mdcat

Fancy cat for Markdown (that is, CommonMark):

$ mdcat sample.md

mdcat in [kitty], with Tango Light, [Solarized] Light, and [Dracula] (from left to right), and [PragmataPro] as font.

Features

mdcat works best with [iTerm2] or [Kitty], 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 also images inline in supported terminals (see above, where "Rust" is a clickable link!),
• adds jump marks for headings in [iTerm2] (jump forwards and backwards with ⇧⌘↓ and ⇧⌘↑).

| Terminal | Basic syntax | Syntax highlighting | Images | Jump marks | | :------------------------- | :-----------: | :-----------------: | :----: | :--------: | | Basic ANSI | ✓ | ✓ | | | | Windows ConEmu | ✓ | ✓ | | | | Windows 10 console | ✓ | ✓ | | | | Generic VTE 0.50 or newer¹ | ✓ | ✓ | | | | Terminology | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | | | iTerm2 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ 2) | ✓ | | kitty | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ 2) | | | WezTerm | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ 2) | | | foot | ✓ | ✓ | | |

1) VTE is Gnome’s terminal emulation library used by many popular terminal emulators on Linux, including Gnome Terminal, Xfce Terminal, Tilix, etc. 2) SVG images require rsvg-convert from librsvg.

Not supported:

• CommonMark extensions: Footnotes and tables
• Re-filling paragraphs

Usage

Try mdcat --help or read the mdcat(1) manpage.

Installation

• 3rd party packages:
  • [Homebrew]: brew install mdcat
  • [MacPorts]: sudo port install mdcat
  • [Arch Linux]: pacman -S mdcat
  • Void Linux: xbps-install -S mdcat
  • Nixpkgs: nix-env -i mdcat
  • [Scoop]: scoop install mdcat
  • [Chocolatey]: choco install mdcat
• You can also build mdcat manually with cargo install mdcat.

Requirements

For image type detection either the file tool with support for --brief and --mime-type flags must be available in $PATH.

Troubleshooting

mdcat can output extensive tracing information when asked to. Run a debug build of mdcat with $MDCAT_LOG=trace for complete tracing information, or with $MDCAT_LOG=mdcat::render=trace to trace only rendering.

Note: Tracing information is mostly elided in release builds; use a debug build for complete output.

Future plans

• [ ] Figure out a better way to show HTML [#3].
• [ ] CommonMark extensions: Footnotes [#1].
• [ ] CommonMark extensions: Tables [#2].
• [ ] Ignore soft wraps and wrap inline text a column limit instead [#4].

License

Copyright Sebastian Wiesner sebastian@swsnr.de

Binaries are subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public License, v. 2.0, see LICENSE.

Most of the source is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public License, v. 2.0, see LICENSE, unless otherwise noted; some files are subject to the terms of the Apache 2.0 license, see http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0