Maxdown is a simple and fast Markdown-to-HTML converter. It comes with a command-line interface and an integration for (Neo)Vim.

You will need cargo in order to build the maxdown command-line tool.

In case you are using Homebrew, it should be as easy as brew install rust.

If you're only interested in the maxdown command-line tool, you can build it by running:

cargo build --release --locked

Then, just put the resulting target/release/maxdown binary somewhere on your PATH.

For the Vim plugin, if you use vim-plug, add this line to your Vim configuration file:

Plug 'pmeinhardt/maxdown', {'do': ':MaxdownCompile'}

If you have a different way of managing your Vim plugins, make sure you add the project directory to your runtimepath and build the command-line tool:

cargo build --release --locked

Or, to build from within Vim:

:MaxdownCompile

The maxdown command-line tool reads Markdown from stdin or a file and outputs HTML to stdout or a file.

For instance:

echo 'Hello *World*!' | maxdown -
maxdown README.md

To learn about the extra knobs and switches, kindly ask maxdown for help:

$ maxdown --help
Convert Markdown to HTML

Usage: maxdown [OPTIONS] <PATH>

Arguments:
  <PATH>  Path to the input markdown file or "-" for stdin

Options:
  -b, --base <url>       Base URL to use for all relative URLs in the document
      --dangerous        Only use this if you trust the authors of the document
  -o, --output <path>    File to write output to [default: stdout]
  -t, --template <path>  Template to use for output
      --title <title>    Title to pass to the template [default: Preview]
  -h, --help             Print help
  -V, --version          Print version

To preview the current markdown buffer, invoke :MaxdownPreview.

Alternatively, define a custom mapping. For instance:

autocmd FileType markdown nnoremap <buffer> <localleader>m <Plug>MaxdownPreview

This will create a normal-mode mapping to preview the current markdown buffer.

To replace the current Markdown buffer's content with the corresponding HTML, use :MaxdownConvert.

If you have other use cases, you always have the option of defining your own custom commands and mappings using the command-line tool.

With the ql Vim plugin, previews on macOS will look more neat (no [DEBUG] in the title):

Plug 'pmeinhardt/ql', {'do': ':QuickLookCompile'}

Maxdown is built on top of the impressive work of other people:

• markdown-rs: https://github.com/wooorm/markdown-rs
• trycmd: https://github.com/assert-rs/trycmd
• github-markdown-css: https://github.com/sindresorhus/github-markdown-css