The post editor

The editor is what you’d expect: a page where you write your post. It uses normal keyboard shortcuts — ⌘B for bold, ⌘I for italic, and so on. You can also paste rich text from elsewhere and it’ll keep most of the formatting.

To the left of each paragraph is a small drag handle. Grab it to move blocks around — useful for reordering sections without cutting and pasting.

Whenever you select some text — by dragging across it or with a keyboard selection — a small floating bar appears just above the selection. This is the bubble menu, and it’s the fastest way to format what’s under your cursor. The buttons it offers:

• Bold
• Italic
• Strikethrough
• Inline code
• Add or edit a link
• Clear formatting (strips every mark from the selection)

Each button highlights when that style is already active on your selection, so it doubles as a status indicator. Hovering a button shows its keyboard shortcut.

The bubble menu hides itself in places where it doesn’t help — inside code blocks and inside existing links, both of which have their own menus.

The toolbar across the top of the editor covers:

• Undo and redo.
• Paragraph styles — heading 2, heading 3, heading 4.
• Inline marks — bold, italic, strikethrough, inline code.
• Lists — bullets, numbered, and task lists with checkboxes.
• Links, horizontal rules, and tables.

Use heading 2 for the main sections of your post. Heading 3 and 4 are for sub-sections. The table of contents on the published post is built from your heading 2s.

Type /on a new line to open the slash menu. It’s the fastest way to insert things:

• /image — insert an image from your media library or upload a new one.
• /file — attach a file your readers can download.
• /table — create a table.
• /link — open the link dialog.
• /post — link to another Valeon post. See Cross-post references.
• /mathInline — insert an inline math expression.
• /math — insert a block math expression. See Math and LaTeX.

The editor supports LaTeX for mathematical notation. You can write inline math that flows with the surrounding sentence, or block math that sits on its own line, centred and larger.

Inserting math

• Use the slash menu: /mathInline for inline, /math for a block.
• Or click the Sigma (Σ) button on the toolbar.
• Or just type: $expression$ on a line auto-converts to inline math. $$ on its own line creates an empty block ready for editing.

The symbol catalog

The Sigma button on the toolbar opens a searchable catalog of common LaTeX symbols and templates — over 100 entries across six categories:

• Greek — α, β, γ, Γ, Δ, etc.
• Operators — sum, product, integral, ±, ×, ÷, etc.
• Relations — ≠, ≤, ≥, ≈, ⊂, →, etc.
• Logic — ∀, ∃, ¬, ∧, ∨, ⇒, etc.
• Structures — fractions, square roots, sums and integrals with bounds, matrices, cases.
• Functions — sin, cos, log, lim, hat, bar, vec, etc.

Search by name (“alpha”), by category (“greek”), or by LaTeX command (“\alpha”). Click a template like a fraction or matrix and the cursor lands in the first slot, ready for you to fill in.

Editing existing math

Click any math expression to edit it. The rendered version swaps to the raw LaTeX source with $ or $$ delimiters around it so you know where it starts and ends. Press Escape, Enter, or an arrow key to leave editing and see the rendered output again.

The editor has its own table of contents — a small panel that floats in the top-right corner once you turn it on. It updates live as you write: any heading 2, heading 3, or heading 4 you add appears in the panel, indented by depth. Click any entry to jump the cursor to that heading.

Toggle the panel with the Show / Hide table of contents button on the far right of the toolbar (the icon looks like a small nested list). Dismiss it by clicking the X in the panel itself. The panel is intentionally separate from the table of contents that appears alongside the published post — this one is just for finding your place while editing.

The editor stores your post as markdown. If you prefer to work with raw markdown directly, toggle source modefrom the editor menu. Most people don’t need to, but it’s there if you do.

To the right of the editor is the metadata panel — the part of a post that isn’t the body. It includes:

• URL — the slug is derived from your title automatically. You can edit it while the post is a draft. Once published, the slug is permanent.
• Cover image — required before publishing. Pick from the media library or upload a new image.
• Excerpt — a short summary used in previews. Up to 500 characters.
• Canonical URL— if you’re also publishing this on another site, point to that version so search engines treat it as the original.
• Categories and tags — pick categories from the existing list. Tags can be created on the fly by typing a new name.
• Series (for editors) — assign the post to a series and set its order in the sequence.
• Audio — toggle to request a text-to-speech version. See Audio synthesis.
• Featured and podcast feed — editors can mark posts as featured and decide whether the audio goes out in the podcast feed.

The editor saves on its own as you type — there’s no Save button. A small indicator near the title shows when changes are being saved and when they’re safely stored. If you close the tab mid-sentence, the next time you open the post your draft will be there.

The editor has its own help reference built in — a dialog with every keyboard shortcut and every slash command listed in one place, with a search box across the top so you can filter to what you need.

Open it in one of two ways:

• Press ⌘/ (macOS) or Ctrl+/ (Windows or Linux) anywhere in the editor.
• Click the question-mark icon in the editor toolbar.

The dialog has two tabs: Shortcuts (grouped by category — inline formatting, blocks, lists, math and tables) and Slash commands (the full list of /-triggered inserts). The filter box at the top narrows both lists at once. If you ever forget a shortcut, this is the place to look.