# Quote bar
quote_caution = "lightmagenta"
quote_default = "white"
quote_important = "lightred"
quote_note = "lightblue"
quote_tip = "lightgreen"
quote_warning = "lightYellow"

# Heading
h_bg_color = "blue"
h_fg_color = "black"
h2_fg_color = "green"
h3_fg_color = "magenta"
h4_fg_color = "cyan"
h5_fg_color = "yellow"
h6_fg_color = "lightred"

Links

MD-TUI currently supports [text](url), [[link]], and [[link|Some title]] type of links.

Neovim plugin

This application also exists as a plugin for Neovim called Preview.

[!NOTE]

This version does not support images regardless of your terminal capabilities.

Contributions

Both PRs and issues are appreciated!

md-tui 0.8.1