[Feature] Support Image and PDF Preview

[chocolatedesue]

Problem

Ferrite currently does not support previewing images or PDF files.

Users have to open files externally, which breaks the writing and review workflow.

Proposed Solution

Add built-in preview support for:

• Images (png, jpg, jpeg, webp)
• PDF files

Preview should work inline (e.g., in split view or on click), similar to how markdown is rendered.

Use Cases

• Quickly reviewing assets without leaving the editor
• Checking attachments during writing
• Improving workflow continuity

[OlaProeis]

Hi @chocolatedesue Thanks for the feature request.

Ferrite already supports image rendering inside markdown documents. If you use standard markdown image syntax:

![description](path/to/image.png)

dragging images directly into a markdown file in ferrite should also add this and copy the image to a assets folder

The image will display inline in Rendered and Split view modes. Supported formats: PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP. Paths are resolved relative to the document's directory and the workspace root.

So if your workflow involves referencing images within markdown documents, that's fully supported today.

Opening image directly as tabs (like a dedicated viewer) i can add to 0.2.8 roadmap

but PDFs, there are currently no good rust crates that handles this, and i do not want to add c++ dependencies here. so that wont happen anytime soon :/

[chocolatedesue]

Hi @chocolatedesue Thanks for the feature request.

Ferrite already supports image rendering inside markdown documents. If you use standard markdown image syntax:

dragging images directly into a markdown file in ferrite should also add this and copy the image to a assets folder

The image will display inline in Rendered and Split view modes. Supported formats: PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP. Paths are resolved relative to the document's directory and the workspace root.

So if your workflow involves referencing images within markdown documents, that's fully supported today.

Opening image directly as tabs (like a dedicated viewer) i can add to 0.2.8 roadmap

but PDFs, there are currently no good rust crates that handles this, and i do not want to add c++ dependencies here. so that wont happen anytime soon :/

Thx for your reply;

For naive pdf rendering, maybe this canbe helpful https://github.com/LaurenzV/hayro?

Sadly, I am not familiar with rust code;

[OlaProeis]

@chocolatedesue

Great find! We've been looking at hayro and it actually changes the picture significantly for PDF support.

Why hayro works for us:

• Pure Rust — no native C/C++ dependencies (unlike PDFium/MuPDF), so no cross-compilation headaches
• MIT/Apache-2.0 — compatible license
• Uses the image crate — same version we already depend on (0.25), so minimal dependency overhead
• CPU-only rendering (via vello_cpu) — no GPU requirements, runs everywhere
• #![forbid(unsafe_code)] — strong safety guarantees

It renders PDFs to bitmaps, which fits perfectly into our existing texture pipeline (same approach we use for markdown image rendering and the upcoming image viewer tab).

What we're planning:

• PDF viewer tab: open .pdf files in a read-only viewer
• Page navigation (prev/next, keyboard shortcuts)
• Zoom (Ctrl+scroll, re-render at different DPI)
• Builds on top of the image viewer infrastructure (Task 39)

hayro is still early (v0.5, performance not yet optimized), so complex/large PDFs may be slow, but for the "quick preview a PDF without leaving the editor" use case, it should work well. We'll ship it as a best-effort viewer rather than a full PDF reader.

This is now tracked for v0.2.8 alongside image viewer support. Thanks for the pointer!