mdcat
cat for Markdown (that is, CommonMark):
$ mdcat sample.md
mdcat in iTerm2, with Dracula, and Solarized Light and Dark (from left to right), and PragmataPro as font.
Features
mdcat works best with iTerm2 or a compatible terminal emulator, and a good
terminal font with italic characters. Then it
- nicely renders all basic CommonMark syntax (no tables or footnotes though),
- highlights code blocks with syntect,
- shows links and images inline in supported terminals (see above, where "Pixabay" is a clickable link!),
- adds jump marks for headings in iTerm2 (jump forwards and backwards with ⇧⌘↓ and ⇧⌘↑).
| Terminal | Basic syntax | Syntax highlighting | Links | Images | Jump marks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic ANSI | ✓ | ✓ | |||
| Windows ConEmu¹ | ✓ | ✓ | |||
| Windows 10 console¹ | ✓ | ✓ | |||
| VTE 0.50 or newer based | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Terminology | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| iTerm2 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
1: On Windows you need to install with --no-default-features (see below).
Not supported:
- CommonMark extensions: Footnotes and tables
- Re-filling paragraphs
Installation
Binaries
The Releases page provides pre-build binaries for Linux, macOS and Windows.
Use these binaries to try mdcat, particularly on Windows.
3rd party packages
Some package managers include mdcat:
- Homebrew:
brew install mdcat - Arch Linux: mdcat in AUR
- Void Linux:
xbps-install -S mdcat - OpenBSD: port via EPBSD
While these packages may not always be up to date we generally recommend to use
these to keep mdcat updated with the rest of the system.
Building with rustup
You can also build mdcat manually with cargo. Install Rust via rustup and
run cargo install mdcat. To keep mdcat up to date install cargo-update and
run cargo install-update mdcat.
Note: On Windows you likely need --no-default-features to make mdcat
build.
SVG support
mdcat needs rsvg-convert to show SVG images in iTerm2; otherwise mdcat
only shows the image title and URL for SVG images. Install with brew install librsvg.
Terminology supports SVG out of the box and needs no additional tools.
Future plans
- Figure out a better way to show HTML GH-3.
- CommonMark extensions: Footnotes GH-1.
- CommonMark extensions: Tables GH-2.
- Ignore soft wraps and wrap inline text a column limit instead GH-4.
License
Copyright 2018-2019 Sebastian Wiesner sebastian@swsnr.de
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.