Markdown Mode 2.1 Release Notes

Markdown Mode for Emacs version 2.1 was released on January 9, 2016. This is a major new stable release and all users are encouraged to upgrade. The many new features and bug fixes included are described below. See the Git repository or the commit-specific links below for a detailed history of changes.

Compatibility

Markdown Mode is developed and tested primarily for compatibility with GNU Emacs versions 24.3 and later. It requires cl-lib version 0.5 or later. This library has been bundled with GNU Emacs since version 24.3. Users of GNU Emacs 24.1 and 24.2 can install cl-lib using M-x package-install RET cl-lib.

New Features

General

• Add automatically updating live preview functionality (C-c C-c l) via the native eww browser. (59a4986 to 41adc10, c0bb1c9, and b14cdbc)

• Use autoload to enable markdown-mode in auto-mode-alist for files with .text, .markdown, and .md extensions. (7ac63cb, b664a7b, e1446e2, f1632bc)

• Use Travis CI for automated build testing. (9d511f9, 1a3f7bb)

Element Insertion and Editing

• ATX heading subtree promotion and demotion via M-S-LEFT, and M-S-RIGHT. (29802bf, bfe7f32)

• ATX heading subtree moving up and down via M-S-UP and M-S-DOWN. (4b98003)

• Convert inline links to reference links when markdown-insert-reference-link-dwim is used when the point is at an inline link. (f6a4969, e7f2f29)

Customizable Features

• Allow linking to multiple stylesheets in markdown-css-paths list. Use stylesheets for both preview and export. Previous markdown-css-path (singular) is now deprecated. (b936fce, 147f06b, 5bc34cf)

• Customizable default unordered list marker via markdown-unordered-list-item-prefix. (0a82af2)

• Add asymmetric ATX heading adornment option markdown-asymmetric-header. (fe30ef7, c04b44c)

Font Lock

• Separate highlighting for Markdown markup characters (asterisks, underscores, backquotes, etc.) to aid in readability. (8d9944f)

• General font lock improvements for comments (496fd19), code blocks (ed6b05e, 5f558a6, aa4f407 03e6e8e), blockquotes (c8d025f), headings (292abd8, 3b1c064), horizontal rules (cb3988b), bold (24dd57d), italics (1ed32c3, 530e735)

• Font lock for bold, italics, and LaTeX math work inside block elements such as headings and blockquotes. (dae7046, 50e6570, b07afc4, 37e1257, e938a08)

• Font lock for <kbd> tags. (3ca7a12, 4d6da7a)

GFM

• Support GFM-style code blocks in markdown-mode (as well as gfm-mode). (9b202c6, 59a4986)

• New function markdown-electric-backquote will prompt for a language name for GFM code blocks. This can be disabled by customizing the variable markdown-gfm-use-electric-backquote. (d76d286)

• Completion of programming language names for GFM code blocks. A list of pre-defined languages is included, but this can be augmented by setting markdown-gfm-additional-languages. (bc5ad26 to 71481e0 and 4260e68)

• Strikethrough support in gfm-mode. (d699de0)

• Support for GFM toggling checkboxes mouse-1 or RET. This is controlled by a new custom variable, markdown-make-gfm-checkboxes-buttons. (4121324)

Other Extensions

• Font lock and filling for Pandoc “fancy lists,” which use # as the list marker. (4b8ac27)

• Basic support for filling of definition lists. (84a49f6)

• Support Ikiwiki-style search for wiki links that allows links relative to parent directories. Enable this by setting markdown-wiki-link-search-parent-directories. (f81bfdd, 4a598b2, 9848e3f)

Bug Fixes

• Fix bug in markdown-complete-region/buffer where level-two Setext headings could be confused with horizontal rules. Includes a unit test. Thanks to Gunnar Franke for the report. (d51ca9c)

• Fix filling when a decimal number appears at column zero, which could be confused with an ordered list item. (8413823)

• Fix buffer-wide markup completion. (97537ec)

• Fix font-lock for GFM code blocks without language keywords. (15b41ba)

• Improved Setext header insertion to support wide characters. (9b3f881)

• Fix expensive paragraph-separate regular expression. (05580fc)

• Make comment-auto-fill-only-comments a buffer-local variable, which allows for better default filling behavior in cases where the global variable is non-nil. (b431f29)

• Fix Emacs 23 compatibility by checking for font-lock-refresh-defaults before calling it. (dea0ae2)

• Handle reference definitions when filling paragraphs. (0c239e2)

• Improve filling of list items with indentation. (6bf23ae)

• Properly handle footnotes when filling. (08efd53)

• Fix issues with markdown-footnote-kill and related functions. ([8b70996][])

• Improve font lock for fenced code blocks. (a54767f)

• Avoid avoid overwriting source file when exporting if source file has .html extension. (35a73ca)

• Fix and improve ordered list behavior to preserve digit spacing and avoid an infinite loop in certain cases. Adjust ordered list whitespace when marker digit count increases. (dc8ac3c, 0ec7248)

• Improve reference definition regular expression to avoid matching multiple reference links in one line. (b795a64)

• Allow spaces in fenced code language identifiers. (d621bc0)

• Improve font lock for preformatted blocks and fenced code blocks. (38ac37a)

• Fix out-of-order HTML output. (b462983)

• Add console-friendly backspace and tab bindings. (88fdd19)

• Better treatment of files without extensions for wiki links. When files have no extensions, don’t append a lone period. (5aa7380)

• Call looking-back with two arguments for compatibility with Emacs 25.1. (fd3054b)

• Make (beginning-of-defun -1) go to next title when point is at beginning of defun. (92fc302, 4f75107)

• Ignore headings in code blocks for font lock. (fcf56f4), movement (5daa9fc), and visibility cycling (3192c9b).

• Don’t highlight wiki links in code blocks. (d299a37)

• Don’t move to links in code blocks with C-c C-p and C-c C-n. (b2e3e18)

• Fix hanging indentation for list items and single-line preformatted blocks. (0c71203, 729ebd5, 6f09417)

• Better rejection of false positives for italics with respect to other inline elements (inline code and bold). (5c032a9, 5b206ce

• Predicate functions should not modify match data. (2e46ac0)

• Use correct list marker from previous list level when using C-u M-RET to insert a dedented list item. Prevent an infinite loop in some cases. (a648097, 60f7f97)

• Reduce lag when scrolling or inserting text into large files. (02fe851, 9117107, ea4ee74, 00152d5, 1541a09, acf7c5e)

• Avoid confusing tramp errors with malformed wiki links. (02b8873, bdc065b)

Acknowledgments

This release of Markdown Mode contains patches written by many individuals including Masayuki Ataka, Jonas Bernoulli, Roger Bolsius, Daniel Brotsky, Julien Danjou, Samuel Freilich, David Glasser, Marijn Haverbeke, Antonis Kanouras, Keshav Kini, Vasily Korytov, Danny McClanahan, Matt McClure, Howard Melman, Makoto Motohashi, Jon Mountjoy, Pierre Neidhardt, Spanti Nicola, Paul W. Rankin, Christophe Rhodes, Tim Visher, and Syohei Yoshida. Many others also submitted bug reports. Thanks to everyone for your contributions.