Posted June 10, 2021 by billiam
Update 0.24 is a feature-packed update that I’ve been looking forward to for a while.
First up, document linking! This is really a collection of features, so let’s dive in.
Deepdwn now supports links from one document to another, both in the editor and preview window.
This is done using the standard markdown link format:
[My Document](../my_document.md)
Clicking this link in the preview window, or control-clicking the filename portion of the link in the editor, will both take you directly to the file. This currently works for documents that Deepdwn knows about (markdown files in the folders you have added).
Control-clicking external http(s) links in the editor will open the URL in your default web browser, similar to clicking external links in the preview window (as of version 0.23).
You can also link directly to a heading in a markdown document by adding an anchor ID.
# My Heading
[link to my heading](../my_document.md#my-heading)
These ID values are based on the heading content, by: replacing all runs of space characters with hyphens, converting it to lowercase, and URL-encoding the whole value.
To make linking to these IDs (much) easier, here comes another new feature.
Deepdwn can now autocomplete links to both documents and their headings. Autocomplete is triggered with Ctrl Space.
Autocomplete will return documents beginning in the same directory as your current file, so your active file will need to be saved first. To link to other directories, you can begin your link with a relative path, like:
[My Document](../
or
[My Document](subdirectory/
You can also link directly to headings by using Ctrl Space after typing a # character in your link:
[My Document](../my_document.md#help
Deepdwn’s autocomplete will then display a list of headings in that document, and will add the correct ID to your document link.
Document links also enable another feature: Backlinks!
To view a list of documents that have linked to your current document, you can expand the brand new file info panel at the bottom of the editor.
Currently, this only shows the number of characters/words/lines in your document, the creation and modification times, and backlinks, if any.
In the editor, you can now see a preview of your images by holding the Control key while hovering over them.
This works for both local images (but only if they’re within one of your document directories), and remote web images.
In addition to PDF, Deepdwn can now export your markdown as HTML, both with and without styling (in case you want to incorporate it in some other location)
Exporting is now available directly from the File menu in the editor, without having to open the preview.
Some of Deepdwn’s non-standard markdown features are rendered as SVGs, like diagrams, sheet music and guitar tabs (but not math).
These SVGs can now be exported directly from the preview window by right-clicking on them and selecting “Export as SVG” from the context menu, in case you want to use a diagram you’ve created somewhere else.
Deepdwn will now highlight and warn you about invalid YAML frontmatter at the beginning of your markdown documents. The error messages themselves need some work to make them more friendly, but for now you’ll have an indicator about what’s going on.