Markdown preview in browser window

[krstp]

Check for existing issues

• Completed

Describe the feature

I would like to have CTRL+SHIFT+P option to view created Markdown. Upon execution, ZED should parse/compile the Markdown source and display in browser of choice window.

If applicable, add mockups / screenshots to help present your vision of the feature

extra feature could allow for parsing/compiling of markdown to given platform supporter formatting such as: Vanilla Markdown, GitHub Markdown, BB Markdown etc.

[karl-cardenas-coding]

This is the one feature holding me back from using Zed. I work a lot with generating technical documentation and I would love to collaborate with my technical writers and education engineers when working on content together.

[jansol]

Any particular reason why specifically compiling to HTML and opening in a web browser? As opposed to a builtin preview renderer as mentioned in #5064 and #5346

[krstp]

Indeed, would be good to see average repo format represented, either it is GitHub/GitLab/BB etc. all of those generally have similar format, or for example what shows up in the Jupyter Notebook rendering etc. Currently, as much as ZED has kick-ass preview feature. it is somewhat custom zed-ish preview formatting, somewhat shows how Markdown looks like, but does not have exactly familiar formatting. Whenever I prepare the Markdown, despite using correct block tags, I would like to see how most of the general populous will see it. I hope this explain. Thanks.

PS. At the moment to verify such formatting before any upload, I am forced to switch to different editor for such preview rendering. Generally, most renders are the same, with GitHub tini-tiny slight difference, and ZED having much custom renderer ;)

[JosephTLyons]

Our built-in Markdown rendered is starting to round out nicely - is there still a desire to have a feature to open the rendered view within a browser, @krstp?

[jansol]

Compiling to actual HTML with $(static site generator) seems better suited for a task at this point (can we assign tasks to be run when specific files are saved?)

[JosephTLyons]

I dont think we have any hook system built in yet, but that would be a great addition to tasks.

[notpeter]

Zed does not current ship a Markdown->HTML renderer.
As a workaround this is relatively trivial to implement with tasks.
Here's an example of how to that uses the GitHub API, Curl, JQ and open to spawn the browser:

[
  {
    "label": "markdown preview",
    "command": "jq --slurp --raw-input '{\"text\": \"\\(.)\", \"mode\": \"markdown\"}' < ${ZED_FILENAME} | curl --data @- https://api.github.com/markdown > /tmp/markdown-preview.html && open /tmp/markdown-preview.html"
  }
]

Assigning the task a custom keyboard shortcut is left as exercise to the reader.