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Zensical Studio works inside modern IDEs and code editors such as Visual Studio Code (support for other editors will be added soon). This page provides an overview of the authoring support that Zensical Studio provides and introduces some key concepts.

Zensical currently supports Python Markdown with its Markdown extensions. The extensions contribute to a rich authoring experience that surpasses other Markdown dialects and even extensions such as GitHub-flavored Markdown.

CommonMark and components

In the medium-term, we are going to introduce support for CommonMark, with a component model that replaces the need for Markdown extensions. See our roadmap for more information.

Syntax highlighting

The first thing you will notice is that Zensical Studio highlights the Markdown text to show syntactic elements such as lists, admonitions, or links. The highlighting gives you confidence that your Markdown has the correct structure and when it does not then it makes mistakes easy to spot.

Syntax highlighting in Zensical Studio.

DiagnosticDiagnosticDiagnosticInspections

A diagnosticA diagnosticA diagnosticAn inspection is an inline message about something that needs attention. It usually appears as an underline in the Markdown source and as an item in the Problems panelProblems panelDiagnostics panelProblems tool window. Seeing a diagnostica diagnostica diagnostican inspections right where you edit your content helps fix problems immediately, instead of waiting for a QA process to flag them up.

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Zensical Studio diagnostics can flag:

  • Broken internal links and missing anchors
  • Missing or duplicate link definitions
  • Broken footnote definitions
  • Missing images

As Zensical Studio evolves, we will add more diagnostics.

Completion

Your editor can suggest what you can insert next using IntelliSenseCompletionCompletionCode completion. In many instances, completions will appear automatically but if not then you can use Ctrl+Space.

find link targets with completions

Suggestions can include:

  • Page links and heading anchors
  • Link definition labels
  • Image paths and other assets

Refactoring

Refactoring means changing structure safely across the workspaceworkspaceprojectproject. In code, that often means renaming a function. In documentation, it can mean renaming a page, heading, slug, glossary term, reusable topic, or asset while updating references that point to it.

A refactoring is different from editing text by hand because the Zensical Studio can update links, navigation, incoming references, and related metadata together.

move a file and links will be updated

Zensical Studio offers the following refactorings:

  • Renaming a file changes links to it
  • Moving a file changes links to it
  • Renaming a header automatically updates links.
  • Renaming a footnote label changes both footnote and reference
  • Renaming abbreviations changes all occurrences.

Workspace navigation

Workspace navigation helps you move through the documentation set without manually searching folders. The ExplorerExplorerProject panelProject tool window shows files, but Zensical Studio also helps you answer documentation-specific questions:

  • What links to this page?
  • Which headings can I link to?
  • Where is this link target used?
  • Which pages mention this glossary term?

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