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Markdown View

For .md (and .markdown, .mdown, .mkd) files Octa renders a proper CommonMark preview with bold / italic / strong / headings / lists / code blocks / blockquotes, plus a live-editing layout so you can author Markdown right in Octa.

Markdown view in Split layout

Layout: Preview / Split / Edit

A segmented toggle at the top of the Markdown view picks the layout. Each option carries a small icon next to the label:

  • 👁 Preview (default) shows rendered output only. Read-mode. Links in the preview open in your system browser when clicked.
  • 🔀 Split shows the TextEdit on the left, live preview on the right. Edits update the preview every keystroke.
  • 📝 Edit shows the TextEdit only, full window width. Useful for distraction-free writing.

The default is Preview so Markdown files open as a rendered document straight away. Switch to Split or Edit whenever you need to write or edit the content.

Reading width cap

The preview column caps at clamp(200.0, 900.0) pixels wide, so on wide monitors the text doesn't sprawl across the screen. This is the same line-length cap most online readers apply to long-form content.

Saving edits

Edits to the buffer are tracked just like Raw view content: the tab shows * when modified, and Ctrl+S (SaveFile) saves back to the original .md file. The preview is for display only; the disk content matches the editor pane.

Pressing Tab in the editor inserts spaces (it indents in place rather than jumping to the next control), using the Tab size setting, the same as the Raw text editor.

Limitations

  • No images yet. ![]() references aren't rendered as actual images in the preview (they fall through silently).
  • No footnotes / definition lists. Plain CommonMark only.
  • No syntect on code blocks. Code blocks render in monospace with a background but without language-specific colours.

For a richer Markdown preview with all these features, open the file in your text editor of choice and use a dedicated previewer. Octa's Markdown view is intentionally light.

See also

  • Notebook view for .ipynb, which also uses the same Markdown renderer for text cells.
  • EPUB Reader reuses render_pulldown for chapter rendering after converting XHTML to Markdown.