The gap
Hand-editing Markdown tables is slow: pipes drift out of line, CJK text and emoji break naive alignment, and moving data between spreadsheets and tables means retyping it.
Developer tools
Pipegrid by PN Scripts
A VS Code extension for Markdown tables: Tab between cells, alignment that stays correct with CJK text and emoji, CSV and TSV in both directions, and row, column and sort commands.
- Visual Studio Code extension API
- JavaScript
- Node.js
- Coming soon
- Free Lite out now
Coming soon
Not published on its store yet, so there is no buy or download link. PN Scripts does not take payment for it here.
Get it on
- VS Code Marketplace: free Lite edition (opens in a new tab)
- Open VSX: free Lite edition (opens in a new tab)
- Free Lite on GitHub (opens in a new tab)
The Lite edition is free and complete for what it does; the full edition adds more.
What it solves
What it is
Pipegrid lets you type into a table with Tab doing the alignment, converts CSV and TSV in both directions and edits tables by row and column, all from the keyboard, the Command Palette or the right-click menu.
How you use it
Readable tables in the source file, quick moves between spreadsheets and Markdown, and column edits that take one command instead of careful manual work.
For people who keep documentation, changelogs and notes in Markdown, Pipegrid is a focused table tool that handles multilingual text correctly and never drops a cell.
Who it is for
Use it when
- Keeping tables in READMEs, changelogs and wikis readable in the source
- Pasting spreadsheet exports into documentation and copying tables back into a spreadsheet
- Maintaining multilingual tables with Chinese, Japanese or Korean text and emoji
Built for
- Developers and technical writers who write documentation in Markdown
- Teams that keep translation tables or status lists in Markdown files
What is inside
Formatting that understands wide characters
Each cell is measured in display columns, the way a monospace editor draws it. CJK ideographs, kana, Hangul and fullwidth characters take two columns, emoji take two, combining marks take none, and emoji sequences such as flags, skin tones and joined families count as one unit. The pipes line up as long as your editor font draws those characters at double width.
CSV and TSV in both directions
Select CSV, TSV or semicolon-separated lines and turn them into a table. Quoted fields, doubled quotes, delimiters inside quotes and line breaks inside quotes are handled, and the first row becomes the header. Going back, a table becomes CSV or TSV in place, or TSV on the clipboard ready for a spreadsheet; escaped pipes and line breaks are restored.
Typing, rows and columns
Inside a table, Tab realigns the table and selects the next cell so you can type over it; Tab in the last cell adds a row and Shift+Tab goes back. Create Table asks for a size such as 3x4. With the cursor in a cell you can insert, delete or move the row or the column, sort the rows by that column or set its alignment, and Transpose swaps rows and columns. After each edit the cursor stays with the cell it was in.
Careful with your file
Pipegrid follows the GitHub Flavored Markdown table rules, keeps alignment markers, indentation and line endings, pads short rows and keeps extra cells rather than dropping them. Tables inside fenced code blocks are left alone. Tab is taken over only inside a table with a single cursor and no suggestion or snippet open, and can be switched off; format on save is off until you turn it on.
Gallery
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Specs
- Availability
- Coming soon
- Vendor
- PN Scripts
- Type
- Extension
- Platforms
- JavaScript
- Pricing
- One-time purchase Price to be announced.
- License
- Proprietary
- Deployment
- Download (.vsix file, installed with Install from VSIX)
- Maturity
- v1.0.0
Compatibility
| Platform or runtime | Supported versions | Tested up to |
|---|---|---|
| Visual Studio Code | 1.85 or newer | 1.141.0 |
Stack
- Visual Studio Code extension API
- JavaScript
- Node.js
Pipegrid is coming soon
It is finished and tested. It is not on sale yet; this page will say where to get it when it is.
Coming soon
Not published on its store yet, so there is no buy or download link. PN Scripts does not take payment for it here.
Questions
A Visual Studio Code extension for Markdown tables: Tab between cells, alignment by display width, CSV and TSV conversion in both directions, and 23 commands for rows, columns, sorting and transposing.
Visual Studio Code 1.85 or newer on any operating system VS Code supports; it was tested on VS Code 1.141.0 on Linux. It is installed from the .vsix file with Install from VSIX and has no dependencies. For CJK and emoji to look aligned, the editor font must draw them at double width.
There is no visual grid editor and no Excel file import. Only Tab and Shift+Tab are bound by default. It is not published on the Visual Studio Marketplace or Open VSX, and it does not format tables written in HTML.
The table logic is plain JavaScript kept apart from the VS Code glue so it can be tested on its own. 38 Node tests cover width rules, parsing, formatting, CSV and TSV, sorting, rows, columns and table creation, plus every command, Tab navigation and format on save against an in-memory VS Code API. An integration script then ran the commands inside a real VS Code 1.141.0, and the .vsix was installed into a clean profile. Created with AI assistance; the table logic and commands were tested by PN Scripts with 38 automated tests and scripted runs inside VS Code 1.141.0.
It is not on sale yet. When it is, this page will link to the store; PN Scripts does not take payment on this site.