MarkView Documentation — Architecture, Installation & Keyboard Shortcuts

1. Overview & Architecture

MarkView is a modern, high-performance desktop Markdown application engineered with Tauri 2, Rust, React 19, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS 4.

Unlike heavy Chromium-based Electron applications that consume hundreds of megabytes of RAM, MarkView uses the operating system's native webview (WebKitGTK on Linux, WebView2 on Windows, WKWebView on macOS) coupled with a multi-threaded Rust backend for directory traversals, regex searches, and file watching.

Technology Stack:
• Desktop Framework: Tauri 2.x
• Backend Core: Rust (std::fs, walkdir, regex, notify)
• Frontend Framework: React 19 + TypeScript
• Styling & Design: Tailwind CSS 4
• Code Highlighting: Shiki (25+ VS Code languages & themes)
• Math & Equations: KaTeX (inline $...$ and block $$...$$)
• Diagram Pipeline: Mermaid (flowchart, sequence, class, state)
• Sanitization: rehype-sanitize whitelist schema
        

2. Installation & Packages

Standalone binaries are published for Linux. Download your target package:

AppImage (x86_64) DEB (amd64) DEB (arm64) RPM (x86_64)

Linux Command Line Installation

# 1. Run AppImage:
chmod +x MarkView-1.0.0-x86_64.AppImage
./MarkView-1.0.0-x86_64.AppImage

# 2. Install on Debian / Ubuntu / Linux Mint:
sudo dpkg -i MarkView_1.0.0_amd64.deb

# 3. Install on Fedora / RHEL / CentOS:
sudo rpm -i MarkView-1.0.0-x86_64.rpm
        

3. Keyboard Shortcuts

MarkView includes full keyboard navigation for mouse-free document exploration:

Shortcut	Action	Description
`Ctrl` + `P`	Quick Open	Fuzzy search and instantly switch files in workspace
`Ctrl` + `Shift` + `F`	Workspace Search	Full regex content search across all workspace files
`Ctrl` + `F`	In-Document Search	Highlight matches in active document with Enter / Shift+Enter
`Ctrl` + `[` / `]`	Back / Forward	History stack navigation between visited markdown files
`Ctrl` + `O`	Open File/Folder	Launch system native file chooser dialog

4. Syntax, KaTeX & Diagrams

Code Blocks with Shiki

MarkView uses Shiki for accurate syntax highlighting. Theme choices include GitHub Dark, GitHub Light, One Dark Pro, Nord, Dracula, and Vitesse.

```rust
fn main() {
    println!("Hello from MarkView!");
}
```
        

Mathematical Formulas with KaTeX

Write inline formulas with $E = mc^2$ or display blocks:

$$
\int_{-\infty}^{\infty} e^{-x^2} dx = \sqrt{\pi}
$$
        

Mermaid Diagrams

MarkView natively renders Mermaid diagrams:

```mermaid
graph TD
    A[Markdown File] --> B[Rust AST Parser]
    B --> C[React 19 Renderer]
    C --> D[Shiki & KaTeX]
```
        

5. Workspace & File Watcher

When you open a workspace directory, MarkView launches a debounced filesystem watcher using Rust's notify crate.

External Edits: Edits made in external IDEs (VS Code, Neovim) are instantly detected and updated in MarkView without re-rendering flashes.
Scroll Preservation: Your scroll offset is automatically retained when documents re-render.
Relative Links: Clicking markdown links like [Setup](./setup.md) instantly navigates to that file in the workspace.
Local Images: Relative image paths (![Image](./assets/diagram.png)) are securely resolved through Tauri's local streaming protocol.

6. Lightning-Fast Search Engine

MarkView incorporates three distinct search tiers:

Quick Open (Ctrl+P): Fuzzy file finder scanning all filenames in memory.
Workspace Content Search (Ctrl+Shift+F): Rust multi-threaded regex engine traversing file contents in parallel.
In-Document Search (Ctrl+F): DOM highlight engine with match count indices.

7. Security & Sandboxing

Security is central to MarkView's design:

AST HTML Sanitization: Raw HTML is strictly sanitized using rehype-sanitize, preventing XSS injection attacks.
External Links: Web URLs (https://...) never open in the local webview; they are delegated to your default OS browser via Tauri's Opener plugin.
100% Offline: No telemetry, analytics, or remote API calls are executed. All engines run entirely locally.

8. Building from Source

To compile MarkView from source:

# 1. Clone repository:
git clone https://github.com/dev-hints/MarkView.git
cd MarkView

# 2. Install dependencies:
npm install

# 3. Run in development mode:
npm run tauri dev

# 4. Build release binaries:
npm run tauri build
        