MDView

A Markdown viewer plugin for Total Commander.

Press F3 on any .md file and get a clean, fully rendered preview — dark mode, syntax highlighting, table of contents, find-in-page, split source view, and more. Single C file, zero dependencies, ~130 KB.

---

Screenshots

TODO: Add screenshots of light mode, dark mode, split view, and the help overlay.

Features

• Full Markdown rendering — headings, bold, italic, strikethrough, links, images, tables with column alignment, fenced and indented code blocks, blockquotes (nested), ordered/unordered/task lists, horizontal rules, autolinks, and escape sequences
• Reference-style links and images — [text][label] and ![alt][label] with [label]: URL "title" definitions
• Embedded HTML — raw HTML blocks (<div>, <details>, <table>, etc.) and inline HTML tags (<mark>, <kbd>, <br>, etc.) are passed through and rendered natively
• Local image support — relative image paths resolve correctly from the markdown file's directory
• Syntax highlighting — JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, C, C++, C#, Java, Rust, Go, SQL, Bash, CSS/SCSS, PHP, HTML, and XML
• Dark / light mode — toggle with Ctrl+D, or auto-detected from your Windows theme on first launch
• Split source view — side-by-side rendered Markdown and raw source with synchronised scrolling (Ctrl+M)
• Smart clipboard — Ctrl+C copies formatted HTML from the rendered view, or raw Markdown from the source pane
• Right-click context menu — Copy, Select All, Split View, Find, TOC, zoom controls, dark mode toggle, and more
• Adjustable layout — zoom in/out, optionally constrain reading column width
• Line numbers — toggle on code blocks with Ctrl+L
• Table of Contents — auto-generated sidebar from your headings
• Find in page — incremental search with match highlighting and navigation
• Expand / collapse — long code blocks and blockquotes are collapsed by default with a "Show more" button
• Persistent settings — font size, theme, column width, and line numbers are saved and restored between sessions
• Print support — Ctrl+P renders a clean printable version
• Progress bar — subtle reading position indicator at the top of the viewport
• Full window resize — content fills the entire viewport and resizes correctly when maximised or dragged
• Unicode path support — CJK and other non-ASCII characters in file paths are handled correctly

Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl C	Copy (HTML from rendered, raw text from source)
Ctrl A	Select all
Ctrl M	Toggle split source view
Ctrl +	Zoom in
Ctrl -	Zoom out
Ctrl 0	Reset zoom
Ctrl W	Constrain column width
Ctrl Shift W	Widen or remove column constraint
Ctrl D	Toggle dark / light mode
Ctrl L	Toggle line numbers
Ctrl T	Table of Contents
Ctrl F	Find in page
Ctrl P	Print
Ctrl G	Go to top
Esc	Close viewer
F1	Show shortcut reference

Press F1 inside the viewer for an on-screen reference. Right-click anywhere for a context menu with all major actions.

Download

Grab the latest release from the Releases page. The zip contains both 32-bit and 64-bit builds.

Installation

Automatic

Open the downloaded .zip file inside Total Commander (navigate to it and press Enter or double-click). The included pluginst.inf will trigger TC's automatic plugin installer.

Manual

1. Extract mdview.wlx (32-bit) or mdview.wlx64 (64-bit) to a directory of your choice
2. In Total Commander: Configuration → Options → Plugins → Lister (WLX) → Add
3. Select the .wlx / .wlx64 file
4. The detect string auto-configures for .md, .markdown, .mkd, and .mkdn extensions

Usage

1. Navigate to any Markdown file in Total Commander
2. Press F3 to open the lister
3. Press Ctrl+M to toggle the split source view
4. Use keyboard shortcuts or right-click for a context menu — your preferences are saved automatically

Building from Source

The entire plugin is a single C file. Cross-compile from Linux with MinGW, or build natively on Windows with any GCC or MSVC toolchain.

# 32-bit
i686-w64-mingw32-gcc -shared -o mdview.wlx mdview.c mdview.def \
    -lole32 -loleaut32 -luuid -ladvapi32 -lgdi32 -O2 -s -static-libgcc

# 64-bit
x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc -shared -o mdview.wlx64 mdview.c mdview.def \
    -lole32 -loleaut32 -luuid -ladvapi32 -lgdi32 -O2 -s -static-libgcc

No external libraries or build systems required.

WLXHarness (Test Tool)

The WLXHarness/ directory contains a standalone test harness (contributed by Nigurrath) that loads any WLX plugin outside of Total Commander. It creates a host window, calls ListLoadW, and forwards resize events — useful for rapid development without restarting TC. A pre-built WLXHarness.exe is included.

How It Works

MDView is a WLX lister plugin — a DLL that Total Commander loads when you press F3 on a matching file type. It contains a built-in Markdown-to-HTML converter and embeds an MSHTML (IE11) WebBrowser control to render the output. The rendered HTML is written to a temporary file in the same directory as the source .md file, allowing local relative image paths to resolve correctly via the Local Machine security zone. The split source view uses a Windows RichEdit control with synchronised ratio-based scrolling. Keyboard input is handled by subclassing the browser's internal window and (when active) the RichEdit control. Settings are persisted via TC's standard INI file mechanism.

Credits

Split source view, synchronised scrolling, context-aware clipboard (CF_HTML copy), OLE command helpers, and the WLXHarness test tool were contributed by Nigurrath (Senior Ghisler.ch Total Commander Forum member). These features were merged from their v2.2 fork, adapted to maintain MinGW cross-compilation compatibility and combined with improvements developed independently (CJK path support, reference-style links, HTML passthrough, local image rendering).

Not carried over from Nigurrath's fork

• _s safe functions (strncpy_s, sscanf_s, etc.) — these are MSVC-specific and break MinGW cross-compilation. Standard C equivalents are used instead, with equivalent safety via explicit size bounds.
• Paste command (Ctrl+V / menu item) — MDView is a read-only viewer, not an editor. Paste has no meaningful target.
• #endif _UNICODE trailing text — the original had compiler-warning-level trailing text after #endif; corrected to standard preprocessor form.

File List

File	Description
mdview.c	Complete plugin source (~1830 lines)
mdview.def	DLL export definitions
pluginst.inf	Total Commander auto-install manifest
test.md	Sample document exercising all features
WLXHarness/	Standalone WLX test harness (contributed by Nigurrath)

License

MIT