Editing

mido has an editor of its own for fixing a typo or writing a note without leaving the reader. e swaps the rendered page for its Markdown source, at the part you were reading, and Esc swaps back. v opens the source beside a live preview of the page instead. E still opens the file in $VISUAL or $EDITOR for anything bigger.

Opening and leaving

e opens the current file. The source scrolls to where the page was, and the cursor sits on the first line in view. The status bar shows the file name, [+] once there are unsaved changes, and the line and column of the cursor.

Esc goes back to reading, and the page shows what you wrote. With unsaved changes it asks first: s saves and leaves, d throws the changes away and leaves, and Esc keeps editing. Standard input has no file to save to, so it cannot be edited.

Live preview

v in the reader opens the editor with the rendered page beside it, and Ctrl-e in the editor shows or hides the preview. The preview takes the text as you type, once you pause for a moment, and lays it out in the background, so a long document never holds up typing.

The two sides scroll together. Whichever you scrolled last leads: move through the source and the preview follows, scroll the preview and the source follows. They line up by the source line at the top, down to the line inside a long paragraph or a code block. A click in the preview puts the cursor on the line under it.

Esc in the editor moves to the preview, where the reader's keys work: j and k scroll, s turns sync off and on, < and > give the editor less or more room, e or a click goes back to the editor, and v closes the preview. Esc or q in the preview leaves the editor, asking first about unsaved changes. Following a link from the preview to another file waits until the changes are saved.

The preview sits to the right of the editor, or below it with split = "stacked" in the config. split_ratio sets the editor's starting share. On a narrow terminal the files panel steps aside first to make room, and when the two panes still do not fit the editor shows alone.

Keys

The editor works like most editors outside a terminal: what you type goes in, the arrows move, and Shift with a move selects. Dragging with the mouse selects too, and a click places the cursor.

In the editor Ctrl-c copies instead of quitting. Every key with a name in the keys page can be bound again in the [keys] table of the config. Editor keys need a ctrl- or alt- prefix, since a plain letter would type.

Undo steps follow what you did: a run of typing undoes a word at a time, and an assist like continuing a list undoes in one step.

Markdown help

The source is colored with the theme: headings in their level's color with faint # marks, emphasis and code as they look on the page, link targets dimmed, list markers, quote bars, table borders and the front matter. Fenced code is highlighted for its language.

A few keys know Markdown:

• Enter on a list item starts the next one, - for a bullet, the next number for a numbered list, and an empty box for a task. On a quote it starts the next quoted line. Enter on an item or quote line with nothing in it ends the list or quote instead. Inside a code fence and on indented lines it keeps the indent.
• Tab and Shift-Tab on a list item nest it one level deeper or shallower. Elsewhere Tab inserts spaces up to the next multiple of four.
• Ctrl-t checks or unchecks a task. On a list item without a box it adds one, and on a plain line it makes a task item.
• A backtick or an asterisk is typed in pairs with the cursor between them, and typing the closing one steps over it. With a selection, it wraps the selection: select a word and press * to emphasise it. Backspace between an empty pair removes both. An asterisk at the start of a line is left alone, since it is likely a bullet.

Find

Ctrl-f opens a find prompt in the status bar. Matches are highlighted as you type and the first one after the cursor is selected, so typing replaces it. Like search in the reader, lowercase matches either case and any uppercase letter makes it exact. Enter keeps the matches, and Ctrl-n and Ctrl-p step through them. Esc in the prompt puts the cursor back where it was.

Copy and paste

Ctrl-c and Ctrl-x copy to mido's own clipboard and to the system one, through the terminal's OSC 52 support, which also works over SSH and in tmux with set-clipboard on. Ctrl-v pastes what mido copied. To paste from the system clipboard, use the terminal's own paste, Cmd-v or Ctrl-Shift-v. mido reads it as one paste, so a pasted list is not continued line by line.

Saving

Ctrl-s writes to a temporary file beside the original and renames it over the top, so a crash or a full disk never leaves half a file. Saving a file you did not change writes the same bytes back: line endings, a byte order mark and the trailing newline, or its absence, are kept as they were. A file with both kinds of line ending is saved with the more common one, and mido says so when it opens. Saving through a symbolic link writes the file it points to.

If the file changed on disk since you opened it, from another editor or a git checkout, mido does not overwrite it silently. It asks: o overwrites, r reads the file again and drops your changes, Esc cancels. The open buffer is never replaced under you while you edit. A note in the status bar tells you the file changed.

New files

mido new notes.md      # create notes.md on first save and open it in the editor
mido ideas.md          # the same for a Markdown path that does not exist yet

The file and any missing folders are created on the first Ctrl-s. Until then nothing is written. A path without a Markdown extension that does not exist is an error, unless it comes after new.

If mido crashes

If mido panics while you have unsaved changes, it restores the terminal, writes what you had to a hidden file beside the original, such as .notes.md.mido-recover, and prints its path. The next time you edit that file mido points it out. Saving removes it.