Markdown Music

Markdown you read and write in the same window: prose with its emphasis, LaTeX equations, source code, and music blocks that engrave as a score and play it back. The editor around them is a full one, with multicursor, an outline down the left edge, a look set from the toolbar and an export to HTML or PDF.

The music is written in ABC notation inside ordinary fenced blocks, so an .mdm file is valid Markdown throughout and any other editor shows it as code with nothing broken. Every part is drawn in place and every part is still plain text underneath.

How it edits

The editor holds the Markdown of the document and nothing else. Every character, the $$ of an equation, the backticks of a fence, the # of a heading, is an ordinary character that can be typed and deleted; there is no serialization step between what is typed and what is saved. What is drawn where follows the carets, the way Obsidian's live preview does:

• A block no caret touches is rendered: an equation as KaTeX, a score as its engraving, a fenced block as a card of highlighted code, bold as bold.
• A block a caret is in shows its source, with the rendered equation or the score kept under it as a live preview. Every caret counts, so each of several opens the thing it edits.
• An equation whose source does not compile stays as source with a red edge, and shows KaTeX's message while it is edited; the moment it compiles, it renders.

Multicursor works as in VS Code's own editor: Alt+click adds a caret (following the editor.multiCursorModifier setting), Shift+Alt+drag selects a column, Ctrl+D takes the next occurrence, Ctrl+Shift+L every one, Escape goes back to one caret. Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I, Ctrl+E and Ctrl+K format each selection, and the toolbar carries the same commands with heading and list buttons beside them.

Music that sounds

A fenced block with the class abc renders as a score; with {.abc .play} it also carries a player: play, pause, stop, repeat, a draggable progress bar, volume and mute. The piano is the Musyng Kite soundfont, all 88 notes vendored with the extension, so playback touches no network. A caret in the block opens its ABC above the engraving, and while a tune plays a brass cursor glides across the score and the notes light up under it as they sound, every voice of them:

```{.abc .play}
X:1
T:C major scale
M:4/4
L:1/8
K:C
CDEF GABc | cBAG FEDC |]
```

A short score can fix its own width with %%staffwidth 200pt as the first line of the block, and it is then set compact and centred, the way a display equation is.

Opening a score's source shows the ABC itself highlighted, and the block is read the way the engraving under it is drawn: the staff and its bar lines in ink, the field labels with them, and the notes in the brass of the note in this extension's icon, the same brass a note lights up in while it sounds. Around them the rest of the family: accidentals and the key and meter a step lighter, note lengths in copper, ornaments in olive, titles and lyrics as text, rests and comments quiet. ABC is the extension's own notation, so these colours are its own on both sides, light and dark, whatever theme paints the code around them.

Themes

The editor follows the VS Code theme by default, and the toolbar's theme menu offers light, dark, white paper, or any colour theme installed in VS Code: the syntax colours of the code blocks are read from the theme itself, Monokai's from Monokai. Staff lines can be drawn grey (Guitar Pro style) or in ink, scores can take a paper, slate or brass fill, and every toolbar state persists as an mdm.* setting, so a document reopens the way it was left.

Export

The export button renders the document to HTML, PDF or both through Quarto, and the HTML comes out dressed as the editor it was exported from, theme, palette and players included. The editor itself needs nothing installed: Quarto (>= 1.4) is looked for only when an export is asked for, a PDF needs a TeX installation, and a PDF of a document with scores needs abcm2ps (Debian and Ubuntu apt install abcm2ps, macOS brew install abcm2ps). Whichever is missing is named in a notification, with the full story one "Show log" away.

Settings

Notes

• The plain text editor stays available: right click the file, "Open With...". Both can be open at once on the same file; they share the document.
• Tables are edited as their source, in a monospace grid. Images render for paths relative to the document and for https: addresses.
• Only the piano is vendored: a different %%MIDI program will not find its notes.

The format, the Quarto filter that renders it outside VS Code and the full documentation live in the markdown_music repository. The extension is MIT; what it vendors (abcjs, CodeMirror 6, KaTeX, the Musyng Kite soundfont) is credited in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md.