✨ Feature: Live browser preview

[ymic9963]

🔖 Feature description:

I feel like the only thing missing from this plugin is a live browser preview so that you could actually see how your MD files would look on GitHub for example. I understand if it's out of scope it's just that everything is so nicely done that I'm sure the execution for this would be excellent as well. I am curious what the dev thinks about this.

📂 Possible solutions:

No response

🧾 Feature reference:

The plugin I currently use for this is https://github.com/brianhuster/live-preview.nvim, but it's been buggy for me on Windows. Howerver it might just be difficult to implement on Windows.

[OXY2DEV]

This would be a cool feature if it didn't require so much work.

I would need to,

• Build something in Lua to communicate with the browser.
• Build the website that will "show" the preview
• Convert markdown to html.

This by itself is a major task as I would need to,

• Find something that's just loose enough in syntax to support different flavors of markdown(eg. GitHub flavored, Obsidian flavored etc.)
• Find theme for stuff like callouts since I don't think it's possible to use a plugin config to change CSS.
• Think about handling external dependencies(e.g. What if the user is offline?).
• Keep track of dependency versions(cause I would have to ship them with the plugin or hide them in the user's filesystem).

Then there's also stuff like,

• How do I handle relative links?
• How do I handle multiple files being previewed?

And that's not even all of it. Since I can't use tree-sitter(I am not using WASM since I can't get it to run properly and most grammars don't actively maintain bindings for it) I would loose a ton of flexibility.

This is a problem for different markdown flavors(specifically callouts).

And since I would be using an external dependency for conversation it would be hard to extend the features.

[ymic9963]

I see! Well it's unfortunate it's so much work but I understand why this might not be implemented.

[OXY2DEV]

I am going to keep this open as I think this would be a fun thing to work in.

Who knows, maybe I would figure something to get around those issues.

[ymic9963]

Did some research and I believe a great solution could be pandoc which would allow to use custom CSS as well. In the live-preview plugin I linked they use jsDelivr to get the markdown-it dependency without any user interaction. pandoc in this case would be a dependency the user would have to manually install. I really like how live-preview doesn't need any manual installations but pandoc is pretty easy to use it's not like you're installing something through NPM.

Relative links to other MD pages I don't think is important in the first implementation since you would only show the current document being edited, therefore one MD file at a time.

These are just some thoughts I had that I thought might get the conversation going.

[MuntasirSZN]

What about using native languages with FFI? This means user doesn't have to deal with dependencies (approach like blink.cmp) and web servers and anything else could be with that. Also, using js runtimes like bun and just creating a binary with bun in it and the source code, compiled into one package also works.

[pidgeon777]

What about this:

https://github.com/jannis-baum/Vivify

and its mate plugin:

https://github.com/jannis-baum/vivify.vim

Another approach:

https://github.com/iamcco/markdown-preview.nvim

[pidgeon777]

My only hope, is for a native Windows support (also).

[MuntasirSZN]

Damn, vivify is cool!

[nekonhub]

https://github.com/iamcco/markdown-preview.nvim works well, I use it as a way to print documents from Firefox.
I have the most vanilla config possible...
https://github.com/nekonhub/nvim/blob/main/lua/plugins/markdown.lua
I lazy load and only toggle on when needed.

Does Markview need to be "all things to all men"?
At what point is it better to just open LibreOffice or install and write a Wiki?

[MuntasirSZN]

You might want markviews neovim view in the browser, thats why maybe? Really speaking, I would love that.

[ymic9963]

Does Markview need to be "all things to all men"? At what point is it better to just open LibreOffice or install and write a Wiki?

Well no but it just seems like a logical step for the plugin coming from my perspective of course. Other plugins for this exist yes but have been either buggy for me on Windows or have dependencies that make using them feel like you're installing something much more than just a plugin. Also, different implementations of something is a good thing since it would mean that all avenues for having this feature on Neovim are explored. Maybe it's worth having another plugin for this but I initially created this issue because the markview developer has proven to make high quality markdown-related plugins, and I wanted to get their input on something like this.

[nekonhub]

You might want markviews neovim view in the browser, thats why maybe? Really speaking, I would love that.

What would you actually do with it once it was in your browser?
Print it?
Admire it?
Show a friend?
Sorry, I have nothing else! I honestly can't think of what else I would want to do with it!

no but it just seems like a logical step for the plugin

Surely the power of Markview is that it provides its own preview right there inside Neovim, live and if required, in Hybrid Mode. You hit ESC ("jj" in my case), return to Normal Mode, and there it is, your beautiful, beautiful preview.

ITS AWESOME!

And beyond that, still in Neovim, you can navigate your notes via links, send images and tables to floating buffers, terminals, or apps, and there is even an external plugin to launch that same page as a half decent HTML render in your browser. And there you could print it, or, erm, erm,..... Nope, I have nothing else!

It seems like an academic exercise, interesting in its own right, to learn new and cool stuff, but not hugely useful in the real world.

[ymic9963]

You ask what would you do if it's the browser then also mention that there are other plugins that can do that. Surely then you can understand why someone would want this.

[nekonhub]

You ask what would you do if it's the browser then also mention that there are other plugins that can do that. Surely then you can understand why someone would want this.

But you already have it! Markdown-Preview and Live-Preview. Both will allow you to print HTML from within a browser, using a basic CSS stylesheet.

What else would you want to do with a file once you have it opened in a browser, over and above print it?
Its a genuine question. I can't think of anything else I would want to do to that file in the browser. If you can think of things, then listing them adds to the argument to @OXY2DEV

@MuntasirSZN seemed to want it to look exactly like it does in Neovim, which would mean passing the current colorscheme to the plugin then writing a parser that takes treesitter elements of Markdown and converts to CSS styles and also respects indents, etc.. Seems like an awful lot of work to print something!

Neovim is a text editor, not a publishing platform.
Markview is a plugin to live preview or hybrid preview Markdown in Neovim.

In my opinion. there are better tools and better ways to publish notes if I need to do so on a regular basis. You are right, pandoc has some possibilities. Conversion to .rtf might also be useful for genuine publishing functionality in another app - "export" a file from Neovim and open in Word/LibreOffice Writer. That would be far more useful to me than opening in browser.