Arbital Markdown

The Arbital editor uses Markdown syntax for editing the pages. If you’ve used Reddit or any of the StackOverflow, it’s the same syntax. Here is a helpful intro to Markdown syntax.

Arbital Markdown syntax

Arbital adds a few extra features to Markdown syntax.

Table of contents

`` creates a table of contents, like the one above.

Greenlinks

Add note about the Intrasite Link button on the toolbar.

You can quickly link to a page by using id or, even better, alias syntax. For example:
Arbital Markdown ⇒ Arbital Markdown
Arbital markdown ⇒ Arbital Markdown

If you want to specify what text shows up as the link, use text. For example:
Custom link ⇒ Custom link

If you link to a page that doesn’t exist, the link will show up red:
Doesn’t exist ⇒ Doesn’t exist

If you want to just create a red link with some text:
create a page for this concept later ⇒ create a page for this concept later

If you want to mention someone use @userId or @userAlias:
@1 ⇒ @1
@AlexeiAndreev ⇒ @1
NOTE: the user will get an update if the mention is in a comment. <div><div>

Summaries

You can set the page’s summary, which shows up in greenlink popovers and other places. For example:
Summary of the page goes here. *Markdown* is okay!
Or to set a specific summary:
Very technical summary. *Markdown* is okay!
Make sure that the entire summary block is in a paragraph of its own.

Hidden text

You can create hidden text:

Button text

Hidden text goes here.

You can use this for hiding problem answers and asking the user to solve the problem themselves before clicking the button to see the correct answer. Button text is required.

Notes

You can create notes, which are snippets of text hidden behind a question mark. You can put footnotes or other text that might be interesting to some users, but not to everyone. For example:
noteFun note text! will show up as: noteFun note text!

Todos, comments, and fixmes

You can leave todo markers for yourself or other authors. For example:
finish this section finish this section

This will only appear in the top quality bar when expanded, not the page text. Red links and “todo” markers count towards the todo score, which you will see next to the pages on the Explore and your Profile pages.

Similarly, you can leave comments or fixmes for other authors, but without increasing the todo count. For example:
there has got to be a better metaphor for this this needs to be fixed, but I've got it there has got to be a better metaphor for this this needs to be fixed, but I’ve got it

Again, this doesn’t show up for the reader in any way.

questions and path generation

conditional text

LaTeX

If you’re new to LaTeX you may want to read the Wikibooks guide

You can use $ to create inline mathematical expressions, e.g.$ax^2 + bx + c = 0$ will be displayed as: \(ax^2 + bx + c = 0\)
And $$ to create centered math expressions, e.g.$$\lim_{N \to \infty} \sum_{k=1}^N f(t_k) \Delta t$$ will be displayed as: \($\lim_{N \to \infty} \sum_{k=1}^N f(t_k) \Delta t\)$

The editor can get a little slow if you are editing very LaTeX-heavy pages. If this is an issue for you, let us know, and in the meantime you can disable MathJax on the settings page.