Ankiweb

Generating HTML from Markdown in Anki fields

I write in Markdown because it’s much easier to keep the flow of writing going without taking my hands off the keyboard.

I also like to write content in Anki cards in Markdown. Over the years there have been various ways in of supporting this through add-ons:

  • The venerable Power Format Pack was great but no longer supports Anki 2.1, so it became useless.
  • Auto Markdown worked for a while but as of Anki version 2.1.41 does not.
  • After Auto Markdown stopped working, I installed the supposed fix Auto Markdown - fix version but that didn’t work either.
  • It’s possible that the Mini Format Pack will work, but honestly I’m tired of the constant break-fix-break-fix cycle with Anki.

The problem

The real problem with Markdown add-ons for Anki is the same as every other add-on. They are all hanging by a thread. Almost every minor point upgrade of Anki breaks at least one of my add-ons. It’s nearly impossible to determine in advance whether an Anki upgrade is going to break some key functionality that I rely on. And add-on developers, even prominent and prolific ones come and go when they get busy, distracted or disinterested. It’s one of the most frustrating parts of using Anki.