MDP(1)

💖 NAME 💖

Hey bestie, welcome to the mdp(1) manual — yes, that's the General Commands Manual section, and we're keeping it cute. mdp is a command-line based markdown presentation tool. No cap, it's literally that. ✨

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

The whole summoning ritual is:

mdp [OPTION]... [FILE]

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

mdp is a command-line program that allows you to make elegant presentations from markdown formatted FILEs.

It is as easy as write your presentation content in the text editor of your preference and launch the presentation from the command-line. Periodt. 🫶

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

🧚 Input Control

• FILE — the input file from which the presentation is read. If no file is specified, or if the file name is -, the presentation is read from standard input.

🌈 Output Control

• -c, --nocodebg — don't change the background color of code blocks.
• -e, --expand — enable character entity expansion (e.g. '>' becomes '>').
• -f, --nofade — disable color fading in 256 color mode.
• -i, --invert — swap black and white color.
• -j N, --jump N — jump to slide number N.
• -L N, --left-indent N — shift slide content by N columns to the right.
• -s, --noslidenum — do not show slide number at the bottom.
• -T N, --top-indent N — shift slide content by N rows down.
• -t, --notrans — disable transparency in transparent terminal.
• -x, --noslidemax — show slide number, but not total number of slides.

⭐ Miscellaneous Options

• -d, --debug — enable debug messages on STDERR. Add multiple times to increases debug level.
• -h, --help — display usage message and exit.
• -v, --version — display version and license information.

🦋 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES 🦋

💜 Output Control

• MDP_LIST_HEAD[1-3], MDP_LIST_OPEN[1-3] — controls the list characters of unordered lists.

The default is equivalent to:

MDP_LIST_OPEN1=' |  '
MDP_LIST_OPEN2=' |  '
MDP_LIST_OPEN3=' |  '
MDP_LIST_HEAD1=' +- '
MDP_LIST_HEAD2=' +- '
MDP_LIST_HEAD3=' +- '

🍓 MARKDOWN FORMATTING 🍓

For a complete list of supported markups, refer the sample presentation (sample.md) provided alongside mdp, or online available at https://github.com/visit1985/mdp.

🧚 Slides

The input FILE is split into multiple slides by horizontal rules. Each consisting of at least 3 --- or *** characters on a single line. This line must be prefixed by an completely empty line. It can also contain spaces but no other characters.

If any slide is too large to fit into your current screen, an error message will be displayed at the moment the presentation is launched.

🌸 Line-by-Line Mode

Same stop-point trigger as block-by-block below — one line at a time is the vibe 💅

🌸 Block-by-Block Mode

A single <br>, <BR> or ^ on an otherwise empty line signals mdp to stop output of the current slide (stop point) and wait for a key-press by the user.

This enables the user to display bullet points or list items one by one (line by line) or block by block.

🎀 Headers

mdp supports metadata lines at the top of the input file in the form [KEY]:[VALUE]. The first metadata entry is used as the title, and repeated footer: entries are used for the lower bar. If only one footer value is given, it is centered when slide numbers are hidden. For example:

<!--
title: Example Presentation
footer: Someone
footer: 2026-01-01
-->

Legacy metadata is also accepted as %title:, %author:, %date: lines at the top of the input file. The old %author: and %date: labels are treated as the first and second footer values respectively. HTML comments may be used to hide those metadata lines from the slide deck, and the comment metadata does not require % prefixes.

Headers are only recognized at the top of the input FILE.

⭐ Line spanning markup

Supported are headlines, code blocks, quotes and unordered lists.

💅 In-line markup

As well as bold text, underlined text and in-line code.

🔥 COLOR SUPPORT 🔥

Most terminals are able to display 256 colors these days. But some of them enable only 16 colors by default. To enjoy mdp's full capabilities, these terminals need to be signaled to enable 256 color mode. This is usually done by setting the TERM environment variable.

export TERM=xterm-256color

👑 KEYBOARD CONTROLS 👑

• h, j, k, l, Arrow keys, Space, Enter, Backspace, Page Up, Page Down — display next/previous slide or continue after a stop point.
• g, Home — jump to first slide.
• G, End — jump to last slide.
• 1..N — jump to Nth slide.
• r — reload the input FILE. This key is disabled if input was read from standard input.
• q — exit mdp.

✨ CUSTOMIZATION ✨

mdp can be configured by modifying config.h and recompiling.

💖 AUTHOR 💖

Written by Michael Goehler and others, see https://github.com/visit1985/mdp/blob/master/AUTHORS.

🌈 COPYRIGHT 🌈

Copyright (C) 2026 Michael Goehler

This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

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And that's the tea ☕ — this page is from User Commands, dated 2016-04-02, and it's the MDP(1) manual. Bye bestie, go make a slay presentation 💅✨