Linux Markdown editor that supports inline images, pandoc syntax and vim-keybindings?

Question

I am looking for for a Markdown editor that can display inline images, is largely compatible with pandoc syntax, supports most common vim-keybindings, and runs on Linux.

I am currently using gvim with vim-pandoc for syntax highlighting, but there is no support for displaying images inside gvim. Newer markdown editors like Abricotine, looks great and can display inline images, but I can't find one that supports vim-bindings or most of the pandoc spec.

The closest I have found is to preview the document in a separate window, but I would prefer to be able to display and edit the content (including images) in one window instead of in two different windows

Update 2021-03-03 I use markdown both for notetaking and writing longer articles, so it would be ideal with a program that is nimble yet capable (like vim), rather than a full blown IDE, but I'm open to suggestions for either.

Answer 1

One possible workaround, if a little overkill, is to use a jupyter notebook in a browser window - you will get each cell rendered as you go from cell to cell and you could always have a function at the top that saves the other notebook cells and renders the document through pandoc.

The majority of the markdown used in jupyter/ipython is the same as the pandoc markdown and I am sure that a little tailoring could support the rest & you can definitely have images embedded.

Answer 2

You can also use Rstudio or Visual Studio Code

rstudio

rstudio Desktop is free and has evolved to a multi-language IDE in recent years.

rstudio assumes that you want to write Markdown in their own dialect RMarkdown, which is basically pandoc markdown with R code chunks embedded by you and denoted with {r}. However you can also edit .md files directly. rstudio compiles ("knits") .Rmd via intermediate .md to .html, .docx, and other file types.

There is a Vim mode and you can tell the IDE if you want to display images inline, with a placeholder, or in a preview pane.

rstudio looks for R on startup, so you need to install R first.

VS Code

With VSCode comes with good built-in markdown support, you can install VIm Keybindings as an Extension, and also some more Extensions for enhancing the Markdown Preview capabilities.

Answer 3

Update After having several issues with emacs, I have switched back to vim for editing md files, which I think is an overall much nicer experience even though it doesn't render images inline (yet...).

To improve the image workflow I use the md-img-paste plugin and a custom command to open images when clicking them (you could also use gx for the default fileviewer):

" cd is needed for feh to reload the filelist correctly
nnoremap <leader>I :!cd <cfile>:p:h && feh --scale-down --reload 5 --no-jump-on-resort --start-at <cfile>:t &<CR><CR>

I have a few other flags also and use i3 to stack it above my vim window, but they are not technically needed.

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Original emacs post:

I would never have guessed it at the time I posted this question, but the most suitable editor for my purposes seems to be... Emacs! I recently started using Emacs to try out the feature-filled org-mode for note taking. It turns out that it has all the features I was looking for!

• Vim bindings are provided via evil-mode, which can be configured separately and is installed by default in the Spacemacs distribution of Emacs (this is what I use, it comes with many nice defaults).
• Pandoc syntax highlighting - Markdown mode enables syntax highlighting for pandoc markup elements (there is also Pandoc mode, which I have not tried myself). It is possible to define custom export commands and view the output in the built-in Emacs browser. Markdown mode also enables folding of headings similar to vim-pandoc.
• Inline-images - Images can be viewed inline in both Markdown mode and org-mode, as long as imagemagick is installed and supported by your version of Emacs. The functions used in org-mode can be found here (to be fair, I have had some troubles with inline images in markdown mode, but I haven't looked too much into it since I use org-mode for note taking now).

Other aspects I appreciate of Emacs include the possibility to search among existing functions and keybindings and org-mode's time-keeping and task management features. To be clear, I still use vim for editing files via terminal, but for taking notes I use Emacs with org-mode and it's great!