mdview Christian Dreier

A standalone application that renders and displays Markdown files. It does nothing else! No direct editing nor any fancy note taking features. It is not distributed as a browser extension nor does it fire up a web server - so no web browser is needed to see the rendered Markdown file.

README

Markdown Viewer

A standalone application that renders and displays Markdown files. It does nothing else! No direct editing nor any fancy note taking features. It is not distributed as a browser extension nor does it fire up a web server - so no web browser is needed to see the rendered Markdown file.

See the flavor documentation for Markdown features additional to GitHub Flavored Markdown.

Installation and usage

You find the latest binaries and setup file at GitHub.

Package formats:

• Windows: Setup-exe, ZIP archive
• Linux: AppImage package
• macOS: DMG package

Windows

The Windows setup file supports following parameters:

• /S runs the setup silently, i.e. in the background, without UI and without asking any questions.
• /D=C:\path\to\install sets the installation directory. This parameter has to be the last one. The path must not contain quotes, even if the path contains whitespaces.

winget

The application can be installed via winget:

winget install c3er.mdview

Scoop

The application can be installed via Scoop:

scoop install https://github.com/c3er/mdview/releases/latest/download/mdview.json

Known issues

Windows installation and download security

Issues occurred with browser download security features and Windows SmartScreen. I checked both, the Windows Setup-EXE and the ZIP file in VirusTotal and no engine detected anything at upload time.

I don't know yet, how to prevent these blockings without paying an annual fee.

Startup speed

The application may have a delay at startup. This delay may be caused by Windows Defender. See my comment in Electron issue #29868 and this StackOverflow question. Other virus scanner may also cause a delay.

As a workaround to remove this delay, you can add the path to the mdview.exe to the exclusion list of your virus scanner. The default installation path of the setup file are:

• C:\Program Files\mdview for system wide installation
• %appdata%\..\Local\Programs\mdview for installation in the user account (non elevated)

Build error ERR_ELECTRON_BUILDER_CANNOT_EXECUTE (development)

You may encounter some issue when trying to build the Electron distribution (binaries) i.e. the build may (partially) fail.

A possible fix is described here not able to build installer/uninstaller (ERR_ELECTRON_BUILDER_CANNOT_EXECUTE)

Developing

See the CONTRIBUTING file.

Copyright and License

This tool is made by Christian Dreier. If you find a copy somewhere, you find the original at GitHub.

You can use and copy this tool under the conditions of the MIT license.

Further notes

There is a fork of this project by Loïs Bégué.