keymap.md

Keymap

Everything in the editor is reachable from the keyboard. The mouse is supported where it is genuinely better — dragging a line, clicking a type in the legend.

On a touch screen there is no keyboard to run the writing loop from, so the legend along the bottom is it: the line types on the left with link among them, and edit new paste remove ↑ ↓ fold on the right, each doing exactly what the key printed beside it does. Tap a line to put the cursor on it; tap it again to write in it.

Moving

key	does
j k or ↓ ↑	move the cursor — skips folded output lines
g G	first / last line
J K	move the line up / down
drag ⠿	reorder with the mouse

Writing

key	does
i or Enter	edit the line in place
Enter (while editing)	commit and open a new line below — the writing loop
Esc (while editing)	commit and stop
o O	new line below / above, straight into editing
Tab / ⇧Tab (editing a table row)	the next / previous cell
^K (while editing)	a link at the caret, or over what is selected — the same overlay a opens, under Blocks
^← ^→	move the selected table column — the strip above a table selects one
D or x	remove the line
y	duplicate the line
^Z	undo
^⇧Z or ^Y	redo

A new line inherits the type and dialect of the one it follows, so writing a list or a code block is o, type, Enter, type, Enter.

A table row is one line and its cells are the |-separated parts of it, so Tab while editing walks the caret along the row a cell at a time. Past the last cell it commits the row and opens the next one with the caret in its first cell — the same writing loop, sideways. ⇧Tab walks back, and on the first cell there is nowhere to go. o on a table row opens a row as wide as the run it is in, so the pipes are typed for you.

A table run in the write pane carries a strip above it, one entry per column, each its number and that column's heading cell — so the columns are something to look at rather than pipes to count. Clicking an entry selects that column; clicking a cell puts the cursor on that row and opens it with the caret already in that cell. The strip is drawn for the run the cursor is in and for no other, and the selection lives as long as the strip does: leave the run and nothing is selected. It is write-pane chrome — the read pane and the exported markdown know nothing about it.

A selected column reveals four controls in the strip — + × ‹ ›, which are add, remove, move left and move right. Each one is col add|del|left|right with the selected column's number, so a click and the command run the same operation, refuse for the same reasons in the same words, and count as one undo step. ^← and ^→ are ‹ and › on the keyboard, and with no column selected they do nothing. After an operation the strip is redrawn from the run as it now is and the selection follows the column it was on: add puts an empty column in front of it, left and right carry it along, and del leaves nothing to point at, so nothing is selected.

Styles

One key each. Applies to the line under the cursor.

key	type
1 2 3	H1 · H2 · H3
p	paragraph
l	list item
q	quote
n	note
t	table row
c	code
s	CLI
u	output
r	rule
f	figure / image
m	meta
Tab / ⇧Tab	cycle the dialect of a code or CLI line — or, on a theme: or palette: meta line, its value
:lang <name>	pick a dialect by name, which is faster past the first few

Blocks

key	does
z	fold / unfold this block's output section
C	copy this code, CLI or output block to the clipboard
a	the links in this line — or an image's file and caption
^K (while editing)	a link at the caret, or over what is selected

a opens the overlay on whatever the cursor is on. On a line that carries links it shows them to pick between — one link opens straight for editing, and none opens an empty form, so writing the first link in a line is also one key. On an image line the two fields are src and caption instead. A line that carries no inline markup at all — code, CLI, output, rule, meta — says so and is left alone.

^K is the same overlay reached from inside the box, and it puts the link where the writer is rather than at the end. Text selected in the box arrives as the wording and the committed link replaces exactly that span; with nothing selected the form opens empty and the link lands at the caret. Either way the caret is left after the link, so typing carries on. a on a line that is not open for editing appends, as it always has — there is no caret there to speak of.

Clearing the href unlinks, leaving the wording as writing; clearing the wording is refused, because [](…) is not a link. An href the published page would refuse is marked in the overlay with what will happen to it, by the same allowlist the page uses — but it does not stop you committing it.

Document and session

key	does
Open .md or drop a .md	open an existing document for editing
New .md or N	start a new document, keeping the category
Clear	empty this document, keeping its name — ^Z brings it back
^V (no line open)	markdown from the clipboard, added below the cursor as typed lines
R	name the file — or click the name in the tab bar
Export .md or E	export — shows the markdown and the path it belongs at, copy or download it
^B then 1 / 2 / 3 / 4	write pane / read pane / split screen / raw
e / v / b / w	the same, without the prefix
B	swap the two panes — editor left or editor right
+ -	content bigger / smaller, in both panes
0	content back to 100%
T	palette, light ⇄ dark
the Theme menu	the Theme the editor is drawn in
:	command line
?	the keys and every command, in the editor

^V with no line open reads the clipboard's text the way Open .md reads a file, and adds it rather than replacing: every line it describes lands below the cursor with its type — a ## a heading, a fence a code block of its dialect — and the cursor ends on the last of them. Frontmatter merges by key: a title: the document already has takes the pasted value where it stands, and a key it lacks is added after its last meta line. The status line says how many lines were added and how many meta lines set, and one ^Z takes all of it back. :paste and the legend's paste read the clipboard through the browser's Clipboard API instead, for a screen with no keyboard; where the browser refuses that — from a page it does not trust, or when permission is withheld — they say so and point at ^V, which needs no permission. Only the clipboard's plain text is read, never its HTML.

A paste into a line that is open for editing is not markdown: it is text, and each further line of it becomes a line of the same type. A shell script pasted into a code line stays a code block, # comment and all.

The four buttons in the topbar are the whole of what the editor does to a document as a whole. There is no save button, and no fifth thing hiding anywhere: the editor has nowhere to save to, and Export .md — which is E — is how a file leaves it.

Undo and redo

^Z takes back anything that changed the document — a word typed, a line removed, a run reordered, a file opened, a paste, Clear, New .md. ^⇧Z (or ^Y) puts it back. The buttons in the topbar do the same and grey out when there is nothing left to take back.

One thing the writer did is one undo. Opening a line with o and typing into it is one step, not two. Two things are not steps at all: moving the cursor, and folding or unfolding an output section. Both are looking rather than editing, neither reaches the file, and there is no point in undoing your way back through a walk down the document.

Undo is in the browser tab and nowhere else. Reloading the page loses it, along with the document; the editor keeps nothing between visits.

Naming the file

The tab bar shows one thing: the name the file will have. It is the part you can click and type into, or set with R or :name. Whatever you type is turned into a slug with .md on the end, because that is what the site addresses a document by.

• until you set one, the name follows the title — type a title and the file is named after it. Setting a name, or opening a file, stops that: the name you chose stays until you clear it with :name and no argument.
• the directory is not shown, because it is not something you set here: it is whatever the category: meta line says. No category means the document belongs at the top of content/, which is where the home page lives.
• E shows the two together — content/<category>/<name>.md is the path the export overlay offers the file at.

Opening a file takes its name, so E offers it back under the same one. The name is slugged on the way in as well, so a file called My Post.md becomes my-post.md — a document the site could not address by its real name is a document the site cannot serve. A name that was already a slug, which is every file the editor has written, comes back unchanged.

The directory the export overlay shows is the one the document's category: says, not the folder the file was opened from: a page in a browser is not allowed to know that, and the category is what the site routes on anyway.

Split screen

b shows the lines and the rendered page at once, both updating as you type. B swaps the sides, for people who want the preview on the left. On a window narrower than 900px the two panes stack instead of sitting side by side.

The write pane keeps the keyboard in split mode: every editing key does what it does in the write pane alone, and the reader half just follows along.

The reading pane has two faces. read is the page as a reader sees it, and raw is the markdown E would export — the same bytes, live as you type, in monospace. v, ^B 2, :read and the read tab show the one full width; w, ^B 4, :raw and the raw tab the other. Split shows the write pane beside whichever face was shown last, so writing with the markdown beside it is w and then b, and the choice is remembered in the browser like the swap and the size. Raw is read-only — there is one way to edit a document and one undo — and its text can be selected and copied.

The read pane's links are the page's, and a click on one opens it in a new tab: the document is in this tab and nowhere else, so the preview never takes it. A link to a heading scrolls the pane. For the same reason, what is dropped on the page is a .md to open or is refused — a URL let go of over the editor does nothing — except text dropped into a box that is being typed in.

Theme and Palette

The menu in the top bar, after Clear, lists the twelve Themes; the one chosen is what the editor is drawn in, and :theme <name> chooses from the keyboard — alone it says which Theme is on, and a name the editor has not got is refused with the list. T flips the Palette between light and dark, and so do the light/dark button and :palette; :palette light and :palette dark name one. Both are the writer's own, remembered in the browser: a fresh editor opens in Baseline and in the browser's Palette.

A document can pin its own: a theme: meta line naming a Theme the editor has draws the read pane in it, in the Palette the editor is in, so the preview is the page; the chrome and the write pane stay in the writer's Theme. A name the editor has not got pins nothing, and removing the line puts the pane back. Tab on a theme: line steps through the Themes, and on a palette: line between light and dark, so neither has to be spelled. Which Theme and Palette the published page opens in is docs/config.md's.

Content size

+ and - step the document size between 70% and 200%, and 0 puts it back. It applies to both panes and to nothing else — the tab bar, the legend and the status line keep their size, so the chrome does not eat the window as the words grow. The tab bar has A- / A+ buttons that do the same thing.

The published page has the same control, next to the light/dark button, with the same keys. Both are remembered in the browser and never leave it.

Command line

: opens it. Tab completes the word under the cursor — command names first, then the arguments that command takes — Enter runs, Esc cancels. Clicking a completion picks it too.

Everything the editor does to a document or to the screen is here, which is the point: the keys are the fast path and the command line is the complete one. (Only the two things a key is strictly better at are missing — moving the cursor line by line, and opening the edit box.) The editor's own ? overlay prints this table from the same list that runs the commands, so the two cannot drift apart.

The line under the cursor

command	does
set <type> [dialect]	set the type of this line
lang <dialect>	set the dialect — refused on a type that has none
new [type]	insert a line below this one
del	remove this line
dup	duplicate this line
move up|down|top|bottom	move this line within the document
col add|del|left|right [n]	a column of this table — counted from 1, across every row
link	the links in this line — pick one, or write a new one; the same as a
img	an image's file and caption — the same overlay
go <line|top|end>	put the cursor on a line by number
copy	copy this code, CLI or output block to the clipboard

A column is the nth cell of every row in the table run the cursor is in, counted from 1, and it is worked out when you ask rather than stored anywhere. col add with no number puts an empty column on the right; col add 2 puts one before the second. col del 2 takes that one out, and col left 2 · col right 2 swap it with its neighbour. Tab offers the numbers with the heading row's words beside them, which is how you tell which number you want. The strip above the run is the same four operations without the number: select a column there and + × ‹ › are add, del, left and right on it.

Every row of the run is rewritten by one such command, and rows shorter than the widest one are padded with empty cells first — so a ragged table comes out of its first column command square. The run's bounds are where it stops: a second table further down the document is untouched. col del on a table one column wide is refused. One column command is one undo step.

Rows need no commands of their own: a row is a line, so J/K move one, D removes one and y duplicates one, exactly as they do everywhere else.

Output sections

command	does
fold	fold or unfold this block's output — the same as z
foldall	fold every output run in the document
unfoldall	unfold every one of them

The document

command	does
undo · redo	the same as ^Z and ^⇧Z
open	open a markdown file — the same as dropping one on the page
paste	markdown from the clipboard, added below the cursor — the same as ^V
newdoc	start a new document, keeping the category
clear	empty this document, keeping its name
name [file.md]	name the file; no argument goes back to following the title
title <text>	set the title meta line
cat <name>	set the category meta — the directory the file goes in
date <text>	set the date meta line; no argument uses today
meta <key> <value>	set any meta line, adding it if it is missing
export	show the markdown — copy it or download it

The screen

command	does
write · read · raw · split	choose the pane layout — raw is the markdown Export writes, live, and split is write beside read or raw, whichever was shown last
swap	swap the panes, switching to split screen if it is not on
size up|down|reset	content size, the same as + - 0
theme [name]	draw the editor in that Theme; no argument says which it is in
palette [light|dark]	light ⇄ dark, the same as T; with an argument, that one
help	the keys and this table

:w is recognised and says there is nothing to save: the editor has nowhere to save to. E produces the file. The key w is something else — the raw face.