Is there a Vim plugin for previewing markdown files?

Vim Problem Overview

I love the marked and Mou editor which have the great capability to preview the rendering results on the fly. So I'm wondering, is there a way to do the same thing in Vim?

Vim Solutions

Solution 1 - Vim

You're in luck - I've just written a vim plugin with real-time Markdown previewing. It uses github Markdown and styles too: https://github.com/suan/vim-instant-markdown

Solution 2 - Vim

I recently found a Chrome extension that makes Chrome able to properly open and display markdown files: Markdown preview.

Then it was just a matter of mapping a key in Vim to open the file with Chrome. Mine looks like this:

" Open markdown files with Chrome.
autocmd BufEnter *.md exe 'noremap <F5> :!start C:\Users\tomas\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe %:p<CR>'

This command would have to be edited, of course, if your files don't have the ".md" extension, you want your mapping on a different key or if Chrome is located at a different location.

Now whenever I'm editing a ".md" file I can hit <F5> to open the file in Chrome. A perfect solution would be to get Chrome to auto reload every few seconds, but I can't seem to find an such an extension that works for local files.

Pros:

The ability to hit a button to preview your markdown file, without the need for any running servers or special code.
Works on all platforms that supports Vim and Chrome - which pretty much covers all platforms.

Cons:

No auto-refresh, you have to hit <F5> every time you want to preview the file.
No Github-flavoured markdown.

Solution 3 - Vim

You can actually use pandoc to compile to document format of your choice and view it using external default command. For example i like to preview it as pdf and i use following setup on Ubuntu.

" pandoc , markdown
command! -nargs=* RunSilent
      \ | execute ':silent !'.'<args>'
      \ | execute ':redraw!'
nmap <Leader>pc :RunSilent pandoc -o /tmp/vim-pandoc-out.pdf %<CR>
nmap <Leader>pp :RunSilent gnome-open /tmp/vim-pandoc-out.pdf<CR>

I compile a document using ,pc and preview using ,pp. Since in ubuntu evince is default viewer and automatically loads changed files. You end up doing only ,pc for your changes to reflect.

PS: I have Leader mapped to ,

Solution 4 - Vim

I use Marked.app to preview Markdown files. And have mapped <leader>p to do a preview:

function! s:setupMarkup()
  nnoremap <leader>p :silent !open -a Marked.app '%:p'<cr>
endfunction

au BufRead,BufNewFile *.{md,markdown,mdown,mkd,mkdn} call s:setupMarkup()

If you don't want to drop $4 on Marked.app then you can try Hammer.vim. Change the line to:

map <buffer> <leader>p :Hammer<CR>

Solution 5 - Vim

Adding to @Codemonkey 's answer, if you are using OSX, you can use the following in your .vimrc file.

" Open markdown files with Chrome.
autocmd BufEnter *.md exe 'noremap <F5> :!open -a "Google Chrome.app" %:p<CR>'

Solution 6 - Vim

No, there are several Vim plugins for syntax highlighting, snippets and so on, but Vim displays text and text only, therefore you cannot have Markdown (or any other kind of) preview in Vim.

If you're interested in real-time preview, maybe MarkdownPad would suit your needs better.

Solution 7 - Vim

Here's a simple vim plugin to view Markdown in Chrome - it doesn't require ruby or anything fancy and will refresh the preview when you write to the vim buffer (it can also be activated with a hotkey)

Also, the previewing takes place in the background so you never have to leave vim.

https://github.com/JamshedVesuna/vim-markdown-preview

Solution 8 - Vim

I have a function in my .vim dir:

function! markdown#preview()
  silent update
  let output_name = tempname() . '.html'

  let file_header = ['<html>', '<head>',
        \ '<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">',
        \ '<title>'.expand('%:p').'</title>',
        \ '<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://yui.yahooapis.com/3.3.0/build/cssreset/reset-min.css">',
        \ '<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://yui.yahooapis.com/3.3.0/build/cssbase/base-min.css">',
        \ '<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://yui.yahooapis.com/3.3.0/build/cssfonts/fonts-min.css">',
        \ '<style>body{padding:20px;}div#container{background-color:#F2F2F2;padding:0 20px;margin:0px;border:solid #D0D0D0 1px;}</style>',
        \ '</head>', '<body>', '<div id="container">']

  call writefile(file_header, output_name)

  silent exec '!markdown "' . expand('%:p') . '" >> "' . output_name . '"'

  silent exec '!echo "</div></body></html>" >> "' . output_name . '"'

  silent exec '!sensible-browser "' . output_name . '" &'
endfunction

With that I have the following mapping too:

inoremap <buffer> <F7> <ESC>:call markdown#preview()<CR>
nmap <buffer> <F7> :call markdown#preview()<CR>

It's not perfect and it's not realtime but it's good enough for my limited needs.

Solution 9 - Vim

I came across a nice plugin which worked great out of the box https://github.com/waylan/vim-markdown-extra-preview

Solution 10 - Vim

I don't think preview markdown in vim is a good idea. But you can convert your markdown in HTML just by typing %!markdown, presumably you have markdown installed. Then save that file and open it in a browser.

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	mko	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - Vim	Suan	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - Vim	Hubro	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - Vim	FUD	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - Vim	Steve McKinney	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 5 - Vim	Jeff	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 6 - Vim	Rook	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 7 - Vim	user3200729	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 8 - Vim	lucapette	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 9 - Vim	katzmopolitan	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 10 - Vim	Alan Dong	View Answer on Stackoverflow