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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 shows rendered output only. Read-mode.
  • 🔀 Split (default) 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 Split so live editing is the out-of-the-box experience. To change it permanently, save your preference is per-tab only.

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.

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.