TigerMarkView
TigerMarkView is a Windows desktop application for reading and reviewing local Markdown files. It is
a viewer, not an editor: when a document needs changes, TigerMarkView opens it in a configured
external editor and watches the file for updates.
The project is pre-1.0. Its current version is defined in Version.props and shown at run
time under Help > About TigerMarkView.
Features
- rendered
.md and .markdown documents with tables, task lists, links, images, and fenced code;
- drag-and-drop, Open Recent, local Markdown links, Back/Forward, and per-session navigation history;
- Manual, Confirm, and Automatic reload modes for files changed by another application;
- a status bar that distinguishes the viewed version from the version currently on disk;
- configurable external editors, including system default, Visual Studio Code, Notepad3, and a
custom executable and arguments template;
- Light and Dark application themes;
- optional emoji shortcode expansion and syntax highlighting, both off by default, and remote images,
on by default and switchable off;
- untrusted-content handling: formatting HTML is kept, scripts and other active content are removed,
images on network shares are never fetched, and links to network shares are not followed;
- PDF export using the exact document version currently displayed;
- configurable menu bar, toolbar, status bar, and optional toolbar buttons;
- bundled offline Help, About, licence, and third-party notices;
- one per-user/all-users installer containing the GUI and CLI, which offers TigerMarkView under
Open with for Markdown files without taking over your default app; and
- the
tiger-mark command-line Markdown-to-PDF converter.
Printing is not included in the shipped application.
Reading and reviewing
TigerMarkView focuses on files on the local machine. Every document-opening route uses the same
rendering and file-monitoring workflow. Links to other local Markdown files stay in TigerMarkView;
web and mail links open through the associated Windows application, other local file types are not
launched from a document, and a link never opens a document on a network share (opening one yourself
still works). Several TigerMarkView windows can be open at once; they share settings and one Open
Recent list, and each saves only the setting changed in it.
The reload modes determine what happens when the open file changes:
| Mode | Behaviour |
|---|
| Manual | Reports that a newer version exists and waits for an explicit reload. |
| Confirm | Shows an unobtrusive reload action. This is the default. |
| Automatic | Reloads automatically and preserves the reading position where practical. |
Open Recent records documents explicitly opened by the user and persists between sessions;
File > Open Recent > Clear Recent Files empties it.
Navigation history records every document visited during the current session, including local links,
and restores the previous scroll position when navigating Back or Forward.
Rendering
Markdown is converted by Markdig and displayed as HTML in WebView2. The same generated HTML and CSS
are used for the viewer and PDF export:
Markdown -> Markdig -> HTML + CSS -> WebView2 -> viewer / PDF
Three rendering options are available under View > Rendering:
- Emoji Shortcodes expands recognised forms such as
:rocket:. It is off by default. Literal
emoji are unaffected, and unrecognised shortcodes or shortcodes inside code remain unchanged.
- Syntax Highlighting colours fenced code blocks when their declared language is recognised. It
is off by default. TigerMarkView does not guess languages; an absent or unsupported language falls
back to the normal code-block rendering.
- Load Remote Images lets documents show
http/https images. It is on by default; turned
off, the viewer and GUI PDF export request no web image at all, in every open window, while local and
embedded images still show.
The options are applied identically to the displayed document and an exported PDF. The CLI uses the
defaults: emoji and highlighting off, remote images on.
Documents are treated as untrusted content. Formatting HTML inside Markdown (, ,
sized images, tables, inline styles) is kept; scripts, event handlers, javascript: links, frames,
embedded objects, stylesheets, and forms are removed. Every generated page also carries a Content
Security Policy that admits only TigerMarkView's own script, and the viewer and PDF export refuse every
network request except images. Local and web images therefore keep working, while nothing in a
document can run, and the only requests it can cause are for the image addresses its author wrote.
Images on network shares are not loaded, whether addressed as \\server\share, through a mapped
network drive, or through a symbolic link to a share, because fetching them would send the reader's
Windows credentials to that server; this includes the images of a document that itself lives on a share
or a mapped drive. If the viewer cannot install its request protection, it shows no documents and says
why rather than showing them unprotected. The viewer, PDF export, and tiger-mark apply the same rules.
Inline SVG supports basic shapes with solid fills; external SVG paint resources are removed.
Web images are fetched without browser cookies or any credentials, so an image that requires signing
in does not load, and neither does one behind a proxy that requires signing in; ordinary public web
images work unless Load Remote Images is turned off. The WebView2 engine runs InPrivate, so viewing
and exporting leave no browsing history on disk.
PDF export
File > Export to PDF... exports the currently displayed document version. If a newer version is
available on disk but has not been reloaded, the PDF contains the version the reviewer can see. PDF
output always uses a light, print-oriented palette regardless of the viewer theme.
Global settings under Tools > PDF Export Settings are remembered between sessions:
| Setting | Choices | Default |
|---|
| Paper size | A3, A4, A5, Letter, Legal | A4 |
| Orientation | Portrait, Landscape | Portrait |
| Margins | Narrow, Normal, Wide | Normal |
| Page numbers | On, Off | Off |
Window layout
The menu bar, toolbar, and status bar can be shown or hidden. The menu bar and toolbar cannot both be
hidden, and the toolbar's Menu (☰) button remains available whenever it is the only route to the
full command tree.
View > Toolbar Buttons controls three named items:
- Menu, shown by default;
- Open Recent, hidden by default; and
- Export to PDF, hidden by default.
These buttons mirror existing menu commands; toolbar customisation does not change the available
features.
Installation
WinGet
TigerMarkView is available in the WinGet community repository as ItTiger.TigerMarkView:
winget install ItTiger.TigerMarkView # install
winget upgrade ItTiger.TigerMarkView # upgrade to the latest version
winget uninstall ItTiger.TigerMarkView # uninstall
WinGet installs the same TigerMarkView installer that is published with the corresponding GitHub
Release, so everything below about what it installs, its prerequisites, and uninstalling applies
equally. Upgrading keeps your TigerMarkView settings and the Open Recent list.
Installer
You can also install TigerMarkView manually using the Windows installer attached to a
GitHub Release. The same installer contains
the desktop application, tiger-mark, bundled Help, the privacy statement, the MIT licence, and
third-party notices. It installs for the current user by default and offers an all-users mode, which
asks for administrator approval. It is built with TigerSetup
and also runs unattended:
TigerMarkView--win-x64-setup.exe install --quiet # for the current user
TigerMarkView--win-x64-setup.exe install --quiet --scope machine # for all users
TigerMarkView--win-x64-setup.exe install --quiet --option path off
The PATH option is on by default, so tiger-mark works from a new shell. A per-user install
changes only the user's PATH; an all-users install changes the machine PATH. Upgrade and uninstall
preserve unrelated PATH entries.
The installer registers TigerMarkView as an available app for .md and .markdown files, so it
appears under Open with and in Settings > Apps > Default apps. It never writes a default app
and never replaces one you have chosen. If you have not chosen an app for Markdown files, Windows may
open them with TigerMarkView as the app offered for them. Uninstalling removes the registration and
leaves your default-app choice alone.
Uninstalling also removes TigerMarkView's own data - the settings, the Open Recent list, the WebView2
profiles, and the generated preview pages - for the Windows account that runs the uninstall.
Upgrading to a newer version keeps them.
Installing this version over TigerMarkView 0.9.0 or earlier - which used an Inno Setup installer -
removes the earlier installation first and keeps your settings. The earlier installation is found in
the scope you install into, so an all-users installation of an earlier version is replaced by an
all-users install (--scope machine, or the all-users choice in the wizard).
TigerMarkView requires:
- Windows 10 version 1809 or later, or Windows 11, on x64-compatible hardware;
- the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (x64); and
- the Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime.
The runtimes are not bundled. The installer checks for both and, when one is missing, downloads it
from Microsoft and installs it before TigerMarkView; installing a runtime asks for administrator
approval.
To build the installer locally, install the TigerSetup release that installer/tigersetup.json
pins (its tiger-setup must be on PATH) and run:
pwsh installer/Build-Installer.ps1
The output is written below artifacts/, which is ignored by Git.
Command line
tiger-mark converts one Markdown file to one PDF without opening the desktop application. It is a
TigerCli-based command installed by the normal TigerMarkView installer. No separate CLI installer,
portable archive, or NuGet package is published by this repository.
Write the PDF beside the input (notes.md becomes notes.pdf):
tiger-mark notes.md
Choose an output path and page settings:
tiger-mark notes.md -o report.pdf
tiger-mark notes.md --output "output/review.pdf"
tiger-mark notes.md --paper Letter --orientation Landscape --margins Narrow --page-numbers
The command surface is:
- one positional Markdown input (
.md or .markdown);
-o / --output ; when omitted, the PDF is written beside the input;--paper ;--orientation ;--margins ;--page-numbers;--header-left, --header-center, --header-right, --footer-left, --footer-center and
--footer-right, each taking a template;--timestamped-fallback;--help and --version; and--help-errors for the documented exit-code meanings.
Enum values are case-insensitive. TigerCli's grammar places the input before TigerMarkView's options:
tiger-mark [options]. There are no subcommands, configuration files, multi-file publishing,
custom page dimensions, TOC generation, or CLI switches for emoji or syntax highlighting.
--help also lists TigerCli's standard presentation and diagnostics options, including -h,
--version-full, --help-env, --non-interactive, --theme, --color, --no-color, and
--culture. These control the command-line framework; for example, TigerCli's --theme does not
change the PDF palette.
On success the command writes Created: to standard output and exits with code 0. Conversion
failures return 1, usage errors return 2, and cancellation returns 3. 4 means a PDF was created
but the requested output file could not be replaced, and only --timestamped-fallback can produce it.
Errors are written to standard error. The CLI is Windows-only and requires WebView2, like the desktop
application.
Six independent slots print in the page margins, above and below the text:
tiger-mark report.md --header-left "{Title}" --header-right "{Date}" --footer-center "Page {Page} of {TotalPages}"
Each slot takes a template: ordinary text plus placeholders.
| Placeholder | Prints |
|---|
{Page} | The current page number |
{TotalPages} | The number of pages in the PDF |
{Title} | The document's title (see below) |
{FileName} | The Markdown file name without its extension |
{FileNameWithExt} | The Markdown file name |
{FilePath} | The Markdown file's full path |
{Date} | The date the PDF was generated (yyyy-MM-dd) |
{Time} | The time it was generated (HH:mm:ss) |
{DateTime} | Both (yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss) |
{Date}, {Time} and {DateTime} take an optional format after a colon — a
.NET date and time format string,
applied with the invariant culture so the same command produces the same PDF on any machine. For
example {Date:dd MMM yyyy} prints 30 Aug 2026 and {Time:HH:mm} prints 14:25. Placeholder names
are case-insensitive, and {{ and }} print literal braces.
{Title} is the first of these the document offers: a title: key in its YAML front matter, then its
first level-one heading, then the file name without its extension.
One timestamp is taken when generation starts and used for every page, so a conversion that runs across
midnight still prints one date throughout. --page-numbers is shorthand for
--footer-center "{Page}"; an explicit --footer-center wins over the flag. Page space is reserved
automatically: a margin too shallow to hold a running head is widened to 14 mm, so headers and footers
never overlap the text. A slot left empty prints nothing and reserves nothing.
A malformed template — an unknown placeholder, a stray brace, an unusable date format — is a usage
error (2), reported before the document is read.
Writing over a PDF that is open
By default the PDF is written straight to its destination, so a target that is open in a reader fails
the conversion after the work has been done. --timestamped-fallback writes to
report-20260830142530.pdf beside the destination first and then replaces the destination with it:
tiger-mark report.md -o report.pdf --timestamped-fallback
If the replacement succeeds the command behaves exactly as it always has — Created: report.pdf, exit
0, and no timestamped file left behind. If it fails, the timestamped PDF is kept, the existing
report.pdf is left untouched, Created: names the file that was kept, an explanation goes to standard
error, and the exit code is 4. Nothing is retried and nothing is deleted.
Building and testing
The repository requires the .NET 10 SDK on Windows:
dotnet restore TigerMarkView.slnx
dotnet build TigerMarkView.slnx
dotnet test TigerMarkView.slnx
dotnet run --project src/TigerMarkView
dotnet run --project src/TigerMarkView.Cli -- README.md -o README.pdf
Repository structure
src/
TigerMarkView.Core/ Platform-neutral rendering and domain logic
TigerMarkView/ Avalonia desktop application
TigerMarkView.Pdf/ Windows/WebView2 PDF support
TigerMarkView.Cli/ tiger-mark command
tests/
TigerMarkView.Core.Tests/
TigerMarkView.Cli.Tests/
docs/ Bundled user documentation and notices
assets/ Artwork and licence texts
installer/ TigerSetup package and build script
TigerMarkView.Core must remain free of Avalonia and Windows-only dependencies. Both the GUI and CLI
reuse its renderer, and both use TigerMarkView.Pdf for PDF generation. Version.props is the single
source of product version and shared application metadata; production projects import it explicitly.
Contributor, architecture, and release guidance is in AGENTS.md; maintainer procedures are in
docs/maintainers/.
Privacy
TigerMarkView keeps its settings and the Open Recent list on the local computer and sends them
nowhere; it has no telemetry, accounts, or update checks. Its network requests are for the web images
an opened document refers to (on by default, and switchable off), for documents you open from a network
share, and, in the installer, for a missing Microsoft runtime. The privacy statement describes what is stored, how to
clear it, what uninstalling removes, and those requests; each release publishes the statement for its
version as its PRIVACY.md asset.
Licence
TigerMarkView is released under the MIT License. Third-party components and their licence
terms are listed in docs/THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md. Toolbar and status-bar
icons are derived from Microsoft Fluent UI System Icons.
TigerMarkView is an open-source project sponsored by IT Tiger.