MarkdownBláthy

Markdown, transformed.

MarkdownBláthy is a desktop Markdown editor with live preview and on-demand PDF export. The preview and the PDF are produced by the same Typst compilation pipeline — true WYSIWYG. The name commemorates Ottó Titusz Bláthy who among his other inventions became the co-inventor of the efficient alternating current transformer.

Features

• Split-screen editing — Markdown on the left, live preview on the right.
• Pixel-identical preview — the preview is rendered by the same Typst compiler that produces the PDF, so what you see is what you get.
• Export to PDF — one click, system save dialog, opens in your default PDF viewer.
• Multiple Markdown flavors — CommonMark, GFM (GitHub Flavored Markdown), or Custom (footnotes, math, task lists).
• LaTeX-style math — inline and display math use familiar TeX/LaTeX notation (fractions, roots, matrices, common macros); Typst renders the preview and PDF.
• Custom templates — supply your own .typ template to restyle everything (colors, fonts, layout) while keeping the editing experience.
• Heading IDs — every heading gets an automatic anchor link; override with {#custom-id} syntax.
• Footnotes — inline references with note blocks at the bottom; clickable markers in the preview.
• Settings persist — your flavor, paper size, margins, and template are saved between sessions.
• CLI — scriptable PDF export, front-matter edits, template validation and GUI launching (deb/rpm packages; see docs/CLI.md).
• Keyboard shortcuts — New/Open/Save/Export and settings from the focused window; see docs/KEYBOARD.md.

Quick start

npm install
npm run tauri dev

Build

npm run tauri build

Output lands in target/release/bundle/. The Linux deb/rpm bundles include both the GUI and the markdown-blathy CLI; the AppImage, macOS and Windows packages are GUI-only.

Build the CLI alone with:

cargo build -p markdown-blathy --release

Documentation

• Command-line interface — export, front matter, templates and gui launcher behavior.
• Keyboard reference — application shortcuts.
• Implementation guide and test plan.

Tech stack

• Frontend: React 19 · Mantine 8 · Tabler Icons · Vite
• Backend: Rust · Tauri 2 · comrak · Typst

Specification

The full implementation specification lives in SPEC.md.

Known limitations

• Legacy-codepage filenames — on Linux systems using a non-UTF-8 locale (e.g. latin-2), a file's name is echoed over IPC as a lossy UTF-8 string. Contents load and saves still write to the correct file, but Save-after-Open may create a new file with a mangled name instead of overwriting. UTF-8-locale Linux, macOS and Windows are unaffected. Details in SPEC.md.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later — see LICENSE.