Show HN: leaf – a terminal Markdown previewer with a GUI-like experience | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: leaf – a terminal Markdown previewer with a GUI-like experience

github.com

46 pointsRivoLink25 comments

> Features:

> <bullet> <checkbox> description 1

> <bullet> <checkbox> description 2

> ...

Like... why are we doing this. What is the purpose of having a bunch of green checkbox emojis in the already bulleted list of features. The only thing it tells me is that an LLM was probably used extensively in building this project.

Forgot m-dashs and the arch.md file

I don't think the em-dashes are particularly out of place in a list like this, though it's not the style I use.

I didn't realize ARCHITECTURE.md was an LLM thing (though I suppose I would've if I'd opened it); I'll have to keep my eyes open for that one in the future too.

I’ve updated the Features section.

`pandoc "$@ | lynx -stdin` and I save you from 225 potential supply chain attack crates.

`cargo audit` finds 3 vulnerabilities, you should fix them.

Blazing safe.

Glow is also an excellent markdown viewer for the terminal, and it’s in most repositories.

or just use glow which is golang.

https://github.com/charmbracelet/glow

These vulnerabilities have been fixed in the latest release. Thanks for pointing it out!

Hi HN,

I built leaf, a Markdown previewer that runs entirely in the terminal.

It supports keyboard/mouse navigation, syntax highlighting, tables, checkboxes, clickable links, search, table of contents, local Markdown links, inline images, Mermaid diagrams, and LaTeX-to-Unicode rendering.

It works on Linux, macOS, Windows, and Termux.

GitHub: https://github.com/RivoLink/leaf

I’d appreciate feedback on the UX, missing features, and performance on large Markdown files.

Please consider adding a screenshot directly into the README (rather than a separate link).

Also maybe a single paragraph at the top describing the project rather than jumping into `install`.

Thanks for your feedback. I added the screenshot and a short description inside it.

Why a previewer rather than an editor that updates as you write?

Do you have a specific use case?

It seems to me that markdown is for writing with the ultimate output supposedly being html. Having a viewer of the markdown doesn't seem to add anything.

Whereas making it an editor makes it more of a rich text editor.

I'm not particularly saying youre wrong, more posing a philosophical question.

There are both "open in editor" and "watch" modes.

The idea is not to replace an editor, but to complement it: - "open in editor" lets you edit the file with your preferred editor - "watch" automatically refreshes the preview when the file changes

So you can keep your usual workflow while having a fast, structured preview directly in the terminal.

I used to use Glow, but now I'm enjoying mdterm:

https://github.com/bahdotsh/mdterm

cool project, how does it compare to glow? https://github.com/charmbracelet/glow

If this project doesn't have open issues going back a year that are unanswered, it's doing better than glow. I forked glow to fix this one specific rendering bug, because the maintainers didn't respond to my bug report. I can't say that my fork is any better maintained, because no one is using it, but glow isn't maintained and has bugs so I wouldn't hold it up as anything other than abandonware.

For one thing, glow doesn't do math equations.

Good point! Glow doesn’t support math equations, but leaf does.

And leaf's math display is better than that of mdterm, IMHO.

Quick follow-up for macOS users:

I opened an issue to test the “open in editor” feature:

- Shift+E should select/configure the editor

- Cmd+E should open the current Markdown file in the selected editor

Tested on Linux/Windows/Android so far.

Feedback from macOS users would be really helpful: https://github.com/RivoLink/leaf/issues/51

Thanks everyone for the feedback, this was super helpful. I’m already working on improvements based on your comments.

This is an interesting approach - I guess you did not move away to a gui - but tried to have a guy-like experience in the terminal only - in https://voiden.md/ we do have a gui with blocks for api testing.

Thanks for the feedback! You're absolutely right. The goal was to create a GUI-like experience directly in the terminal. Your project looks really interesting too.

Now available from AUR: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/leaf-markdown-viewer-bin

Thanks again for this, really appreciate it!

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