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README

[!IMPORTANT]

This repository is no longer maintained.

>

You can find a maintained fork at .

mdcat

Fancy cat for Markdown (that is, [CommonMark][]):

$ mdcat sample.md

![mdcat showcase with different colour themes][sxs]

mdcat in [WezTerm], with "One Light (base16)", "Gruvbox Light", and "Darcula (base16)" (from left to right), and [JetBrains Mono] as font.

[CommonMark]: http://commonmark.org [Solarized]: http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized [dracula]: https://draculatheme.com/iterm/ [wezterm]: https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/ [JetBrains Mono]: https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/ [sxs]: ./screenshots/side-by-side.png

Features

mdcat works best with [iTerm2], [WezTerm], and [kitty], and a good terminal font with italic characters. Then it

nicely renders all basic CommonMark syntax,
highlights code blocks with [syntect],
shows [links][osc8], 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 ANSI¹ | ✓ | ✓ | | | | Windows 10 console | ✓ | ✓ | | | | [Terminology] | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | | | [iTerm2] | ✓ | ✓ | ✓² | ✓ | | [kitty] | ✓ | ✓ | ✓² | | | [WezTerm] | ✓ | ✓ | ✓² | | | [VSCode] | ✓ | ✓ | ✓² | | | [Ghostty] | ✓ | ✓ | ✓² | |

1) mdcat requires that the terminal supports strikethrough formatting and [inline links][osc8]. This includes most modern terminal emulators, such as Windows Terminal, KDE Konsole, or anything based on VTE, GNOME's terminal emulation library. But mdcat likely won't work well on old terminals that lack these features (e.g. the Linux text console). 2) SVG images are rendered with [resvg], see [SVG support].

Not supported:

CommonMark extension for footnotes.
Inline markup and text wrapping in table cells.

[syntect]: https://github.com/trishume/syntect [osc8]: https://gist.github.com/egmontkob/eb114294efbcd5adb1944c9f3cb5feda [Terminology]: http://terminolo.gy [iterm2]: https://www.iterm2.com [WezTerm]: https://wezfurlong.org/wezterm/ [kitty]: https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/ [resvg]: https://github.com/RazrFalcon/resvg [SVG support]: https://github.com/RazrFalcon/resvg#svg-support [VSCode]: https://code.visualstudio.com/ [Ghostty]: https://mitchellh.com/ghostty

Usage

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

Installation

Release binaries built on Github Actions.

- These binaries are build from Git source on Github actions; you find provenance attestations at .

3rd party packages at Repology
You can also build mdcat manually with cargo install mdcat (see below for details).

mdcat can be linked or copied to mdless; if invoked as mdless it automatically uses pagination.

Building

Run cargo build --release.

Building requires libcurl.

Packaging

When packaging mdcat you may wish to include the following additional artifacts:

A symlink or hardlink from mdless to mdcat (see above).
Shell completions for relevant shells, by invoking mdcat --completions after building, e.g.

$ mdcat --completions fish > /usr/share/fish/vendor_completions.d/mdcat.fish
  $ mdcat --completions bash > /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/mdcat
  $ mdcat --completions zsh > /usr/share/zsh/site-functions/_mdcat
  # Same for mdless if you include it
  $ mdless --completions fish > /usr/share/fish/vendor_completions.d/mdless.fish
  $ mdless --completions bash > /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/mdless
  $ mdless --completions zsh > /usr/share/zsh/site-functions/_mdless

A build of the man page mdcat.1.adoc, using [AsciiDoctor]:

$ asciidoctor -b manpage -a reproducible -o /usr/share/man/man1/mdcat.1 mdcat.1.adoc
  $ gzip /usr/share/man/man1/mdcat.1
  # If you include a mdless as above, you may also want to support man mdless
  $ ln -s mdcat.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/mdless.1.gz

[AsciiDoctor]: https://asciidoctor.org/

Troubleshooting

mdcat can output extensive tracing information when asked to. Run mdcat with $MDCATLOG=trace for complete tracing information, or with $MDCATLOG=mdcat::render=trace to trace only rendering.

License

Copyright Sebastian Wiesner

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

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