Using :Make for MacVim to invoke "Marked 2" for markdown rendering?

[David Finton]

I found a simple recipe for configuring ".make" in MacVim to automatically bring up Marked 2 for markdown rendering as I edit.  I can't get it to work.  Perhaps there is a simpler way?

The recipe is from Rob Allen:  Use Vim's :make to preview markdown

So I have the file ~/.vim/ftplugin/markdown.vim, and it contains the following line:

set makeprg=open\ -a\ Marked\\\ 2.app\ '%:p'

When I try ":make" in MacVim, it reports the following:

make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found.  Stop.

I can manually start Marked 2, and in Marked 2 find the file I'm editing and open it, and that works.  But I would like to do this with a keystroke from MacVim.  Rob Allen's page filled me with hope that this was possible and easy.  Am I close?

Thanks!

[David Finton]

Solved.

I looked for info on setting the variable makeprg in Vim.  In Vim, ":set mp" showed me that the makeprg variable was still set to its default value of "make". But I also realized that I could change that setting in my ~/_vimrc file, rather than in a script under the ".vim" folder.  

I used the same exact setting line from Rob Allen's article, but I used it to set the "makeprg" variable directly in my vimrc.  

Works like a charm.

[Yee Cheng Chin]

I think the reason why the article you linked to uses a ftplugin file in .vim folder is to make sure it only gets set when you are editing a Markdown file. Otherwise if you do it in your own vimrc it will be set for all file types unless you explicitly uses a FileType auto-command to do the same thing. My guess is that you put the file at the wrong place, which resulted in it not being loaded in.

[David Finton]

Thank you;  that makes sense!  I tried putting the file in  ~/.vim/ftplugin and it had no effect.  Could you suggest another place to try?

--David

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[Yongwei Wu]

Is there any reason you do not want to use a plugin like https://github.com/iamcco/markdown-preview.nvim? Scrolling in Vim would synchronize with the view in the browser.

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[David Finton]

Okay.  Yee Cheng reminds me that I should be able to restrict this behavior to the markdown filetype.  And this should work by means of ~/.vim/ftplugin/markdown.vim.

Indeed!  This works for me -- but only if I hide my personal .vimrc file!  In fact, if that file exists, the markdown.vim script will not be loaded, even if the .vimrc is empty!  I confirmed this via the :scriptnames command in the editor.

What is going wrong, that simply doing "touch .vimrc" to create an empty .vimrc file is sufficient to cause this mechanism to fail?

So... rename / remove my .vimrc, and I can open a '.md' file in MacVim, and the :scriptnames command shows ~/.vim/ftplugin/markdown.vim is loaded.  Now I close that file, and do "touch .vimrc" at the commandline, and open the same file... and markdown.vim is not loaded.  The file .vimrc exists -- but it's empty.  

[David Finton]

Is there some command that needs to be present in .vimrc to cause Vim to load scripts based on the filetype?

[David Finton]

I added the following three lines to my empty .vimrc -- and now I seem to have the plugins working!  Is there anything else I should do?

set nocompatible

filetype on

filetype plugin on

Thanks!

-David

[yeeche...@gmail.com]

You could just add the following to the top of your vimrc instead of setting those yourself:

unlet! skip_defaults_vim
source $VIMRUNTIME/defaults.vim

The reasoning is a little complicated but basically if you don't have a vimrc, Vim uses a "defaults.vim" as defaults settings, but once you use your own vimrc it doesn't load defaults.vim for backwards compatibility reasons. You can manually load it by adding those two lines above, see ":h defaults.vim".

As for plugins like markdown_preview, I think those are cool but they do require installing a Node.js server instead of just having an app, so I feel that it's a little more involved.

[David Finton]

Wonderful!  I really appreciate your help.