The page

This page covers how your text is drawn: which markup the file is in, how much of that markup you see, where lines break, how paragraphs open, and the extras you can turn on while you write. None of it changes the file. Every setting here is a way of looking at the text.

Most of these are :view-* commands. Most of them, typed alone, tell you their current state, and on, off or a value changes it. To keep a setting, put it in your config (see Configuration) or save it from the settings panel, :settings.

Source, colour, or WYSIWYG: :render

:render has three levels:

Under basic, the word in **bold** is drawn bold and the two ** stay on the page, dimmed. You always see what is really in the file.

Under full, the inline marks leave the page: **, backticks, the brackets and target of [text](target), [[ ]], and %%. Only the text they surround stays. A footnote mark [^1] is drawn as a superscript ⁽¹⁾, and so is the [^1]: that starts the note. Only all-digit footnote names are drawn this way; [^note] stays as written.

Block structure is never hidden. A heading keeps its #, a list keeps its marker, a quote keeps its >. A terminal cannot make a heading bigger, so the # is the only thing that shows its level. Typst code such as #import "ch1.typ" is never hidden either, only dimmed.

Wherever the cursor or the selection touches a construct, that construct opens and shows its source. So the cursor is never inside text you cannot see, and w, x and d work on the characters in front of you. Move away and it closes again.

:render alone tells you the level of the markup, tables and ruby. Tables have their own levels (see Tables), and so does ruby (see Ruby and annotations).

Markdown, Typst or plain text: :syntax

A .md file is Markdown and a .typ file is Typst. A file whose name does not say, usually a .txt, is read when it opens and guessed. A Typst keyword such as #let or #import, or a heading in either syntax, settles it. Without enough evidence the file is plain text, so the * and # in a novel are not mistaken for markup.

You can always say it yourself:

:syntax              which syntax this file is read as
:syntax typst        read it as Typst
:syntax markdown     read it as Markdown
:syntax text         no markup at all: every character is only itself

From the shell, ye --syntax typst draft.txt does the same, and it beats both the extension and the config.

For a whole project, write it into the project's .yumete/config.toml. An exact file name beats an extension:

[syntax]
txt = "typst"              # every .txt here is Typst
"notes.txt" = "markdown"   # except this one

[editor] syntax = "typst" says the same for every file whose name does not say, without listing extensions.

A chapter you open with gf from a Typst #include line is read as Typst whatever it is called.

Markdown colouring

Headings, **bold**, *italic*, ~~struck~~, ==highlight==, `code`, links, [[wiki links]], footnotes, quotes, lists, tasks, rules, tables, front matter and ::: tip boxes are all coloured. The marks themselves are dimmed, and the text they fence stands forward. Annotations to yourself, written %%like this%% or <!-- like this -->, are set back in a faint colour. Their words are never hidden, and export leaves them out.

A fenced code block is coloured by the grammar its fence names (```rust, ```python), with the theme's code colours. :view-code off turns this off; :view-code alone tells you whether it is on and why a block is not coloured. The list of languages is on the Language servers page.

A line longer than 50,000 characters is left plain, so a one-line data file does not slow the editor down. :view-long-line sets the limit, and :view-long-line off removes it.

Following a link

Put the cursor anywhere on a link and press gL, or hold Ctrl and click it.

A relative path is read from the folder of the file the link is in. [[Chapter 3]] names a title, not a file: yumete tries the current file's extension first, then .md. In [[Chapter 3|that night]] the part after | is only what the link shows.

Only http and https links are handed to the system. Any other scheme, such as mailto:, is shown on the status line and not run, and an absolute path is not followed.

On a footnote mark, gd goes to the note, and gd in the note brings you back to the character you left. See Checks and counts for the note that floats beside the sentence.

Soft wrap: :view-wrap

A paragraph too wide for the window wraps onto the next row. This is on by default, because a Chinese paragraph is often one line of several hundred characters.

:view-wrap off       one line per paragraph; the page scrolls sideways
:view-wrap on        wrap at the window's edge (also :view-wrap alone)
:view-wrap 50        wrap at column 50: a measure (below)
:view-wrap 0         drop the measure and wrap at the window again

A Latin word is never cut in half. A row never starts with closing punctuation such as 。 、 」 ）, and never ends with an opener such as 「 （.

Under the helix keymap, j and k move by rows on screen and gj gk by lines in the file. Under the vim keymap it is the other way round, as in vim. The line number is printed only on the first row of a paragraph.

Wrap is for horizontal layout. A vertical column has its own length, set with :view-wrap-vertical; see Vertical layout.

Hard wrap: :hard-wrap

Soft wrap folds long lines on screen and leaves the file alone. :hard-wrap rewrites the file's own line breaks, like vim's gq, but it reads the text first and never changes what it means:

:hard-wrap 50     the selected lines, or the paragraph under the cursor,
                  re-filled to fifty cells
:hard-wrap 0      each paragraph joined into one line
:hard-wrap        the width from [editor] hard_wrap; unset, it says so

With nothing selected it takes the unit the cursor is in — a paragraph, a list item, a block of comments — and nothing else; % first takes the whole file. One u takes it back.

What it respects, by syntax:

• Markdown: a line ending in two spaces or a \ is a hard break and stays exactly as written; code fences and what is in them, indented code, tables, headings, a setext underline and the line above it, rules, HTML blocks, front matter and reference definitions are not touched; quotes keep their >, list items and footnotes hang under their marker. A continuation line never begins with something that would open a block there, such as - or 1.; code spans, [[links]] and [text](url) are never broken inside.
• Typst: headings, # code lines, raw blocks, display maths and block comments are left alone; \ at the end of a line is a hard break; items hang; // comments re-fill behind their marker.
• Code: only comments. A run of lines with the same indent and marker is one unit and the marker is written again on every line; ///, //! and // are never merged into one another. A block comment's * rail is kept, its opening and closing lines are left alone. Every line of code, and a comment that follows code on the same line, is left as it is. A Python or Mojo docstring, the """ right after a def or class or at the top of the file, is documentation and re-fills; every other string is never touched. A comment's body is read as Markdown in turn, so a fenced example inside a /// is skipped.
• Chinese: width is counted in cells, so fifty is twenty-five characters. A line breaks between any two characters, but never starts with 。，、」） and never ends with 「（; a word or a number is never split. Two lines joined across Chinese take no space between them, and a space where a letter is on either side, as J joins them.

gq and :reflow stay what vim's and helix's are: plain fillers that know nothing of the text, for when that is what you want.

The measure

A measure writes the page narrow. :view-wrap 50 wraps every line at column 50 and tints everything to the right of it. On a wide monitor this keeps lines at a length the eye can follow. If the window is narrower than the measure, the window wins.

To keep it, set measure in the config:

[editor]
measure = 50   # wrap here; 0 is the window's width
ruler = 80     # only a cue: tint whatever runs past column 80

ruler does not wrap anything. It tints what runs past the column, which helps if you break long sentences by hand. With wrap off it also draws a vertical line there.

First-line indent: :indent

A Chinese paragraph opens with a two-square indent, not a blank line. :indent draws that indent without changing the file.

:indent full     indent every paragraph and fold away the blank line between them
:indent basic    indent, and keep the blank lines
:indent off      no indent (default)
:indent 2        the width in squares, up to 8; turns the indent on if it was off
:indent          tell me the current level and width

[editor]
indent = 2       # a width here turns the indent on, at the full level

Under full, the blank line between two paragraphs stays in the file but leaves the screen, and the line numbers skip (1, 3, 5) to show that it is there. The paragraph the cursor is in is drawn as the file has it, with no indent and its blank line back above it. Two or more blank lines in a row stay on the page, as do blank lines inside a code fence or front matter. The cursor never stops inside an indent or on a folded line.

Headings, lists, quotes, tables, code fences and footnote bodies are not indented, and a line already indented gets nothing added.

The indent squares are blank by default. To see them:

:indent-hint color     a faint tint
:indent-hint symbol    a mark in the first square (↵, or [editor] indent_symbol)
:indent-hint none      blank (default)

Pages side by side: :view-pages-*

On a wide window you can cut the page into columns that run on from one to the next, like a newspaper. The text flows from the left page into the right one.

:view-pages-horizontal 2    two pages side by side
:view-pages-horizontal 1    one page, the whole window
:view-pages-vertical 2      in vertical layout, two pages one above the other
:view-pages-horizontal      how many there are now

The number is 1 to 4, and each layout keeps its own. Each horizontal page has its own line numbers and wraps at its own width, even with wrap off. Moving, scrolling, paging, zt zz zb and mouse clicks work across all the pages as if they were one. When the window is too narrow, you get fewer pages: each page needs at least 30 cells of text.

[editor]
pages_horizontal = 2
pages_vertical = 2

The margin: :view-margin

Ruby readings, hung punctuation, emphasis dots and 平仄 marks are drawn in the margin, a narrow strip beside the text: the row above a line, or the cell to the right of a vertical column. :view-margin decides when the margin is kept.

loose keeps the spacing even through a paragraph; always looks most like squared paper. Under never, ruby tags are still hidden but the readings are not set. The indent is not part of the margin, so never does not turn it off. In config: [editor] margin = "dense".

Preview in a real typesetter: :view-preview

:render full is the most this screen can show. :view-preview hands the file to a real typesetter and shows the result in your browser.

The Typst preview follows your typing without saving: each keystroke is sent to the typesetter, which recompiles only what changed. The first compile of a long book can take a while, and the page stays grey until it finishes. The preview stops when you close that file, when you type :view-preview off, or when you quit. The file must have a name; save a new buffer first.

Focus and typewriter

:view-focus on          the paragraph you are in stays lit; the rest steps back
:view-typewriter on     the row you are writing stays in the middle of the screen

Focus works by paragraph, not by row: a paragraph wrapped over three rows is lit as a whole. Both take on, off and toggle; typed alone, each says whether it is on.

The count as you write

The status line shows how long the file is, after the cursor position, and the outline sidebar (Space s) shows each heading's count. See Checks and counts for how words are counted and where the count is shown.

The page you left

ye -r and :resume bring back how the page looked along with the files. See Files, saving and changes.