MultiMarkdown Drag and Drop

Introduction

After getting the kinks ironed out of my workflow, I wanted to have the ability to simply drag a MultiMarkdown formatted text document to a Mac OS X application, and have it spit out a formatted document.

Thanks to Platypus, this was quite simple.

Where to get it

download:

What else do I need?

In order to use these programs, you must have a “Common” installation of MultiMarkdown. This means that you have installed MultiMarkdown in:

  • Your library (~/Library/Application Support/MultiMarkdown)
  • the system Library (/Library/Application Support/MultiMarkdown)

Obviously, these programs also require a Mac running Mac OS X (not sure of the specific version requirements).

What is it?

There are actually five applications:

  • MultiMarkdown2XHTML - drop a MultiMarkdown formatted text file, and it spits out an XHTML file.

  • MultiMarkdown2LaTeX - drop a MultiMarkdown file, and it spits out a LaTeX file. You can then use this to create a PDF in the usual way.

  • MultiMarkdown2RTF - drop a MultiMarkdown file and you get an RTF file as output. Subject to the usual limitations of the RTF format.

  • MultiMarkdown2PDF - drop a MultiMarkdown file, and output a pdf. All .bib, .png, .gif, .jpg, and .pdf files in the same directory as the source text file are copied to the working directory in case they are referenced. Files in other directories will not be copied. NOTE - this is a complicated process, and might not work on complex files. If this app doesn’t work, I recommend manually processing the LaTeX file first.

  • XHTML2LaTeX - drop an XHTML file on this, and it is converted to a LaTeX file. For best results, the XHTML should have been created by MultiMarkdown, but this is not strictly required.

How to install it

Simply drag and drop the applications you wish to use to wherever you want to keep them. You can also place them in the Dock, to allow quick access if you use them frequently.

Version History

  • 2.0 - use the “Common” installation, rather than embedding MMD in each application; you should not need to update these when you update your MMD install!

  • 2.0.a - updated to MultiMarkdown 2.0.a code base

  • 1.0 - initial public release

Credits

Several projects were used to make this possible:

  • The GUI for this application was built using Platypus, written by Sveinbjorn Thordarson.

  • Check out the MultiMarkdown web site for more information.

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