Marked 2 5 11 – Easily Preview Your Markdown Documents

1. Marked 2 5 11 – Easily Preview Your Markdown Documents Free
2. Marked 2 5 11 – Easily Preview Your Markdown Documents Online
3. Marked 2 5 11 – Easily Preview Your Markdown Documents Electronically

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

Web Essentials is a great plug-in if you want to see Markdown files inside of Visual Studio. It has an editor with live preview for Markdown. It has an editor with live preview for Markdown. Also it includes several other features for web development (most of them are integrated directly into Visual Studio with the next release).

1. This is my personal choice for writing markdown. Integrates nicely with Marked 2 (see Preview section). Primarily good for writing longer documents. Brilliant table of contents feature makes it super-easy to rearrange you document's section ordering. Other nice features. Comes is regular and pro versions. Bear (Mac, iPad, iPhone).
2. For Markdown files, the symbol tree is the Markdown file's header hierarchy. The Outline view is a great way to review your document's header structure and outline. Extending the Markdown preview. Extensions can contribute custom styles and scripts to the Markdown preview to change its appearance and add new functionality.

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.

What is Markdown?

Markdown is a lightweight markup language that you can use to add formatting elements to plaintext text documents. Created by John Gruber in 2004, Markdown is now one of the world's most popular markup languages.

Using Markdown is different than using a WYSIWYG editor. In an application like Microsoft Word, you click buttons to format words and phrases, and the changes are visible immediately. Markdown isn't like that. When you create a Markdown-formatted file, you add Markdown syntax to the text to indicate which words and phrases should look different.

For instance, to denote a heading, you add a number sign before it (e.g., # Heading One). Or to make a phrase bold, you add two asterisks before and after it (e.g., **this text is bold**). It may take a while to get used to seeing Markdown syntax in your text, especially if you're accustomed to WYSIWYG applications. The screenshot below shows a Markdown file displayed in the Atom text editor.

You can add Markdown formatting elements to a plaintext file using a text editor application. Or you can use one of the many Markdown applications for macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android operating systems. There are also several web-based applications specifically designed for writing in Markdown.

Depending on the application you use, you may not be able to preview the formatted document in real time. But that's okay. According to Gruber, Markdown syntax is designed to be readable and unobtrusive, so the text in Markdown files can be read even if it isn't rendered.

The overriding design goal for Markdown's formatting syntax is to make it as readable as possible. The idea is that a Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it's been marked up with tags or formatting instructions.

Why Use Markdown?

You might be wondering why people use Markdown instead of a WYSIWYG editor. Why write with Markdown when you can press buttons in an interface to format your text? As it turns out, there are a couple different reasons why people use Markdown instead of WYSIWYG editors.

• Markdown can be used for everything. People use it to create websites, documents, notes, books, presentations, email messages, and technical documentation.

• Markdown is portable. Files containing Markdown-formatted text can be opened using virtually any application. If you decide you don't like the Markdown application you're currently using, you can import your Markdown files into another Markdown application. That's in stark contrast to word processing applications like Microsoft Word that lock your content into a proprietary file format.

• Markdown is platform independent. You can create Markdown-formatted text on any device running any operating system.

• Markdown is future proof. Even if the application you're using stops working at some point in the future, you'll still be able to read your Markdown-formatted text using a text editing application. This is an important consideration when it comes to books, university theses, and other milestone documents that need to be preserved indefinitely.

• Markdown is everywhere. Websites like Reddit and GitHub support Markdown, and lots of desktop and web-based applications support it.

Kicking the Tires

The best way to get started with Markdown is to use it. That's easier than ever before thanks to a variety of free tools.

You don't even need to download anything. There are several online Markdown editors that you can use to try writing in Markdown. Dillinger is one of the best online Markdown editors. Just open the site and start typing in the left pane. A preview of the rendered document appears in the right pane.

You'll probably want to keep the Dillinger website open as you read through this guide. That way you can try the syntax as you learn about it. After you've become familiar with Markdown, you may want to use a Markdown application that can be installed on your desktop computer or mobile device.

How Does it Work?

Dillinger makes writing in Markdown easy because it hides the stuff happening behind the scenes, but it's worth exploring how the process works in general.

When you write in Markdown, the text is stored in a plaintext file that has an .md or .markdown extension. But then what? How is your Markdown-formatted file converted into HTML or a print-ready document?

The short answer is that you need a Markdown application capable of processing the Markdown file. There are lots of applications available — everything from simple scripts to desktop applications that look like Microsoft Word. Despite their visual differences, all of the applications do the same thing. Like Dillinger, they all convert Markdown-formatted text to HTML so it can be displayed in web browsers.

Markdown applications use something called a Markdown processor (also commonly referred to as a 'parser' or an 'implementation') to take the Markdown-formatted text and output it to HTML format. At that point, your document can be viewed in a web browser or combined with a style sheet and printed. You can see a visual representation of this process below.

To summarize, this is a four-part process:

1. Create a Markdown file using a text editor or a dedicated Markdown application. The file should have an .md or .markdown extension.
2. Open the Markdown file in a Markdown application.
3. Use the Markdown application to convert the Markdown file to an HTML document.
4. View the HTML file in a web browser or use the Markdown application to convert it to another file format, like PDF.

From your perspective, the process will vary somewhat depending on the application you use. For example, Dillinger essentially combines steps 1-3 into a single, seamless interface — all you have to do is type in the left pane and the rendered output magically appears in the right pane. But if you use other tools, like a text editor with a static website generator, you'll find that the process is much more visible.

What's Markdown Good For?

Marked 2 5 11 – Easily Preview Your Markdown Documents Free

Markdown is a fast and easy way to take notes, create content for a website, and produce print-ready documents.

Marked 2 5 11 – Easily Preview Your Markdown Documents Online

It doesn't take long to learn the Markdown syntax, and once you know how to use it, you can write using Markdown just about everywhere. Most people use Markdown to create content for the web, but Markdown is good for formatting everything from email messages to grocery lists.

Here are some examples of what you can do with Markdown.

Websites

Snapmotion 3 1 4 – easily extract images from video. Markdown was designed for the web, so it should come as no surprise that there are plenty of applications specifically designed for creating website content.

Marked 2 5 11 – Easily Preview Your Markdown Documents Electronically

If you're looking for the simplest possible way to create a website with Markdown files, check out blot.im and smallvictori.es. After you sign up for one of these services, they create a Dropbox folder on your computer. Just drag and drop your Markdown files into the folder and — poof! — they're on your website. It couldn't be easier.

If you're familiar with HTML, CSS, and version control, check out Jekyll, a popular static site generator that takes Markdown files and builds an HTML website. One advantage to this approach is that GitHub Pages provides free hosting for Jekyll-generated websites. If Jekyll isn't your cup of tea, just pick one of the many other static site generators available.

If you'd like to use a content management system (CMS) to power your website, take a look at Ghost. Microsoft outlook 2020. It's a free and open-source blogging platform with a nice Markdown editor. If you're a WordPress user, you'll be happy to know there's Markdown support for websites hosted on WordPress.com. Self-hosted WordPress sites can use the Jetpack plugin.

Documents

Markdown doesn't have all the bells and whistles of word processors like Microsoft Word, but it's good enough for creating basic documents like assignments and letters. You can use a Markdown document authoring application to create and export Markdown-formatted documents to PDF or HTML file format. The PDF part is key, because once you have a PDF document, you can do anything with it — print it, email it, or upload it to a website.

Here are some Markdown document authoring applications I recommend: Presonus studio one 4 professional 4 6 1 download free.

• Mac:MacDown, iA Writer, or Marked
• iOS / Android:iA Writer
• Windows:ghostwriter or Markdown Monster
• Linux:ReText or ghostwriter
• Web:Dillinger or StackEdit

Notes

In nearly every way, Markdown is the ideal syntax for taking notes. Sadly, Evernote and OneNote, two of the most popular note applications, don't currently support Markdown. The good news is that several other note applications do support Markdown:

• Simplenote is a free, barebones note-taking application available for every platform.
• Notable is a note-taking application that runs on a variety of platforms.
• Bear is an Evernote-like application available for Mac and iOS devices. It doesn't exclusively use Markdown by default, but you can enable Markdown compatibility mode.
• Boostnote bills itself as an 'open source note-taking app designed for programmers.'

If you can't part with Evernote, check out Marxico, a subscription-based Markdown editor for Evernote, or use Markdown Here with the Evernote website.

Books

Looking to self-publish a novel? Try Leanpub, a service that takes your Markdown-formatted files and turns them into an electronic book. Leanpub outputs your book in PDF, EPUB, and MOBI file format. If you'd like to create paperback copies of your book, you can upload the PDF file to another service such as Kindle Direct Publishing. To learn more about writing and self-publishing a book using Markdown, read this blog post.

Presentations

Believe it or not, you can generate presentations from Markdown-formatted files. Creating presentations in Markdown takes a little getting used to, but once you get the hang of it, it's a lot faster and easier than using an application like PowerPoint or Keynote. Remark (GitHub project) is a popular browser-based Markdown slideshow tool, as is Cleaver (GitHub project). If you use a Mac and would prefer to use an application, check out Deckset or Marked.

Email

If you send a lot of email and you're tired of the formatting controls available on most email provider websites, you'll be happy to learn there's an easy way to write email messages using Markdown. Markdown Here is a free and open-source browser extension that converts Markdown-formatted text into HTML that's ready to send.

Documentation

Markdown is a natural fit for technical documentation. Companies like GitHub are increasingly switching to Markdown for their documentation — check out their blog post about how they migrated their Markdown-formatted documentation to Jekyll. If you write documentation for a product or service, take a look at these handy tools:

• Read the Docs can generate a documentation website from your open source Markdown files. Just connect your GitHub repository to their service and push — Read the Docs does the rest. They also have a service for commercial entities.
• MkDocs is a fast and simple static site generator that's geared towards building project documentation. Documentation source files are written in Markdown and configured with a single YAML configuration file. MkDocs has several built in themes, including a port of the Read the Docs documentation theme for use with MkDocs. One of the newest themes is MkDocs Material.
• Docusaurus is a static site generator designed exclusively for creating documentation websites. It supports translations, search, and versioning.
• VuePress is a static site generator powered by Vue and optimized for writing technical documentation.
• Jekyll was mentioned earlier in the section on websites, but it's also a good option for generating a documentation website from Markdown files. If you go this route, be sure to check out the Jekyll documentation theme.

Flavors of Markdown

One of the most confusing aspects of using Markdown is that practically every Markdown application implements a slightly different version of Markdown. These variants of Markdown are commonly referred to as flavors. It's your job to master whatever flavor of Markdown your application has implemented.

To wrap your head around the concept of Markdown flavors, it might help to think of them as language dialects. People in Ciudad Juárez speak Spanish just like the people in Barcelona, but there are substantial differences between the dialects used in both cities. The same is true for people using different Markdown applications. Using Dillinger to write with Markdown is a vastly different experience than using Ulysses.

Practically speaking, this means you never know exactly what a company means when they say they support 'Markdown.' Are they talking about only the basic syntax elements, or all of the basic and extended syntax elements combined, or some arbitrary combination of syntax elements? You won't know until you read the documentation or start using the application.

If you're just starting out, the best advice I can give you is to pick a Markdown application with good Markdown support. That'll go a long way towards maintaining the portability of your Markdown files. You might want to store and use your Markdown files in other applications, and to do that you need to start with an application that provides good support. You can use the tool directory to find an application that fits the bill.

Additional Resources

There are lots of resources you can use to learn Markdown. Here are some other introductory resources:

• John Gruber's Markdown documentation. The original guide written by the creator of Markdown.
• Markdown Tutorial. An open source website that allows you to try Markdown in your web browser.
• Awesome Markdown. A list of Markdown tools and learning resources.
• Typesetting Markdown. A multi-part series that describes an ecosystem for typesetting Markdown documents using pandoc and ConTeXt.

Learn Markdown in 60 pages. Designed for both novices and experts, The Markdown Guide book is a comprehensive reference that has everything you need to get started and master Markdown syntax.

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