Comment by VerifiedReports
2 days ago
As I was griping above, you usually can't just view a Markdown file with formatting applied at all. I think MAYBE Notepad has been updated just recently to render it, but otherwise... you're looking at plain text with a bunch of formatting characters in it. Why? It's baffling. Where are the simple Markdown READERS?
Your plain text editor is the markdown reader. That’s the point.
It really would be nice to have a convenient renderer for it though. It's genuinely surprising something like firefox doesn't have a markdown reader builtin already.
I wrote one for my own use (on Linux): https://github.com/mvz/mdv
If you’re on a Mac, I recommend qlmarkdown. It’s a customizable quick look renderer for markdown (md) files.
https://github.com/sbarex/QLMarkdown
Then that's no point at all. You're not seeing the formatting that the embedded formatting characters call for, so why have them in there?
and it looks like poo, that’s the other point
Exactly. You can always count on someone to come back with, "That's why it's so great! You just read it in a plain-text editor!"
Why does anyone have to point out how dumb it is to litter your "plain text" file with formatting characters that are never respected?