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Alexandr Zahatski
Alexandr Zahatski

Posted on • Originally published at podlite.org

Podlite Desktop 0.8 released

#opensource #podlite #markup #productivity

Podlite Desktop 0.8 is out. Podlite Desktop is a free, open source editor for the Podlite markup language, and it runs on macOS, Windows and Linux. This version shipped as a string of patch releases, 0.8.0 through 0.8.3, over a single week. This post covers the whole cycle: what is new, what got fixed, and a short note on where the fix list came from.

What's new

  • Inline image paste and drag-and-drop. Paste with Cmd+V or drag a file from Finder. It lands in a media/ folder next to the current document, and an =picture line referencing it appears at the cursor. Drop a file that already lives in media/ and the editor references it in place, no copy.

Drag a file onto the editor and the =picture line lands at the cursor

  • =include in the live preview. References resolve at render time against the current document's directory, so the preview shows the real included content instead of a placeholder. A recursive watcher invalidates the cache when an included file changes on disk, and the preview re-renders. Glob patterns work too: =include file:**/*.podlite | defn expands through a depth-bounded directory walk and skips dotfiles.

  • Auto-numbered headings and lists. Mark a heading :numbered and it gets a prefix like 1., 1.1., 1.2.1.. Set the document default with =config head1 :numbered, and opt a single heading out with :!numbered. =config item1 :numbered renders a list as ordered (1., 2., 3.) instead of bulleted.

Headings render with 1., 1.1., 1.2. prefixes; the items below become an ordered list

  • Syntax-highlighted code blocks. =code blocks with a :lang attribute are highlighted in the live preview now, matching the editor pane. Inline formatting composes with the highlighter, so bold inside a code block renders over the syntax colors, and so do italic and inline code.

Syntax-highlighted code blocks

  • Native Apple Silicon build. The macOS distribution ships separate arm64 and x64 builds. Apple Silicon Macs run native instead of going through Rosetta 2; startup, file open, and preview switching are faster on M-series machines. Grab the -arm64 file for Apple Silicon, the unsuffixed one for Intel.

What got fixed

  • Opening a .podlite file from Finder no longer creates two windows. File -> Open opens a fresh window instead of replacing the current one, and Cmd+S on an untitled document opens Save-As instead of doing nothing.

  • =picture renders under the Mac App Store sandbox. The build reads image bytes in the main process and inlines them as a base64 data URL, so the renderer no longer needs the file:// access the sandbox denies for sibling files.

  • External-edit reload survives atomic writes. The watcher now watches the parent directory and reloads on rename, instead of losing the inode when an IDE or sync tool writes via tmp + rename.

  • The file watcher no longer crashes the app when the OS denies recursive directory watching. Mac App Store paths and iCloud Drive folders hit this; auto-reload disables for that document instead of taking the app down.

  • An empty =Mermaid block no longer crashes the preview while the body is still empty.

A note on where the fix list came from

Most of 0.8.x was shaped by one contributor. Across three ship cycles, @schueani filed detailed bug reports: stack traces, reproducible test cases, and follow-up testing on each patch release.

Get it

Podlite Desktop is on the Microsoft Store, Snap, and the Mac App Store. You can also download directly from GitHub Releases: macOS arm64 and x64 DMG/zip, Windows .exe/.zip, Linux AppImage.

Source is at github.com/podlite/podlite-desktop. Want to try the markup without installing anything? pod6.in runs the editor in the browser.

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