I’m hoping that it’s just that my google-fu is weak, and not that Scrivener doesn’t have this functionality.
Coming from Ulysses, iAWriter, etc, where all markdown syntax is highlighted and indicated as different from its surrounding text, it’s something I’ve gotten incredibly used to, and actually rely upon.
Is there a functionality within Scrivener to “preview” markdown while in Page View mode or another mode, without having to compile? All I see is about compiling, and that’s not what I want to do. I want to see my markdown syntax while writing, not after.
I don’t think Scrivener does that. It’d be nice, but remember that Scrivener was written having RTF in mind, not plain text. Anyway, I’d definitely vote for it
Scrivener does not preview Markdown. (I’d love if it did.) However, if you’re a Mac user there’s a great solution out there: Marked2 that will preview Scrivener files (and much much more). Check it out here: marked2app.com
Another app is Mou which will show the file plus the preview along with syntax highlighting. NValt will also do this. Problem here is that you would turn on syncing to an external folder, and have all your draft documents backed up there as plain text with either the txt, md or mmd extension. Then get Mou or NValt or other markdown app to have the files in this external folder loaded. But with every change you make, whenever you wanted to see the markdown preview, you would have to Sync Now with the external folder, open and/or refresh the markdown program. Much better if the program reads Scrivener files natively as above suggested.
But none of these methods equal the ease of a Scrivener window or toggled setting to preview MMD or see the syntax highlighted from within Scrivener. And as MMD support is very tangential to the main purpose and usage of Scrivener, I doubt it would be worthwhile for Keith et al to go about implementing such.
Marked2 is very sweet though. It’s a markdown, and MMD, previewer. And a power tool at that (with many key features). Drag your Scrivener project file onto Marked2 and the whole thing will be previewed with an easy to use ToC navigation screen for longer documents. Every time you save your Scrivener work the Marked2 preview is auto-refreshed.
Not as convenient as built-in, but given the extra power features of Marked2 (which would never make their way into Scrivener), it’s probably a better solution than any inbuilt option. Check it out: every MMD user should be using Marked2 anyways.