Vim Essential Plugin: Markdown to HTML

We’re cheating a bit in this episode. Rather than installing an actual plugin, we’ll be using a couple tools to allow us to write and convert Markdown to HTML. It’s really a simple process, and can save great deals of time.

Usage

First, we need to download Markdown and place it within our runtime folder. On the Mac, you can drag the Markdown.pl file into your usr/local/bin/ folder. And that’s it; you’re all set! Next, to trigger the markdown-to-html conversion, we need to provide two parameters: the path to the Markdown.pl file, and the command itself.

Within Vim, the following should do the trick:

:%! /usr/local/bin/Markdown.pl --html4tags

This instructs the Markdown.pl file to run on the curent page. But, that’s a little too much typing; let’s instead save this to our .vimrc file, and assign it to a shortcut.

".vimrc file

"Markdown to HTML
nmap md :%!/usr/local/bin/Markdown.pl --html4tags 

With this line of code, whenever we type – by default – backslash + md, that command will run, thus converting our markdown to clean HTML.