[HN Gopher] Show HN: MDV - a Markdown superset for docs, dashboa...
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Show HN: MDV - a Markdown superset for docs, dashboards, and slides
with data
Author : drasim
Score : 77 points
Date : 2026-04-18 15:24 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| kevinkoning wrote:
| Markdown is a beautiful demonstration that document structure
| syntax can/should be simple. What most people do in Word is
| better done by just adjusting the document rendering/style, not
| the document structure...
|
| I love the idea of extending markdown to include more visual
| elements, but if you're not careful you just reinvent HTML.
|
| Here's my personal take on extending table syntax for charts.
| Easy to write, and if a renderer/parser understands the syntax
| you get a beautiful chart, and if it doesn't you get a table with
| slightly weird headings: | Month::x | Revenue::y1
| | Cost::y2 | | -------- | ----------: | -------: | |
| Jan | $82,000 | $51,000 | | Feb | $91,000
| | $56,000 | | Mar | $95,000 | $58,000 |
| esafak wrote:
| What's the : in the divider?
| microflash wrote:
| That's header alignment marker. If it's on right, the header
| cell is aligned to right.
| rao-v wrote:
| Tables are the one thing in markdown where I'd prefer to
| emphasize edit ergonomics over good looking unrendered text.
| Making a quick manual change like adding column to a markdown
| table is just unfun. I've always thought a json like format
| that a linter can organize would be better.
|
| Which is all to say I really like the table proposal here -
| adding an optional linter to make the data look tabular in
| unrendered markdown will make it even better
| freedomben wrote:
| > _Making a quick manual change like adding column to a
| markdown table is just unfun._
|
| This is one of those moments where I realize that the vim
| life spoils me. It's so easy to do this in vim that I don't
| even think about. I probably use it a dozen times per day
| such as commenting out code.
|
| Ctrl + v, select where you want the character, then hit I
| (shift + i), type your thing, hit escape, and Bob's your
| uncle.
| nine_k wrote:
| Same in Emacs, and, I suppose, in any editor with enough
| self-respect to support vertical blocks.
| jez wrote:
| Even in Vim, the editing experience falls over when making
| markdown tables that have non-trivial content in their
| cells (multiple paragraphs, a code block, etc.). I recently
| learned that reStructuredText supports something called
| "list tables":
|
| https://docutils.sourceforge.io/docs/ref/rst/directives.htm
| l...
|
| Where a table is specified as a depth-2 list and then post
| processed into a table. Lists support the full range of
| block elements already: you can have multiple paragraphs,
| code blocks, more lists, etc. inside a list item.
|
| This syntax inspired the author of Markdoc[1] (who came
| from an rST background) to support tables using
| `<hr>`-separated lists[2] instead of nested lists (to
| provide more visual separation between rows).
|
| I have found various implementations of list table filters
| for Pandoc markdown[3][4], but have never gotten around to
| using any of them (and I've tossed around ideas of
| implementing my own).
|
| [1] https://markdoc.dev
|
| [2] https://markdoc.dev/docs/tags#table
|
| [3] https://github.com/pandoc-ext/list-table
|
| [4] https://github.com/bpj/pandoc-list-table
| toastal wrote:
| reStructuredText & AsciiDoc are so, _so_ much better than
| Markdown since they have rich feature sets to actually
| build documentation, blogging, & so on. It's a massive
| shame everyone would prefer _yet another Markdown fork_
| like the OP.
| cush wrote:
| Any editor plugin makes it easy though
| phyzix5761 wrote:
| Nice project. But at what point does Markdown just become Emacs
| Org-Mode? At least with Emacs you can write Lisp to make your
| document do anything you want.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Deepening on who your users are you might also say "at least
| with markdown they write Lisp and make their documents do
| whatever they like."
| arikrahman wrote:
| I'm struggling to figure out why I wouldn't just use Emacs Org
| or even Typst for this use case.
| maleldil wrote:
| Typst is amazing, but if you want HTML output, it's not quite
| there yet.
| amcaskill wrote:
| I work on a dashboarding / BI solution that is also built around
| markdown and clickhouse. www.evidence.dev
|
| We moved to stripe's Markdoc variant for the component syntax
| last year and have been really happy with it. Models are good at
| writing it, people are good at reviewing it.
|
| Here's an area chart that would issue a SQL query for weekly
| revenue totals:
|
| ``` {% area_chart data="my_table" x="date" y="sum(revenue)"
| date_grain="week" /%} ```
| tnolet wrote:
| This is XML without the < and >
| Diti wrote:
| Yeah, why not go directly the route of custom HTML elements
| in Markdown anyway, since HTML inside Markdown is valid?
| remywang wrote:
| All of these are supported in pandoc markdown:
|
| > .mdv is strict CommonMark plus four additions:
|
| > YAML front-matter for title, theme, named styles, and dataset
| references.
|
| > Fenced blocks for data/visuals: ```chart type=bar x=region
| y=sales.
|
| > ::: containers for styled regions and layout: ::: callout / :::
| columns.
|
| > ::: toc for an auto-generated table of contents.
| nzoschke wrote:
| Looks cool.
|
| I continue to love Markdown and always push it a bit further than
| Commonmark, with frontmatter, schemas, code fence metadata too.
|
| I've been enjoying https://djot.net/ as a superset of Markdown
| that is feels very well designed and extensible too.
|
| You may look into its syntax and tooling for prior art or some
| extra lift.
|
| I'm trying to get a djot extension in Zed for syntax highlighting
| if anyone minds adding a to help signal some community interest.
|
| https://github.com/zed-industries/extensions/pull/5206
| ifh-hn wrote:
| I'm using quarto for this sort of thing.
| woodydesign wrote:
| Very cool.
|
| I'm a product designer, and I could totally see this fitting into
| my workflow for design briefs, strategy, review, and crit docs.
| Markdown is too simple, and Figma is too visual. This feels like
| a great middle ground.
| sieste wrote:
| I was expecting to find a link to a github pages site where I can
| see the rendered examples, but only found a link to the html
| sources in examples/out. Am I missing something?
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| nope this is becoming a theme. many showhn posts that are about
| visualizations do not have any renderings of said
| visualizations. especially in github readme.
| bthallplz wrote:
| I was curious to see them, too, so I uploaded the HTML examples
| here: https://tacticaltypos-tools.pgs.sh/mdv/examples/out/
| trueno wrote:
| jesus thank you, im so wary of any project that isn't going
| to do this bare minimum. static pages on gh are literally
| free it feels absurd to post this project to HN without doing
| that.
| FailMore wrote:
| I feel your pain. My project is https://sdocs.dev, the homepage
| is actually the rendering of a markdown file (sdoc.md), so you
| can see how SDocs renders immediately. There are some links on
| the homepage to other Markdown files with some elaborate styles
| and charts
| pixelmonkey wrote:
| This seems cool. For going from Markdown to slides I've often
| used Marp: https://marp.app/ -- It doesn't require much
| specialized syntax, it mostly does the right thing to turn plain
| Markdown sections into slides. Simple self-hostable HTML output
| and PDF export options. Already has a VSCode preview plugin, too.
| I noticed that Claude Code is able to generate Marp slides for
| you if you ask it, as well.
|
| Best for slides that are just bullet points, full-slide images,
| and code. Especially code. Less good if you have a lot of images
| or need to do your own styles or layout.
| FailMore wrote:
| This is cool. Can you tell me more about the :: blocks thing. I
| didn't know that was a Markdown element.
|
| This problem has risen to the top of many people's minds at this
| moment (including mine!). My Show HN for a similar cli + web
| based solution (https://sdocs.dev) is on the /show page now
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47777633).
|
| I also went with Front Matter for styling and added an
| interactive styling mode you can do on the web to test it out
| immediately. There are some examples on my homepage which
| demonstrate it in action.
|
| SDocs is cli -> instantly rendered on web
|
| Despite being in the browser, the content of SDocs rendered
| Markdown files remain local to you. SDoc urls contain your
| markdown document's content in compressed base64 in the url
| fragment (the bit after the `#`):
| https://sdocs.dev/#md=GzcFAMT...(this is the contents of your
| document)... The url fragment is never sent to the server (see
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/URI/Reference/F...:
| "The fragment is not sent to the server when the URI is
| requested; it is processed by the client").
|
| The sdocs.dev webapp is purely a client side decoding and
| rendering engine for the content stored in the url fragment.
|
| This also means you can share your .md files privately by sharing
| the url.
|
| Also, I'm sorry I high jacked your post to some degree with this
| comment. It's just a little too relevant for me not to leave a
| comment!
| gkfasdfasdf wrote:
| Looks wonderful, is there a skill or prompt that can teach agents
| how to use this format?
| FailMore wrote:
| Maybe not a direct answer to your question, but
| https://sdocs.dev has a cli built for agents. 'sdoc --help' and
| 'sdoc schema' and 'sdoc charts' teach your agent how to use it.
| You can try it with 'npm i -g sdocs-dev'
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(page generated 2026-04-18 23:00 UTC)