mdcat

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

$ mdcat sample.md

mdcat showcase with different colour themes

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)
Jump marks for headings (in iTerm2 jump forwards and backwards with ⇧⌘↓ and ⇧⌘↑)

| Terminal | Basic syntax | Syntax highlighting | Links | Images | Jump marks | | :---------------------- | :-----------: | :-----------------: | :---: | :----: | :--------: | | Basic ANSI | ✓ | ✓ | | | | | VTE 0.50 or newer based | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | | | | Terminology | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | | | iTerm2 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |

Not supported:

CommonMark extensions: Footnotes and Tables
Images from remote URLs
SVG images
Re-filling paragraphs

Installation

Install Rust and run cargo install mdcat. To keep mdcat up to date install cargo-update and run cargo install-update mdcat.

3rd party packages

Arch Linux: mdcat in AUR
Void Linux: xbps-install -S mdcat

Future plans

[ ] Fetch remote images to show them inline.
[ ] Render SVG images.
[ ] 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

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.