Markdown Tables: Bold, Colors & Sort

Small helpers for VS Code's Markdown editor and built-in preview.

• Cmd+B (macOS) / Ctrl+B: select one complete table row to toggle bold, preserving pipes and spacing. If every nonempty cell is bold, bold is removed; otherwise the remaining cells become bold. Separator rows are ignored. For other selections, your existing shortcut remains in effect.
• Markdown Tables: Sort by column[s]: place the cursor in a table, run the command, and enter comma-separated header prefixes, such as team, name. Prefixes ignore case and surrounding spaces and must each identify one column; an exact header match takes precedence over longer prefix matches. Body rows sort ascending, case-insensitively, by the entered precedence; ties retain their order. Markdown formatting, the header, and the separator stay intact.
• Markdown Tables: Insert Column: insert an empty column from a header, separator, or body row. On an internal pipe, the cell to the right is used; on the closing pipe, the last cell is used. Opening or closing pipes are added where necessary to retain an empty edge cell.
• Markdown Tables: Insert Row / Append Row: add an empty row immediately before or after the current body row. From the header or separator, both add the first body row. The cursor moves to the beginning of the new row.
• Preview colors: set markdownTables.colorColumns to comma-separated header names (default: Color). Names match exactly, ignoring case and surrounding spaces. Configured color columns are hidden in the preview; each row uses its first valid configured color from left to right. CSS color names and #RGB, #RGBA, #RRGGBB, or #RRGGBBAA are accepted; empty or invalid values are ignored.

In configured color cells, invoke VS Code's suggestions (Option+Esc on macOS or Ctrl+Space on Linux) to choose a CSS color name containing the text before the cursor. Empty cells offer all names; selecting one preserves cell spacing and bold formatting.

The three insertion positions (<bar> marks the cursor; bar shows text typed into the new empty cell):

• Before the table: <bar>|foo| → |bar|foo|.
• Inside a cell: |<bar>foo| → |bar|foo|; |baz|<bar>foo| → |baz|bar|foo|.
• After the table: |foo|<bar> → |foo|bar|.

Use Markdown table syntax, including escaped pipes (\|) inside cells and code spans. Sorting compares trimmed cell Markdown as text. Preview colors are preview-only; the file is unchanged.

Open this folder in VS Code and press F5 to try example.md. Run npm ci && npm test for unit tests, or npm run package to build a VSIX.

If an existing binding overrides the shortcut (including Markdown All in One), add this entry after it in your user keybindings.json. VS Code uses this binding for complete table rows and falls through to your existing binding otherwise:

{
  "key": "cmd+b",
  "command": "markdownTables.bold",
  "when": "editorTextFocus && !editorReadonly && editorLangId == markdown && markdownTables.selectedTableRow"
}

Use ctrl+b on Linux.