The editor
Editing happens on the internote’s own page rather than a separate screen, in one of two modes over the same document.
#Getting in
Press Edit internote in the sidebar, or right-click anywhere on the page and choose Edit. A floating toolbar appears.
Drag it by anywhere that is not a control. On release it docks to the top or the bottom edge — whichever half you let go in — keeping the horizontal position you dropped it at. So it moves out of the way of what you are reading without ever floating loose in the middle of the page.
#Visual and Source
Two modes over one document. Anything you do in one is reflected in the other, and you can switch as often as you like.
- Visual
- The rendered page, edited directly. Right-click any block to change, duplicate, move or delete it, or to add a scene. Because Visual is the live render, there is no preview pane to keep in sync — what you are editing is what a reader will see.
- Source
- The Chalk itself. This is where you go for anything the visual editor does not expose, and where compile errors are shown with the line that caused them.
Neither is the “real” editor. Visual is faster for arranging and rewriting; Source is faster once you know the language and are making a change in several places.
#Adding things
Add opens the element palette. It is searchable and divided into All, Blocks, Inline and Media, with the blocks and inline elements grouped by category underneath.
The help button beside it opens the Chalk manual alongside your work, so looking up how an element takes its attributes does not cost you your place in the document.
#Saving
There is no save button. The editor saves as you go, and the toolbar reports what state the document is in:
- Draft
- Never published. The working copy is the only copy.
- Auto saving…
- A save is in flight.
- Draft changes
- Published, with edits since that readers cannot see yet.
- Published
- Live, with nothing pending.
- Couldn’t save
- A save failed. Your work is still in the editor — the connection is the problem, not the document.
A lighter line beneath records when the last successful save landed.
#When the Chalk stops compiling
If the document stops compiling, the toolbar reads Error and previewing and publishing pause. Your edits are still saved — this is not a state that loses work.
Switch to Source, where the error is shown against the line that caused it. Both the preview and the Publish button come back once it compiles.
#The rest of the toolbar
- Undo and Redo cover the editing session.
- Publish pushes the current draft out — Publishing covers what that does.
- The overflow menu holds the destructive and structural actions: Discard draft changes, Unpublish, Transfer ownership to site and Delete internote.