Marked 2 5 27 – Easily Preview Your Markdown Documents

• Marked 2 5 27 – Easily Preview Your Markdown Documents Online
• Marked 2 5 27 – Easily Preview Your Markdown Documents Automatically
• Marked 2 5 27 – Easily Preview Your Markdown Documents Electronically

Written in Python, and easy to deal with. Simple and lightweight: Yes. On its own, it comes with the basics – and you can add more (like support for specific Markdown dialects as Markdown Extra or MathJax if you need. Open source: Yes (using GPLv2) ReText with Live Preview (source: ReText; click image for larger variant). If you use Marked 2 to have a live preview of your Markdown documents already, toss TableFlip in the mix for some graphical editing and see how all the apps work in synchrony! It's so natural that it's weird to even mention, but TableFlip does allow you to use whichever tool you prefer to edit and process your text files. .BETTER MARKDOWN PREVIEW WITH MARKED 2. Marked is a great utility for previewing Markdown files (learn more at Marked2app.com). Now, you no longer need to authorize it to view Markdown previews from Bear.NEW THEMES FOR BEAR PRO. Enjoy the new Olive Dark and D.Boring themes, now available to Bear Pro subscribers.MORE GOODIES AND. Automatically parses markdown files (.md) into HTML with live reload Usage: 1. Install extension from webstore (creates no new UI) 2. Check 'Allow access to file URLs' in chrome://extensions listing: 3. Turn your analyses into high quality documents, reports, presentations and dashboards with R Markdown. Use a productive notebook interface to weave together narrative text and code to produce elegantly formatted output.

This article provides an alphabetical reference for writing Markdown for docs.microsoft.com (Docs).

Markdown is a lightweight markup language with plain text formatting syntax. Docs supports CommonMark compliant Markdown parsed through the Markdig parsing engine. Docs also supports custom Markdown extensions that provide richer content on the Docs site.

You can use any text editor to write Markdown, but we recommend Visual Studio Code with the Docs Authoring Pack. The Docs Authoring Pack provides editing tools and preview functionality that lets you see what your articles will look like when rendered on Docs.

Alerts (Note, Tip, Important, Caution, Warning)

Alerts are a Markdown extension to create block quotes that render on docs.microsoft.com with colors and icons that indicate the significance of the content. The following alert types are supported:

These alerts look like this on docs.microsoft.com:

Note

Information the user should notice even if skimming.

Tip

Optional information to help a user be more successful.

Important

Essential information required for user success.

Caution

Negative potential consequences of an action.

Warning

Dangerous certain consequences of an action.

Angle brackets

If you use angle brackets in text in your file--for example, to denote a placeholder--you need to manually encode the angle brackets. Otherwise, Markdown thinks that they're intended to be an HTML tag.

For example, encode </code> as <code>&lt;script name&gt;</code> or <code><script name></code>.</p><p>Angle brackets don't have to be escaped in text formatted as inline code or in code blocks.</p><h2>Apostrophes and quotation marks</h2><p>If you copy from Word into a Markdown editor, the text might contain 'smart' (curly) apostrophes or quotation marks. These need to be encoded or changed to basic apostrophes or quotation marks. Otherwise, you end up with things like this when the file is published: It’s</p><p>Here are the encodings for the 'smart' versions of these punctuation marks:</p><ul><li>Left (opening) quotation mark: <code>&#8220;</code></li><li>Right (closing) quotation mark: <code>&#8221;</code></li><li>Right (closing) single quotation mark or apostrophe: <code>&#8217;</code></li><li>Left (opening) single quotation mark (rarely used): <code>&#8216;</code></li></ul><h2>Blockquotes</h2><p>Blockquotes are created using the <code>></code> character:</p><p>The preceding example renders as follows:</p><p>This is a blockquote. It is usually rendered indented and with a different background color.</p><h2>Bold and italic text</h2><p>To format text as <strong>bold</strong>, enclose it in two asterisks:</p><p>To format text as <em>italic</em>, enclose it in a single asterisk:</p><p>To format text as both <em><strong>bold and italic</strong></em>, enclose it in three asterisks:</p><h2>Code snippets</h2><p>Docs Markdown supports the placement of code snippets both inline in a sentence and as a separate 'fenced' block between sentences. For more information, see How to add code to docs.</p><h2>Columns</h2><p>The <strong>columns</strong> Markdown extension gives Docs authors the ability to add column-based content layouts that are more flexible and powerful than basic Markdown tables, which are only suited for true tabular data. You can add up to four columns, and use the optional <code>span</code> attribute to merge two or more columns.</p><p>The syntax for columns is as follows:</p><p>Columns should only contain basic Markdown, including images. Headings, tables, tabs, and other complex structures shouldn't be included. A row can't have any content outside of column.</p><p>For example, the following Markdown creates one column that spans two column widths, and one standard (no <code>span</code>) column:</p><p>This renders as follows:</p><p><strong>This is a 2-span column with lots of text.</strong></p><p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec vestibulum mollis nuncornare commodo. Nullam ac metus imperdiet, rutrum justo vel, vulputate leo. Donecrutrum non eros eget consectetur.</p><h2>Headings</h2><p>Docs supports six levels of Markdown headings:</p><ul><li>There must be a space between the last <code>#</code> and heading text.</li><li>Each Markdown file must have one and only one H1 heading.</li><li>The H1 heading must be the first content in the file after the YML metadata block.</li><li>H2 headings automatically appear in the right-hand navigating menu of the published file. Lower-level headings don't appear, so use H2s strategically to help readers navigate your content.</li><li>HTML headings, such as <code><h1></code>, aren't recommended, and in some cases will cause build warnings.</li><li>You can link to individual headings in a file via bookmark links.</li></ul><h2>HTML</h2><p>Although Markdown supports inline HTML, HTML isn't recommended for publishing to Docs, and except for a limited list of values will cause build errors or warnings.</p><h2>Images</h2><p>The following file types are supported by default for images:</p><ul><li>.jpg</li><li>.png</li></ul><h3>Standard conceptual images (default Markdown)</h3><p>The basic Markdown syntax to embed an image is:</p><p>Where <code><alt text></code> is a brief description of the image and <code><folder path></code> is a relative path to the image. Alternate text is required for screen readers for the visually impaired. It's also useful if there's a site bug where the image can't render.</p><p>Underscores in alt text aren't rendered properly unless you escape them by prefixing them with a backslash (<code>_</code>). However, don't copy file names for use as alt text. For example, instead of this:</p><p>Write this:</p><h3>Standard conceptual images (Docs Markdown)</h3><p>The Docs custom <code>:::image:::</code> extension supports standard images, complex images, and icons.</p><p>For standard images, the older Markdown syntax will still work, but the new extension is recommended because it supports more powerful functionality, such as specifying a localization scope that's different from the parent topic. Other advanced functionality, such as selecting from the shared image gallery instead of specifying a local image, will be available in the future. The new syntax is as follows:</p><p>If <code>type='content'</code> (the default), both <code>source</code> and <code>alt-text</code> are required.</p><h3>Complex images with long descriptions</h3><p>You can also use this extension to add an image with a long description that is read by screen readers but not rendered visually on the published page. Long descriptions are an accessibility requirement for complex images, such as graphs. The syntax is the following:</p><p>If <code>type='complex'</code>, <code>source</code>, <code>alt-text</code>, a long description, and the <code>:::image-end:::</code> tag are all required.</p><h3>Specifying loc-scope</h3><p>Sometimes the localization scope for an image is different from that of the article or module that contains it. This can cause a bad global experience: for example, if a screenshot of a product is accidentally localized into a language the product isn't available in. To prevent this, you can specify the optional <code>loc-scope</code> attribute in images of types <code>content</code> and <code>complex</code>.</p><h3>Icons</h3><p>The image extension supports icons, which are decorative images and should not have alt text. The syntax for icons is:</p><p>If <code>type='icon'</code>, only <code>source</code> should be specified.</p><h2>Included Markdown files</h2><p>Where markdown files need to be repeated in multiple articles, you can use an include file. The includes feature instructs Docs to replace the reference with the contents of the include file at build time. You can use includes in the following ways:</p><ul><li>Inline: Reuse a common text snippet inline with within a sentence.</li><li>Block: Reuse an entire Markdown file as a block, nested within a section of an article.</li></ul><p>An inline or block include file is a Markdown (.md) file. It can contain any valid Markdown. Include files are typically located in a common <em>includes</em> subdirectory, in the root of the repository. When the article is published, the included file is seamlessly integrated into it.</p><h3>Includes syntax</h3><p>Block include is on its own line:</p><p>Inline include is within a line:</p><p>Where <code><title></code> is the name of the file and <code><filepath></code> is the relative path to the file. <code>INCLUDE</code> must be capitalized and there must be a space before the <code><title></code>.</p><p>Here are requirements and considerations for include files:</p><ul><li>Use block includes for significant amounts of content--a paragraph or two, a shared procedure, or a shared section. Do not use them for anything smaller than a sentence.</li><li>Includes won't be rendered in the GitHub rendered view of your article, because they rely on Docs extensions. They'll be rendered only after publication.</li><li>Ensure that all the text in an include file is written in complete sentences or phrases that do not depend on preceding text or following text in the article that references the include. Ignoring this guidance creates an untranslatable string in the article.</li><li>Don't embed include files within other include files.</li><li>Place media files in a media folder that's specific to the include subdirectory--for instance, the <code><repo></code><em>/includes/media</em> folder. The <em>media</em> directory should not contain any images in its root. If the include does not have images, a corresponding <em>media</em> directory is not required.</li><li>As with regular articles, don't share media between include files. Use a separate file with a unique name for each include and article. Store the media file in the media folder that's associated with the include.</li><li>Don't use an include as the only content of an article. Includes are meant to be supplemental to the content in the rest of the article.</li></ul><h2>Links</h2><p>For information on syntax for links, see Use links in documentation.</p><h2>Lists (Numbered, Bulleted, Checklist)</h2><h3>Numbered list</h3><p>To create a numbered list, you can use all 1s. The numbers are rendered in ascending order as a sequential list when published. For increased source readability, you can increment your lists manually.</p><p>Don't use letters in lists, including nested lists. They don't render correctly when published to Docs. Nested lists using numbers will render as lowercase letters when published. For example:</p><p>This renders as follows:</p><ol><li>This is</li><li>a parent numbered list<ol><li>and this is</li><li>a nested numbered list</li></ol></li><li>(fin)</li></ol><h3>Bulleted list</h3><p>To create a bulleted list, use <code>-</code> or <code>*</code> followed by a space at the beginning of each line:</p><h3 id='marked-2-5-27-easily-preview-your-markdown-documents-online'>Marked 2 5 27 – Easily Preview Your Markdown Documents Online</h3><p>This renders as follows:</p><ul><li>This is</li><li>a parent bulleted list<ul><li>and this is</li><li>a nested bulleted list</li></ul></li><li>All done!</li></ul><p>Whichever syntax you use, <code>-</code> or <code>*</code>, use it consistently within an article.</p><h3>Checklist</h3><p>Checklists are available for use on Docs via a custom Markdown extension:</p><p>This example renders on Docs like this:</p><ul><li>List item 1</li><li>List item 2</li><li>List item 3</li></ul><p>Use checklists at the beginning or end of an article to summarize 'What will you learn' or 'What have you learned' content. Do not add random checklists throughout your articles.</p><h2>Next step action</h2><p>You can use a custom extension to add a next step action button to Docs pages.</p><p>The syntax is as follows:</p><p>For example:</p><p>This renders as follows:</p><p>You can use any supported link in a next step action, including a Markdown link to another web page. In most cases, the next action link will be a relative link to another file in the same docset.</p><h2>Non-localized strings</h2><p>You can use the custom <code>no-loc</code> Markdown extension to identify strings of content that you would like the localization process to ignore.</p><p>All strings called out will be case-sensitive; that is, the string must match exactly to be ignored for localization.</p><p>To mark an individual string as non-localizable, use this syntax:</p><p>For example, in the following, only the single instance of <code>Document</code> will be ignored during the localization process:</p><p>Note</p><h3 id='marked-2-5-27-easily-preview-your-markdown-documents-automatically'>Marked 2 5 27 – Easily Preview Your Markdown Documents Automatically</h3><p>Use <code></code> to escape special characters:</p><p>You can also use metadata in the YAML header to mark all instances of a string within the current Markdown file as non-localizable:</p><p>Note</p><p>The no-loc metadata is not supported as global metadata in <em>docfx.json</em> file. The localization pipeline doesn't read the <em>docfx.json</em> file, so the no-loc metadata must be added into each individual source file.</p><p>In the following example, both in the metadata <code>title</code> and the Markdown header the word <code>Document</code> will be ignored during the localization process.</p><p>In the metadata <code>description</code> and the Markdown main content the word <code>document</code> is localized, because it does not start with a capital <code>D</code>.</p><h2>Selectors</h2><p>Selectors are UI elements that let the user switch between multiple flavors of the same article. They are used in some doc sets to address differences in implementation across technologies or platforms. Selectors are typically most applicable to our mobile platform content for developers.</p><p>Because the same selector Markdown goes in each article file that uses the selector, we recommend placing the selector for your article in an include file. Then you can reference that include file in all your article files that use the same selector.</p><p>There are two types of selectors: a single selector and a multi-selector.</p><h3>Single selector</h3><p>... will be rendered like this:</p><h3>Multi-selector</h3><p>... will be rendered like this:</p><h2>Subscript and superscript</h2>

You should only use subscript or superscript when necessary for technical accuracy, such as when writing about mathematical formulas. Don't use them for non-standard styles, such as footnotes.

For both subscript and superscript, use HTML:

This renders as follows:

Hello _{This is subscript!}

This renders as follows:

Marked 2 5 27 – Easily Preview Your Markdown Documents Electronically

Goodbye ^{This is superscript!}

Tables

The simplest way to create a table in Markdown is to use pipes and lines. To create a standard table with a header, follow the first line with dashed line:

You should only use subscript or superscript when necessary for technical accuracy, such as when writing about mathematical formulas. Don't use them for non-standard styles, such as footnotes.

For both subscript and superscript, use HTML:

This renders as follows:

Hello _{This is subscript!}

This renders as follows:

Marked 2 5 27 – Easily Preview Your Markdown Documents Electronically

Goodbye ^{This is superscript!}

Tables

The simplest way to create a table in Markdown is to use pipes and lines. To create a standard table with a header, follow the first line with dashed line:

This renders as follows:

You can align the columns by using colons:

Renders as follows:

Tip

The Docs Authoring Extension for VS Code makes it easy to add basic Markdown tables!

You can also use an online table generator.

Line breaks within words in any table cell

Long words in a Markdown table might make the table expand to the right navigation and become unreadable. You can solve that by allowing Docs rendering to automatically insert line breaks within words when needed. Just wrap up the table with the custom class [!div].

Here is a Markdown sample of a table with three rows that will be wrapped by a div with the class name mx-tdBreakAll.

It will be rendered like this:

Line breaks within words in second column table cells

You might want line breaks to be automatically inserted within words only in the second column of a table. To limit the breaks to the second column, apply the class mx-tdCol2BreakAll by using the div wrapper syntax as shown earlier.

Data matrix tables

A data matrix table has both a header and a weighted first column, creating a matrix with an empty cell in the top left. Docs has custom Markdown for data matrix tables:

Every entry in the first column must be styled as bold (**bold**); otherwise the tables won't be accessible for screen readers or valid for Docs.

HTML Tables

HTML tables aren't recommended for docs.microsoft.com. They aren't human readable in the source - which is a key principle of Markdown.

Inspired in part by setext, the lightweight markup language designed for TidBITS in 1992, John Gruber's Markdown revolutionized the way people write for the Web a dozen years later. Writers were freed from coding cumbersome HTML tags or managing bloated Web design apps; Markdown provides a standard method of writing a plain text document that can easily be converted to HTML for display on a Web site.

Markdown is now used in many content management systems, including our own TidBITS Publishing System, where the connection with setext made adoption easy. Book publishing services like Leanpub rely on Markdown too, and Take Control uses Markdown as part of our ebook workflow (see 'Celebrating Ten Years of Take Control,' 28 October 2013). Markdown's simplicity has even made writing more accessible, making it easier for the vision-impaired to become authors (see 'With Markdown, Even the Blind Can Write,' 18 June 2013).

Besides Gruber, the man most responsible for the popularity of Markdown is programmer Brett Terpstra. He has released a plethora of excellent free tools for users of the markup language, including:

• nvALT for note taking
• Markdown Service Tools to simplify writing Markdown
• TextExpander snippets for a variety of tasks
• Marky the Markdownifier, which translates HTML into Markdown
• MarkdownEditing package for the Sublime Text 2 editor
• PopClip extensions for Markdown and more
• A bundle of Markdown tools for the Blogsmith CMS
• Markdown QuickTags for the WordPress CMS
• Grablinks Safari extension to grab Markdown links from a Web page
• TabLinks Safari extension to save open tabs as Markdown links

But there's one tool Brett Terpstra charges money for: Marked 2, a Markdown previewer. It costs $11.99 directly from Terpstra's Web site, with a free 7-day trial available. The original version of Marked is available in the Mac App Store for $3.99, but lacks some of the features of Marked 2. Terpstra told me that Marked 2 may return to the Mac App Store in the future.

At first blush, Marked 2 is incredibly simple. Drop a Markdown-formatted text file onto Marked's app icon and a window pops up with a preview of how the file will look on the Web. You can even drag the proxy icon from a text editor's title bar into Marked, and the preview updates every time you save. (I use Gabe Weatherhead's Keyboard Maestro macro to open BBEdit documents in Marked.) The Marked preview shows live links and even images, if you stick to standard Markdown format.

But Marked isn't just a Markdown previewer — BBEdit users can choose Markup > Preview in BBEdit for that. Marked goes further, providing a powerful editing and formatting package that both expands upon Markdown's capabilities and makes you a better writer. Let's take a look at the top features.

Statistics — You might have noticed in the above screenshot that Marked displays a word count at the bottom of the window. Click it (or press Command-Option-S) and it also shows the number of paragraphs, sentences, and characters. Select some text, and a little statistics balloon reports word, character, and line counts for the selection.

If you choose Preview > Detailed Statistics (Command-I — this menu item is also available by clicking the gear icon in the lower-right corner of Marked's window), Marked displays a lovely set of in-depth stats, including average words per sentence, percentage of complex words, reading ease, grade level, fog index, and even an estimate of how long the document will take to read. From the Preview menu, you can also choose to show readability statistics at the bottom instead of paragraph, sentence, and character counts (or just Option-click the word count display).

Keywords and Word Repetition — Even the best writers can get stuck on a certain word, using it over and over, or resort to clichés and junk words like 'very.' There are plenty of tools to check spelling and grammar, but Marked is the only editing tool I've used that addresses these writing tics.

To see if you're overusing a word, choose Preview > Visualize Word Repetition (Control-Command-W). Repeated words are highlighted in pink, and if you hover over one with your mouse pointer, Marked darkens the highlight and shows other instances of the same word.

To check for verboten words, choose Preview > Highlight Keywords (Command-Shift-H). Marked comes with a dictionary of words and phrases to avoid or replace, such as: 'actually,' 'very,' and 'really.' It highlights these with four colors: pink for words to avoid, purple for those for which you might want to find alternatives, blue for other words you've told Marked to highlight, and green for custom — which denotes temporary keywords.

Temporary keywords are just that — words you want to highlight for a single document. To set them, choose Preview > Keyword Drawer (Command-Shift-K) or click the arrow icon at the bottom of the window. A pop-up appears with a notepad for temporary keywords. Enter one per line, and click Update to highlight those words in green.

It would be nice to be able to create temporary keywords to avoid checking as well. While writing this review, the words 'Marked' and 'Markdown' appear over and over again, but justly so — the article is about them. I don't need to see them in the list of overused words.

To edit the permanent list of words to highlight, choose Preview > Edit Keywords to bring up Marked's Proofing preference pane. It has three tabs: Avoid, Use Alternate, and Other (which corresponds to the blue highlight mentioned above). Each gives you a ruled text field, so it's simple to click inside to edit or add. If you screw up, you can restore the defaults for each.

Format and Export — Marked not only previews text, it also formats text, according to a number of built-in themes. The default is Swiss, as indicated in the lower left of the preview window. Click the theme name to display a menu of eight themes, each with a keyboard shortcut. Special note to fiction writers: the Manuscript theme formats your document as though it came from a typewriter.

Not enamored of the defaults? You can create your own with standard CSS, if you're familiar with styling Web pages. Create your style sheet as you would normally in BBEdit or CSSEdit or whatever, save it, and then, back in Marked, choose Marked > Preferences > Style. Click the + button and select your CSS file.

Custom CSS styles aren't just a pretty way of viewing your documents. Once you're previewing in Marked, you can copy out HTML or rich text, or export to PDF, .doc, .docx, and .odt. Be sure to turn off highlights first, or they'll be embedded in your document! The conversion isn't always perfect, but it offers a tantalizing look at a future where Markdown can easily be turned into any other format. It's sort of like XML for humans.

You can view the HTML of your document at any time by selecting the angle brackets (<>) in the upper-right corner of Marked's window.

Custom Preprocessors and Other Languages — Marked can handle a variety of markup languages beyond Markdown and MultiMarkdown. It also supports the Fountain screenwriting language, the CriticMarkup editing standard, the aforementioned Leanpub publishing service's Markdown variant, the Mathjax mathematics display engine, and the Discount Markdown variant. Marked can even do tables of contents and chapter splits, so you could in theory use it to help buildebooks.

In addition to plain text documents, Marked can preview documents written in MarsEdit and Scrivener, both of which emphasize content over form — though each has its own formatting and preview capabilities.

If you prefer some other markup language, never fear, because you can tie in custom processors and preprocessors, which enable you to add additional languages or specific processing directives.

For instance, here at TidBITS, we have specified a custom variant of Markdown that allows the use of what we call 'lazy links,' reference-style links that use asterisks in place of per-link labels. A bit of Perl code in the TidBITS Publishing System translates lazy links to regular reference links on the backend.

Lazy links may seem a bit nutty to John Gruber, but they let us use Keyboard Maestro macros for automating link creation, make it easy to group links with their associated paragraphs, simplify editing and reordering links, and give us a more accurate preview of how our plain text email edition will look. (Want in on a secret? In the Web version of this article, click the pipe | between the category and date to see how we facilitate linking.)

But Marked doesn't understand our lazy links out of the box. I contacted Brett Terpstra to ask him if he could add such support, and to my delight, he was nice enough to write a custom preprocessor that does it for us! He even expanded it with the capability to include linked footnotes. How's that for customer service?

(Speaking of links, choosing Preview > Validate External Links is a great way to make sure all the links in an article work before going live with it.)

So no matter what markup language you use, if it can be translated to HTML, Marked should be able to handle it.

Power and Simplicity — If I were forced to come up with a complaint, it would be that Marked's design language sometimes clashes. For instance, the Detailed Statistics display features iOS 7-like thin text on a white background. But the temporary keyword editor uses a skeuomorphic notepad and switch, on a linen background — a throwback to iOS 6's visual style. (Terpstra says he's in the process of redesigning this.)

But that's nitpicking. It's incredible how much power has been tucked into what seems like such a simple app. If you compose serious text in Markdown or any of Marked's other supported languages, Marked 2 is a must-have for its word repetition and statistics tools alone — not to mention many of the features we didn't get around to, such as adapting it for long-form reading.

But even more exciting, Marked's powerful formatting and export capabilities take us closer to the day when human-readable, plain-text markup languages may largely supplant machine-readable, proprietary file formats for everyday uses. You probably won't be able to design a brochure in Markdown or the equivalent, but for an article, script, manual, or novel, the combination of a lightweight markup language and Marked could eliminate the need for a complex word processor or page layout application. And the beauty of these plain text markup languages is that files using them can be opened on any platform, using many different apps. If you still have documents locked away in MacWrite or WriteNow format, you know how hard it can be tobring older files into the present.

So if you work with text, and certainly if you're already doing much of your writing in Markdown, give Marked 2 a try. It has earned a permanent spot in my workflow, and, if it meets your needs as well, picking up a copy for $11.99 is a great way to show Brett Terpstra some appreciation for all the other Markdown-related tools he's given away for free over the years.