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The file is plain Markdown. The editor shows it styled — headings larger, emphasis in weight, code in a box — but leaves every mark in place, dimmed to the theme’s syntax colour, so what you see is what is in the file. There is no rendered mode to fall out of and no hidden formatting; Review, when you want the finished page, is one key away. If you would rather not see the marks at all, hide them: the file stays the same and the sentence you are writing still shows its syntax.

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Pasting from elsewhere

⌘V reads the rich flavour of the clipboard — what a browser, Word, Pages, Notes or Google Docs actually put there — and writes it as the Markdown the editor would have written: - and 1. for the lists, nested by their depth and numbered from one; # for a heading that was one; **, *, ~~ and ` for the weights; [text](url) for a link; a pipe table for a table; a fence round a block of code. The plain flavour, which most apps strip of its bullets and numbers, is used only when there is nothing richer, and even then • becomes -, 1) becomes 1., cells separated by tabs become a table, and a table separator that someone’s smart dashes turned into | — | — | gets its hyphens back. Text copied out of Glassine itself is Markdown already and goes in untouched. Text dropped onto the page from another app is read the same way as a paste. If a paste is not what you wanted, ⌥⇧⌘V (Edit → Paste as Plain Text) pastes the plain string exactly as it is. More than one line is a block — paragraphs, a list, a table — and a block lands on lines of its own: pasted into the middle of a sentence, it starts on the line below and the rest of the sentence follows it, rather than its first row being welded onto the words before the caret and its last onto the words after.

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What gets styled

Emphasis follows the usual rules: the marks have to hug the text (**bold**, not ** bold **) and underscores inside words are left alone.

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Keys that write the syntax

Each of these wraps the selection in the right marks, or inserts a placeholder to type over when nothing is selected. They turn the mark off the way a rich-text key does: press ⌘I at the end of an italic run and the caret steps out past the closing mark, so what you type next is plain; in the middle of a run the run splits around the caret; with the marked words selected, marks included or not, the marks come off. Between two marks with nothing inside, the key removes them. They are all in the Format menu as well, and on the bar that appears over a selection; the slash menu writes the block-level ones — headings, lists, quotes, code blocks, dividers — from the keyboard without leaving the line.

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Lists

Return inside a list continues it: a new bullet, the next number, an empty task box. Return on an empty item ends the list. Settings → Typing → Continue lists on Return turns this off. Tab nests the item under the one above it — bullets, numbers and tasks alike — and Shift-Tab un-nests it. Numbered lists renumber themselves to fit, and Return on an empty nested item steps back out one level rather than ending the list. You can also drag a bullet, a number or a task box up or down to reorder the list; nested items travel with their parent.

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Headings

Headings are drawn larger and centered by default, in the editor and in Review alike. Settings → Type has one switch for each: Larger headings and Center headings.

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Smart typing

Settings → Typing controls the Mac’s own text services: smart quotes and smart dashes (both on by default), spell checking, automatic correction and inline predictions (all off by default). They apply only to what you type; the file is never rewritten behind you.

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The placeholder

An empty document shows Start writing at the caret, in the syntax colour. It disappears at the first character.

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Where the caret opens

A document opens with the caret after its last character, where writing usually continues. The window itself reopens at the size and position you left it.

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Text size

⌘+ and ⌘− change the type size a point at a time (it is the same Size as in Settings → Type); ⌘0 returns it to the default, 16 pt. In Review the same keys scale the rendered page independently, and ⌘0 puts that back to 100%.