This configuration sets up a complete Markdown editing environment in Emacs with support for GitHub-Flavored Markdown, table of contents generation, live preview, and distraction-free writing.

The markdown-mode package provides comprehensive support for editing Markdown files with syntax highlighting, live preview, and convenient keybindings.

Key features:

• GitHub-Flavored Markdown (GFM) support for README files
• Native syntax highlighting for code blocks
• WikiLinks support for internal linking
• Scalable headers for better visual hierarchy
• Custom keybindings: C-c C-e for markdown-do and C-c C-t for TOC generation

;;; doc-md-conf.el --- Markdown Configuration  -*- lexical-binding: t; -*-
;;; Commentary:
;;; Code:

(use-package markdown-mode
  :ensure t
  :mode ("README\\.md\\'" . gfm-mode) ;; Use GitHub-Flavored Markdown for READMEs
  :init (setq markdown-command "multimarkdown")
  :bind (:map markdown-mode-map
                        ("C-c C-e" . markdown-do)
                        ("C-c C-t" . markdown-toc-generate-or-refresh-toc))
  :custom
  (markdown-header-scaling t)             ;; Make headers look bigger
  (markdown-enable-wiki-links t)          ;; Enable [[WikiLinks]] support
  (markdown-italic-underscore t)          ;; Use _italics_ by default
  (markdown-fontify-code-blocks-natively t) ;; Syntax highlight code blocks
  (markdown-gfm-use-electric-backquote nil) ;; Disable electric backticks if annoying
  :hook
  ((markdown-mode . olivetti-mode)))

The markdown-toc package automatically generates and updates table of contents in Markdown files. Use C-c C-t (bound above) to insert or refresh the TOC based on your headers.

(use-package markdown-toc
  :ensure t
  :after markdown-mode)

This integration enables Org-mode's powerful table editor within Markdown files. When editing Markdown tables, you can use TAB to navigate between cells and automatically format tables, just like in Org-mode.

;; Use Org-mode's powerful table editor inside Markdown
;; This allows you to use TAB to navigate/format tables automatically.
(use-package markdown-mode
  :hook (markdown-mode . orgtbl-mode))

The grip-mode package provides live preview of Markdown files as they would appear on GitHub. It uses the GitHub Markdown API to render your files in real-time. Toggle the preview with C-c C-p.

Note: grip-mode requires the grip Python package to be installed (pip install grip or just brew install grip on macOS).

(use-package grip-mode
  :ensure t
  :bind (:map markdown-mode-map
         ("C-c C-p" . grip-mode))) ;; Toggle preview with C-c C-p