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1.16 The Editor

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Frédéric Clavert edited this page Jul 26, 2026 · 5 revisions

The Editor

Rewritten for RC3. ClioDeck's writing surface changed completely: the previous pair of editors (a WYSIWYG one and a "source" one, with a toggle between them) is gone. There is now one editor, built on CodeMirror 6, which renders your text as you write it.

One editor, live rendering

You write markdown; the editor shows it formatted. Headings are large, emphasis is italic, links show their text — but the moment your cursor enters a construct, its markdown reappears so you can edit it. Nothing is hidden from you, and nothing is rewritten behind your back.

Your file is the source of truth. ClioDeck loads a string and saves the same string, changed only by your own edits. Opening a document and saving it without touching it produces a byte-for-byte identical file — line endings, trailing spaces and all. This is enforced by a test corpus, not a promise.

The dialect is Pandoc markdown: footnotes, Pandoc citations, YAML front matter, GFM tables.

Footnotes

  • [^1] renders as a superscript.
  • Hover an note reference to read the note without leaving your line.
  • Cmd/Ctrl+click it to open a small editing popup for the note itself.
  • Click it to jump to the definition; click a definition label to come back to the first reference. If the note has no definition yet, clicking opens the popup so you can write it.
  • Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+F inserts a new footnote (reference plus definition, with the cursor placed in the definition).
  • The Renumber footnotes button renumbers them in reading order. It is a deliberate command, never automatic — ClioDeck does not rewrite your document behind your back. Free-form identifiers ([^danzig]) are left alone, and [^99] inside a code block is not touched.

Citations

  • Type @ to get autocompletion from your Zotero bibliography; pick an entry and the key is inserted.
  • [@lester1932], [@lester1932, p. 12] and clusters [@a; @b] render as discreet pills.
  • Hovering a pill shows the resolved reference (author, year, title).
  • A key that is not in your bibliography is underlined with a wavy line — visible, but never blocking.
  • Check citations lists the missing keys (and, in a book, the chapter each one is in).

Front matter

A YAML front matter block at the top of a file is folded into a single discreet line. Click to unfold and edit it; it never reaches your exported text as a heading.

Formatting shortcuts

Shortcut Action
Cmd/Ctrl+B Bold
Cmd/Ctrl+I Italic
Cmd/Ctrl+L Link
Cmd/Ctrl+' Citation
Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+T Table
Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+F Footnote
Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+Q Blockquote
Cmd/Ctrl+F Search in the current document

In a book project, a separate button searches the whole manuscript — see Books and Chapters.

Saving

Auto-save runs a few seconds after you stop typing. The status bar tells you where you stand: Unsaved changes, or Saved at 14:32.

Switching files (or chapters) saves the outgoing document first, and refuses to open the next one if that save fails — nothing is lost in silence.

⚠️ Real bug, verified against code: that guard exists only for switching within a project (chapter-to-chapter, or a plain document reload) — editorStore.ts's loadFile() explicitly checks isDirty and awaits saveFile() before proceeding. Switching to a different project goes through a completely separate path, projectStore.ts's loadProject(), which has no such check anywhere: it doesn't read isDirty, doesn't call saveFile(), and the main-process project:load handler didn't either, so opening a different project with unsaved changes discarded them silently — the exact class of bug the chapter-switch guard was built to prevent, one level up. Fixed in RC4, which also added the guard that was missing at the other end: quitting the application now flushes the editor before exiting.

Presentations use the same editor

A presentation project opens the same editor, with slide-specific additions: --- separators are drawn as numbered slide boundaries, a slide navigator sits on the left, and a preview follows the slide your cursor is in. See Export Presentations.

When the assistant writes

Anything the AI writes into your document arrives as a proposal, not as text silently inserted: you see the suggestion in place and accept it (Tab), reject it (Esc) or edit it before applying. Every decision is recorded — in your research journal with the full text, and in the AI usage journal as a bare decision without any content.

This is a rule of the architecture, not a feature of one panel: no AI writing path bypasses it.

⚠️ Real bug, verified against code: for the expired decision specifically — the one recorded when switching chapters with a proposal still pending — the chapter path attached to the journal entry can be wrong. recordAdjudication() (proposals-ipc.ts) reads useEditorStore.getState().filePath at the moment it's called; but expiry fires from the CodeMirror view's destroy() teardown (ui.ts/proposalExpiry), which for a chapter switch runs after loadFile() (editorStore.ts) has already written the incoming chapter's path into the store in the same set() call that triggers the view teardown. The expired proposal — which belonged to the chapter you just left — gets journaled under the chapter you just arrived at. accept/reject/modify were unaffected: those fire synchronously while the outgoing chapter is still the current one. Fixed in RC4 — the chapter context is captured when the proposal is created, not when the expiry is journaled.

See also

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