Emacs markdown-mode error on preview: "bin / bash: markdown: command not found"

Question

I am using emacs 24 on fedora 17. I installed markdown-mode, but whenever I try to export a file by typing C-c C-c m or C-c C-c p in emacs, I got this error:

/bin/bash: markdown: command not found

I read that this is probably an issue with the path variable, so I compared the env variable by typing $ env at the command line and Esc-! env RET in emacs. I found the path variable description is the same in both cases.

What is this error? How can I fix it and execute markdown previews from within emacs?

Answer 1

Install any markdown generating tool as you like, for example pandoc.

Then add the following line to your .emacs file:

(custom-set-variables  '(markdown-command "/usr/local/bin/pandoc")) 

Answer 2

This error occurs when you do not have a markdown parser installed. Installing one is simple with brew. From the command line:

brew install markdown

This should result in something like:

==> Downloading http://daringfireball.net/projects/downloads/Markdown_1.0.1.zip ######################################################################## 100.0%   /usr/local/Cellar/markdown/1.0.1: 2 files, 40K, built in 2 seconds 

Before running that command, I had the same error you did. After running that command, which installs a markdown parser on your system, the emacs commands C-c C-c m and C-c C-c p worked as expected by opening an HTML version of my markdown file in either another buffer or the browser, respectively.