mdcat

cat for CommonMark: Show CommonMark (a standardized Markdown dialect) documents on text terminals.

$ 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 which includes italic characters. It supports

• All CommonMark syntax
• Syntax highlighting for code blocks
• Inline links (note the dashed underline like in the screenshot above, in some terminals)
• Inline images like in the screenshot above (in some terminals), even from HTTP(S) URLs (use --local to disable remote images)
• 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

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 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 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.