Marked 2.2 is out, and it’s a pretty big update. Stability, speed and rendering fixes and improvements, as well as some new features. I’m working on a screencast about some of them, but it won’t be ready before my Thanksgiving trip. Soon.

The major highlights (in my opinion) are the ability to create blank new files and open them in your editor, separate word counts/stats for different panels of the CriticMarkup preview, and the ability to quickly locate and edit nested files within a multi-file document. That last one’s my favorite, but it’s going to take a screencast to explain it properly. For now, there’s the help page.

If you haven’t picked up a copy, this is a great time to jump on board. There’s a free 7-day trial waiting for you.

Here are the release notes. I’m also working on getting back to putting up a version history page, coming soon.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention: this update fixes some Scrivener issues and improves support. Notes and annotations can now be included or hidden, and the “blank screen” syndrome should be no more. Even for non-English-language users.

Marked 2.2 (806)

Performance

  • MultiMarkdown 4.4
  • Clean up temporary watcher files when the window closes
  • Memory management tweaks

Fixes

  • Fixed an issue where apps with Autosave would stop updating when launched with E from Marked
  • Fixed an issue where renaming or moving a file would result in a File Type Fail
  • Fixes for Keyword and Export drawer animation
  • Video in Welcome popup plays now
  • Fixed crash when canceling word repetition processing
  • Fixed not stipping MMD metadata on Save HTML

Improvements

  • If E is used and no default external editor is selected, offer to let the user pick one.
  • Keyword drawer design update.
  • Smoother animation and scrolling for Zoom feature

New features

  • Create blank new files and optionally open them in external editor automatically

    That’s right, N does something now. No, Marked is not planning to be an editor, but it now allows you to start a new document and open it in both Marked and your text editor from one place.

  • Added the ability to save a Clipboard (V) Preview
    • Use the Save Clipboard Preview command in the File and Gear menus
    • When pressing E (Edit in External Editor) on a Clipboard Preview, before opening the editor it will allow you to save it to disk.
    • If you don’t manually save a clipboard preview, it’s considered transient and is cleaned up when the window closes.
  • “Quick Toggles” in App Menu for global preferences that you may want to switch on and off quickly. Some of these may become per-document settings, but for now affect all open documents on refresh

CriticMarkup

  • CriticMarkup Preview toolbar now shows the correct word count for each tab
  • Detailed Info palette now shows correct stats for the current tab
    • I said it would be too hard to do, but I figured it out the same day the support request came in. Yay…
  • {/} navigation for CriticMarkup Tabs

Book formats and multi-file documents

Marked’s multi-document and book features are some of my personal favorites (thought they’re not well known), so I took some time to improve on a few points. More to come, along with a screencast.

  • Updates for Leanpub authors
    • handle Book.txt files without older “frontmatter:” requirement
    • Clean up {tokens}
    • X> block support coming, as well as handling for code block format specifiers
  • In documents using include syntax or in index files (Leanpub/mmd_merge):
    • turn on Show Boundaries Of Included File in the gear menu (^B) to place a line on the left side of your preview showing where various included files start and end, including support for nested and repeated includes.
      • Hovering over the bar will show you the name of the file it represents, and clicking will open that file in the default external editor.
    • Press I within a preview to see which included file is currently visible in the viewport. Pressing Return after showing the filename will open it in your external editor.