Pelcrow for VS Code

Pelcrow adds a structured visual editor for Markdown and MDITA while keeping the repository text file canonical.

Features

• Open .md and .markdown files with Pelcrow Visual Editor.
• Edit headings, emphasis, links, lists, code, images, and source-preserving Markdown tables.
• Apply and remove MDITA data-props conditions from the selection inspector.
• Edit repository-defined YAML metadata with required-field and allowed-value feedback.
• See Pelcrow metadata diagnostics in VS Code Problems.
• View and edit canonical key references and content references as semantic tokens.
• Navigate from a keyref or conref to its workspace definition.
• Switch back to the source editor at any time.

When Pelcrow cannot safely preserve a construct, the custom editor presents a source-mode fallback instead of rewriting the document.

Getting started

1. Open a Markdown document.
2. Run Pelcrow: Open Visual Editor, or use Open With... and select Pelcrow Visual Editor.
3. Use the Properties panel for frontmatter and the Selection panel for conditions, images, and references.
4. Use Open Source whenever you need direct control over the MDITA source.

The extension reads metadata rules from .pelcrow/config.json. Local/self-hosted workspaces may instead use pelcrow.config.json with metadataSchemaFile. Set pelcrow.configPath when the server config is outside the workspace root.

Commands

• Pelcrow: Open Visual Editor
• Pelcrow: Open Visual Editor to Side
• Pelcrow: Open Source
• Pelcrow: Open Reference Target

Current safety boundary

Canonical empty <span data-keyref="..."></span>, <span data-conref="..."></span>, and <div data-conref="..."></div> elements are supported visually. Key-definition containers, references with nested content or additional attributes, and raw HTML tables remain source-only.

Development

From the repository root:

npm install
npm run typecheck
npm run test
npm run package:vsix --workspace pelcrow-vscode

The packaged extension is written to vscode/pelcrow-vscode.vsix.