Markdown quote action: need script to place a colored "border-left" along the left side of the quote

Actions - Help & Questions
1

I don’t have a clue what to do, but I would like to add a colored border-left to run along the left side of the quote. I assume there is some script language to add to the script for the quote action which is described as “Apply Markdown Quote (”>“) at beginning of selected lines.”

Thanks in advance.

2

Markdown itself is plain text and does not have any associated styling information.

In what scenario are you hoping to have that border applied? If in the editor, that is not possible. If in HTML Previews of the converted Markdown, that is possible with CSS styles applied in the preview.

If you have a Markdown quote, like:

> This is a quote

When run through a Markdown parser to generate HTML, that will be output as:

<blockquote>
This is a quote
<//blockquote>

How that is displayed in a web browser depends on the CSS styles loaded in the webpage. If I just past that in here in the forum (below), it will render with a background and left border because this forum has those styles setup, like:

This is a quote

Drafts previews and preview actions all have templates that include CSS styles. Drafts ships with three built-in styles - both the “Swiss” and “Foghorn” styles have a left border on blockquote, the “Basic” style uses just a background color.

So, you may get what you want out of just using one of those styles.

1 Like
3

I understand; thank you. I’m curious, where are the Swiss or Foghorn styles files located?

4

I’m wondering if a vertical bar character is useful here. But I get the point that it wouldn’t affect display - until conversion in Preview. (And even then it probably wouldn’t create an impromptu table.)

5

HTML previews are actions and as such you can edit them and learn from their source code.

I’d recommend you to open the Markdown action group, pick the inbuilt preview that comes closest to what you want and duplicate it. And then look up CSS basics in the internet and play around with the duplicated action. It is not that complicated.

6

@suavito Thank you. I did enter properties for the blockquote element, which displays accordingly in Preview.

I know Drafts is “where text starts,” but most of the time it where my quick notes stay. I understand what @agiletortoise explained above. I’ve been using Drafts for years as is, so having control of editor styles is far from critical for my use.

Perhaps saving/printing the Preview to PDF would be a nice enhancement to Drafts.

7

There is a Print: Markdown action in the Markdown action group too. And it works with CSS too.

8

More good advice; thank you!