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   Enable Quick Look for Markdown Files

   Adam C. Engst

   We rely on Markdown-formatted text files for TidBITS articles, but one
   of the slight annoyances of doing so has been that we haven't been able
   to use Quick Look to glance at the contents of an article, even though
   it's just text. Luckily, this is a solved problem (and the solution
   isn't even new ' it's just that I finally got around to looking for
   it).

   Said solution is the free [1]QLMarkdown generator from developer Phil
   Toland, who has also created a Markdown parser in C, which I gather is
   relatively unusual. Irrespective of the underpinnings, QLMarkdown works
   perfectly in my testing. To be recognized as Markdown, files need to
   have one of the following filename extensions: markdown, mdown, md,
   mdml, text, mdwn, mkd, or mmd.

   [2][tn_QLMarkdown-preview.jpg]

   To install QLMarkdown, [3]download the latest version (currently 1.3),
   expand it, and copy the QLMarkdown.qlgenerator file to either
   ~/Library/QuickLook (to make it available to just your user) or to
   Library/QuickLook (to make it available to all users). Remember that if
   you're using OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion or 10.7 Lion, you'll need to hold
   down Option and choose Go > Library in the Finder to reveal the user's
   hidden Library folder (for details, see '[4]Dealing with Lion's Hidden
   Library,' 20 July 2011).

   If you don't like the look of the text in the previews, you can change
   nearly everything by modifying the built-in CSS stylesheet. Follow
   these steps:
    1. Control-click the QLMarkdown.qlgenerator file and choose Show
       Package Contents.
    2. Navigate to /Contents/Resources.
    3. In a text editor like BBEdit or TextWrangler, open styles.css, make
       your desired changes (I chose a different font and increased the
       font size), and save. In my testing, there was no need to do
       anything else to have the new styles honored ' just preview another
       file to see them.

References

   1. https://github.com/toland/qlmarkdown/#readme
   2. http://tidbits.com/resources/2013-01/QLMarkdown-preview.png
   3. https://github.com/toland/qlmarkdown/downloads
   4. http://tidbits.com/article/12306

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