Document editor

ThinkForge opens each editable file in the editor suited to its format. Documents and Markdown use the document editor; source code, configuration, and plain-text files use the code editor.

Choosing an editor

  • Document editor — .md, .html, .rtf
  • Code editor — .cs, .js, .py, .json, .txt, and 30+ other programming, markup, configuration, and script formats
  • Media viewer — images and PDFs
  • Table view — .csv and .tsv
  • Video window — supported video formats

Unknown extensions fall back to the code editor in plain-text mode when opened directly.

RTF files are converted to HTML when loaded. Saving an RTF file writes HTML — ThinkForge does not write RTF back out.

Document editor

The document editor provides a what-you-see-is-what-you-get experience with a ribbon-style toolbar.

Ribbon tabs — Home, Insert, and Format.

Text formatting — Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, and inline code.

Block elements — Headings 1 through 4, bullet lists, numbered lists, blockquotes, code blocks, horizontal rules, and tables.

Insert operations — Project-document links, web and file links, a linked contents block, and images by URL, clipboard paste, or drag-and-drop.

Document navigation — Heading links in the same document scroll locally. Other links are resolved by ThinkForge.

Document metadata — An editable document name field and a tag editor with add and remove.

Content detection — Automatically detects whether loaded content is Markdown or HTML.

Frontmatter preservation — YAML frontmatter is stripped before rendering and re-added on save.

Word and character count — Shown live in the status bar.

Tables and line breaks

Markdown pipe tables open as editable tables and save back to Markdown. Columns share the available width and wrap long text. The ribbon does not yet create tables or add rows or columns, so a table must already exist in the document's Markdown. Complex tables may be preserved as HTML.

Single newlines inside a paragraph remain line breaks when the document is reopened and saved. Tab characters are still collapsed to spaces and are not converted into table columns.

Typing [[ opens an autocomplete at the caret over project documents and inserts a stable ID-backed Markdown link. The Document Link insert command types [[ for you rather than opening a separate window. Contents inserts ordinary linked Markdown derived from the current headings.

See Document Linking for the full workflow and supported target formats.

Code editor

The code editor provides the features expected from a modern code editor:

  • Syntax highlighting for 40+ languages, auto-detected from the file extension
  • Autocomplete with quick suggestions
  • Bracket pair colorization and folding
  • Minimap navigation
  • Format on paste and type
  • Line and column position in the status bar
  • Theme support, defaulting to a dark theme
  • Read-only mode toggle
  • Go-to-line navigation

Offline behavior

The document editor works entirely offline. The code editor currently loads part of its engine from the internet on first use.

Editor keyboard shortcuts are listed in Keyboard Shortcuts. Application-wide shortcuts can be changed under Settings → Hotkeys; see Settings and Preferences.