welcome.md

January 27, 2025 · View on GitHub

0 ## Welcome to MDVIEW MTX

MDVIEW MTX is an open source graphical Markdown viewer and converter. Development occurs on the MDVIEW MTX project page, where users can report issues and contribute to the project. Below is a brief help guide for the program.

 

The home page directory is the directory in which the home page is located. The home page is the initial file that the viewer displays. Clicking the home icon reloads the home page. Clicking the arrow icons moves through the trail of displayed pages. When you click to go to, or away from, a page, the trail marks the current cursor position then changes page. As you move through trail pages, the cursor returns to saved marks.

The search input field offers two search functions:

  • Document Search: Click the left icon or press the [Enter] key.
  • Page Search: Click the right icon or press [Control] + [f].

Document Search looks in the home page directory for files that include any of the search terms, and produces a list of links to the matching documents. For example, red apples finds files matching apples or red or both.

Page Search looks in the current page for the next match of the search words strung together. For example, red apples does not match apples or red, it only matches red apples.

In Document Search, terms that include spaces must be quoted. Thus, "term 1" and term2 are two search terms, the first one consisting of two words; but term 1 and term2 are three search terms, each one consisting of a word.

In Page Search, all the words you enter are treated as a single search term, and quotation marks are ignored. To search for text that includes quotes, you need to escape the quotes with a backslash. For example, searching for term is the same as entering "term", but to search for the literal text "term", you should enter \"term\".

Keyboard shortcuts

Using keyboard shortcuts provides fast navigation inside the page and through search results. In addition to the Arrow, Page, Home and End keys and their Shift/Control/Alt variants, the following special shortcuts enhance navigation.

Symbols: A=[Alt] C=[Control] S=[Shift]

ShortcutDescription
[A-s]Set focus on the search field to enter terms
[Enter]¹Activate search within the home page folder
[Tab]¹Move focus out of the search field
  
[C-f]Activate search or find the next match in the page
[C-b]Find the previous match in the page
  
[A-b]Navigate back to the previous page
[A-f]Navigate forward to the next page
[A-h]Reload the home page
  
[S-C-b]Find the previous link in the page
[S-C-f]Find the next link in the page
[Enter]²Open the link at the current cursor location
  
[C-e]Open the current page in the default text editor
[C-o]Open an existing Markdown file
[A-p]³Preview the current page in the default browser
[A-x]Cancel the in-progress page load

[¹] If the search field is focused.
[²] At the text cursor position if the text view area is focused.

Don't be surprised if you use [A-s] [C-f] to find a certain link label, but nothing happens when you press [Enter] to follow the link. This occurs because the focus is still on the search field. To successfully follow the link, press [Tab] first to shift the focus away from the search field, allowing you to activate the link with [Enter].

[³] Use command-line option --html-css=N to prettify the preview page.

Extensions

Mdview features extensions that enhance its functionality. Run mdview -h to see the list of available extensions, and refer to the Extensions online page.

Configuration

Mdview does not have a configuration file. For advanced needs refer to the Configuration online page.