Writing a devlog

Devlogs are written in Markdown, the plain-text formatting most forums and chat apps use: **bold**, *italic*, # A heading. Every button on the toolbar writes Markdown for you, so it’s never necessary to remember the marks, but they’re all listed here, along with a few additions for things itch can do that Markdown can’t.

The toolbar

From left to right: the line’s level (a paragraph, or a heading from 1 to 6), bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, spoiler, colours, link, bulleted list, numbered list, quote, centre, right, code, collapsible section, table, image, YouTube video, and find. Hovering over a button shows what it does and its keyboard shortcut.

Buttons act on the selection. With nothing selected, they insert a placeholder to type over.

What the editor understands

Spoilers are written as Discord writes them. Inside a table, their bars need a backslash each, \|\|like this\|\|, because a table already uses | between its columns.

Lists

The list buttons work on every line the selection touches. Pressing the numbered-list button on a bulleted list turns it into a numbered one (and the other way round), renumbering it and keeping nested items in their place. Pressing a list’s own button again turns it back into plain lines. With the cursor in a list and nothing selected, the whole list changes.

Code blocks

The code button wraps a word in backticks. With several lines selected, it makes a block instead:

```
let speed = 12
```

Collapsible sections

Itch can fold a section away behind a title, which suits long changelogs. Here that’s a block that starts with :::collapse and its title, and ends with ::::

:::collapse Full changelog
- Drifting, with sparks
- A new canyon level
:::

The preview opens them so you can see what’s inside, on itch they start closed.

Centred and right-aligned text

The same kind of block, named center or right, aligns everything in it, images included:

:::center
![The canyon at dusk](media/canyon.png)

*The new canyon level*
:::

The centre and right buttons put the selected lines in such a block. Pressing the other one switches the side, pressing the same one again takes the alignment off.

Blocks can go inside each other, a centred line inside a collapsible section for example. A ::: on its own always closes the block opened most recently.

Colours, boxes and frames

Itch’s own editor has no colours, but a post can still have them. The palette button opens a small menu: a colour for the selected words, their size, or a box or a frame around the selected lines.

Coloured words are the words in square brackets, with the colour in braces right after:

The boss now has [three phases]{red}, and [one is secret]{green 150%}.

The colours are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple and grey, picked to read on dark itch pages and light ones alike. Any colour of your own works too, as its code, {#8fd14f}. The size is a percentage of the text around it, from 50% to 400%: the menu’s Size list offers the usual steps, and you can type any other, {140%}. A colour and a size go together, {red 150%}, and {big} and {small} still work, as 135% and 85%. Inside the brackets, everything else still works: bold, links, spoilers.

A box is a block like the collapsible ones, with its colour after its name:

:::box yellow
**Known issue:** saving on Windows 7 is slow.
:::

It comes out pale, with dark words of its own, so it reads the same whatever your page’s colours are. :::frame red draws a coloured border instead. Anything goes inside either: lists, images and other blocks. Their corners are square, because itch doesn’t keep rounded ones.

Each row of the menu starts with a struck-out A, which takes that one thing away: the colour of the words the cursor is in (their size stays), or the box or frame around it (what’s inside stays). Setting Size back to Normal takes the size away the same way, and the list always shows the size of the words the cursor is in. Picking a colour for words that already have one changes it, and so does picking a box or frame colour while inside one, rather than adding another around it.

Tables

| Rover | Top speed | Drifts |
| --- | :---: | ---: |
| Scout | 80 | yes |

The colons in the second line align a column: :---: centres it, ---: puts it on the right. itch shows the alignment as you’d expect.

YouTube videos

A video goes on a line of its own, with any YouTube link, or just the video’s id:

@[youtube](https://youtu.be/1ThgYIYSe6k)

On itch it becomes the usual embedded player. The preview shows a link to the video instead of loading YouTube.

Spelling

Spelling is checked as you type, in US English, and only in the prose: addresses, image paths and code are left alone. Right-click an underlined word for suggestions.

Finding things

Ctrl+F, or the magnifier at the end of the toolbar, opens find and replace, with options for matching case, whole words and regular expressions. The footer counts the words of the devlog as readers will see them, without image paths, link addresses or Markdown’s marks.

The preview

The preview shows a dark page, or itch’s own light one; the sun or moon at its top right switches between them. The arrows next to it swap the preview and the editor from side to side.

The editor and the preview scroll together: scroll either one and the other follows to the same place, tall images and long paragraphs included, and while you type the preview keeps up with you. The button with two arrows, at the left of the preview’s bar, lets each one scroll on its own instead; it remembers your choice.