How can you immediately start writing in Article Wiki, and why would anyone use a plain-text wiki format for writing long-form articles?

To try writing with the wiki just open the playground¹ on any Article Wiki site.  The following three points will cover most of your writing needs, though there are many more features available.  See the Cheat Sheet (Print Me!) (§6) below for a handy reference.

Firstly, you’ll need to know how to lay out text.  A single control character at the start of a line or a paragraph tells you how that block should be formatted, like how > indicates a quotation in email.

@ A Simple Example

Article Wiki is a wiki designed for humanities writing.

> Article Wiki is a triumph!
= Albert Einstein

Powerful and intuitive, without being awkward or intrusive. Check out the amazing:

* footnotes
* bibliographies

From this we can see that @ is a subheading, > and = are quotes and captions, and * are bullet points.  See Four Kinds of Text Blocks (§4), for a full list of control characters.

Secondly, you’ll want to add a little styling.  This will get you started, but see Inline Markup (§3) for the full tour.

# *Bold*
# /Italic/
# _Underline_
# `Monospace`

Thirdly, you might need to know how to add links and footnotes.  The short answer is that you mark them in the text, then add their content as a subsequent paragraph, anywhere in the same section.  In both cases the magic character is ^.

Here's a ^[link] and a ^[footnote].

Article continues...

^ https://example.org 
^ This is a footnote. 

This keeps your text free of interruptions, while also giving your links and footnotes as much space as they need.  They’ll be formatted in a way that is equally readable online (with links) and in print.  See Links and Footnotes (§5.b) below, and then the subsequent sections on indexes and bibliographies.

If this is already familiar, skip ahead to The Index Page (§2).

The most important feature of Article Wiki is its structure, which is like a directory of files rather than one very long file, or a set of pages bound together into a book.  These are joined and organised by the outline in the index.txt file or index page.

My Article

$ AUTHOR = Author Name
$ EMAIL = email@example.org
$ DATE = 18 September 2017

A short example document.

~ 

- Introduction
- The Main Argument
- - Part One
- - Part Two
- Conclusion

If there is no index page, the document parts will be arranged in alphabetical order by their titles, and there will be no front matter (headings, author, abstract, table of contents).  Typically, an Article Wiki document will have an outline.

Because Article Wiki aims to take a document from brainstorming through writing to publication, the index page of each document offers a nested ‘outline’ list, which is autolinked to new pages in the online editor.  The index page can thus be used as an outliner and brainstormer, in which sections can be easily added, arranged, and deleted.  Each section corresponds to a file name:

Table 1.  Titles and ‘slugs’, the names of document parts.

This multi-file document format has strengths and weaknesses.  Its main disadvantage is that changing your headings means changing your file names.  However, the online editor helps with that, and other benefits follow:

1. It’s easy to rearrange your document by rearranging your outline.
2. In a wiki designed for long arguments, it is a convenience to be working only on one self-contained part of the argument at a time.
3. Your document will be clearly organised when someone later – maybe you – has to maintain it.

You will have seen some lines began with $ in the index page: these are called values or settings.  Some like AUTHOR and DATE are used by the wiki; these are capitalised.  In this document $[DATE] is “26 December 2019”, for example.  You can also make and use your own – see Values and Counters (§5.a) below for a full summary.  Those set in the index page are especially useful because they are shared with all the other sections.

For Creative Commons licenses, the following codes will result in appropriate notices appended to the end of the page.

Wiki markup is of two main kinds, inline and block markup, respectively.  Inline formatting determines how text is laid out within each text block, say, a paragraph, a list item or a table cell.  There are two kinds of inline formatting, general typography and square brackets.  Markup ofny kind can always be prevented with Backslashes and Line Breaks (§3.d).

See Backslashes and Line Breaks (§3.d) for entering plain quotemarks as \' and \".  Unicode characters are always supported.

For common markup, just type naturally:

* 'quote's' "quoting"
* dashes --- dashes -- 1-2

Links will be added:

* http://example.org
* email@example.org

Use round brackets for special characters ...

* ACME(TM), (C)1999, 38(D)C. 
* 2(1/4), (3/4) and (1/2)

... and for horizontal space:

| x(S)x(2S)x(4S)x    | /thin/
| x x                | /normal/
| x(EN)x(2EN)x(4EN)x | /en/
| x(EM)x(2EM)x(4EM)x | /em/

Sentence-ending punctuation (.!?) will always be followed by an extra space for readability.  Like.  This.  It allows for any trailing right-quotes or right-brackets.  You can always escape a punctuation character to prevent the extra spacing; see Backslashes and Line Breaks (§3.d) for more.

* J\. R\. R\. Tolkien. C\. S\. Lewis.
* See Job 11:12, though Heb.\ is unclear.
* ("A!") ('B?') (C.) "D." E.

Backslashing the period characters in initials, acronyms, and common abreviations is a little inconvenient.  There are text processing systems like LaTeX that maintain a list of common abbreviations and format them appropriately, but this is complex and it still requires occassional work-arounds.  Backslashing is a single, simple principle that gives consistent results in all cases.

Most inline markup consists of a single control character in front of a set of square brackets, for example *[bold] for bold text.  In the simplest and most common cases it is easier just to type *bold* and get the same effect, but the square brackets handle complex cases better and can be visually clearer in plain text.

Nesting.  You can’t presently nest brackets or shorthand inside other brackets.  This is on the To Do list, but a low priority.

Table 2.  Information Control Characters

The wiki formatter will preserve any character that is backslashed, rather than allow it to affect the formatting.  That’s how you’ll see the wiki markup in Square Brackets (§3.c) was entered if you view the wiki text.

. \*[Bold Text] vs. *[Bold Text]
. \"quotes\" vs. "quotes"

Note that backslashing doesn’t allow <, > or & characters to be inserted into the wiki’s HTML output, however:

. </br> vs. \</br\> 
. &lt;/br&gt; vs. \&lt;/br\&gt;

In some wiki formatting conventions a backslash at the end of a line indicates a line break.  In Article Wiki, however, we use the control characters for aligning paragraphs.  See Alignment Blocks (§4.b.i) for more.

. Line 1
. Line 2

Use HTML Entities¹ to enter special characters; e.g.  write ‘détente’ as d&eacute;tente.  If frequently relying on these characters, it is best to use a keyboard layout for your computer or device that lets you type them directly.

| α | Γ | á
    | æ | ç | è
    | ï | ñ | ô
| ¢ | £ | €
    | ° | ± | ½
    | ≤ | ≥ | ≠
| © | ® | ™
    | § | ¶ | †
    | « | » | ·

Wiki text is organized in four kind of text blocks.  These are paragraphs, character blocks, function blocks and dividers.  All text blocks are separated from each other by blank lines.  Function blocks, however, may contain blank lines; their start and end points are indicated by three-character delimiters like —:

This is a normal *paragraph*. 

> This is a quotation. It is an
example of a *character
block*, indicated by a control
character at the start of the
first line (in this case, `>`,
an angled right-bracket). 

VERBATIM ---
Here's some 
   verbatim text.
      It's an example
         of a *function block*.
            In this case,
               'VERBATIM' is the
                   function name.
---

* * *

(And that's a *divider*.)

Here's some 
   verbatim text.
      It's an example
         of a *function block*.
            In this case,
               'VERBATIM' is the
                   function name.

These simple arrangements should cover almost all formatting needs, at least when augmented by options and settings, which will be described below.

Paragraphs are just blocks of text separated by blank lines in the source text.

When a paragraph follow another paragraph, it is marked by a first line indent, as illustrated here.  Indenting can also be controlled with Character Blocks (§4.b).

Character Blocks are paragraphs formatted by a single control character at the start of the first line: It must be the first character and it must be followed by a space.

* This is a single line
* This is a single line too. 

Unlike regular paragraphs, aligns and floats have space above and below them.  Repeat the control character to start a new line without spacing.

. Left aligned text
. with no indents
. on following lines.

; Centered text.

, Right aligned text.

~ A hanging indent, meaning that wrapped lines will be indented. 

: A block indent. Wrapped lines are also indented.

These can be combined in more sophisticated ways:

. Definition title
: with the definition here.
. Definition title
: with the definition here.

The caption function block (=) is always used to explain the element preceding it.  When it follows the initial title paragraph in a section it becomes a summary paragraph.  This will be displayed in larger text for easier skimming.

Subheadings within a section do not appear in the navigation, so it’s up to the author to format them however they wish.  This can be done with Alignment Blocks (§4.b.i) and Square Brackets (§3.c).

; =[Here's a Subheading]
; /[And here's a sub-subheading]

(Regular paragraph continues here, after a gap.)

There is a form of short-cut called a double-stop that makes this easier to type.  Several of the common format markers (/*_=) can be repeated to either format a whole block of text, or just to mark off some leading text to create a inline subheading.

. // Italicised Subheading.
; ** Bold Subheading.
, == Small Caps Subheading.
; __ Underlined subheading.

. Italics. // Body text...
. Bold face. ** Body text...
. Small caps. == Body text...
. Underline. __ Body text...

However, while this allows a great deal of control, it means equal space above and below the subheading unless extra space is manually entered with a ~ character.  So headlines are best entered with the @ control character, which formats it in a customary manner.  Double-stops are used to select bold or italic.

(Regular paragraph continues here)

@ Subheading

(Regular paragraph continues here)

A range of common layout requirements can be solved with double-stops, of which the following examples are representative.

Subheading. // This is an inline subheading at the start of a normal auto-indenting paragraph.

> Abstract. ** A bold inline subheading in a quotation will create a sensibly formatted abstract or summary block. 

~ Definition. // Here's a useful way to format some glossaries, definition lists, and so on.

= Table 1. ** A caption line. 

> Simple quotes look like email. 
= Abraham Lincoln

You will have seen that captions (=) are formatted differently depending on what they follow.  One following the title will be read by the wiki as a summary.  One following a table will be formatted as a table caption; see Formatting Tables (§4.c.ii). Likewise for captions after quotes.

Lists have a very simple syntax, whose behaviour can be modified with settings, for example to set the numbering or continue from before.

# List (Ordered)
# # List
# # # List 
# # # # List 
# List

* List (Unordered)
* * List
* * * List 

$ NUMBERING = continue

# This continues the previous
top-level list number
# after an interruption.

$ NUMBERING = 9

# Whereas this starts a list
# from a new number.

_ Buy milk
_ Return books to library

There are better ways to enter table data, but this is sometimes sufficient and extremely simple.  See Formatting Tables (§4.c.ii) (below).

! Name ! Number
| John | 7326532765
| Jane | 6397532340 ksjdh kjsh kdsjh sdkjh dskjh dskjh 

= Table $[t++]. ** A Table of Numbers

This is a good way to lay out questions and answers.

| Q. | How can I best format questions and answers?
| A. | Well, I'm glad you asked! It's like this... 

Glosses or parallels are commonly required in linguistics, but can be difficult to format.  Wiki markup suits them well, however.  There is no limit on the number of translated phrases that can be stacked together.  Unicode font substitution can be applied to different character ranges, but is presently only set up for Greek – note that the font GFS Didot automatically replaces the body font here:

/ *[1] Παῦλος καὶ Τιμόθεος / Paul and Timothy, 
/ δοῦλοι Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ / ^[servants] of Christ Jesus 
/ πᾶσιν τοῖς ἁγίοις / to all ^[those set apart] 
/ ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ / in Christ Jesus 
/ τοῖς οὖσιν ἐν Φιλίπποις / who are in Philippi, 
/ σὺν ἐπισκόποις καὶ διακόνοις· 
    / together with the ^[overseers and assistants]. 
/ *[2] χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη / Grace and peace to you, 
/ ἀπὸ Θεοῦ Πατρὸς ἡμῶν / from God our Father 
/ καὶ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. / and the Lord Jesus Christ.

^ δοῦλοι, also /slaves/
^ lit. /holy people/, trad. /the saints/
^ trad. /bishops and deacons/ 

/ '[1:14]  Ἕλλησίν / 無 論 是 希 利 尼 人 、 / To Greeks / मैं यूनानियों / A Griegos / لليونانيين 
/ τε καὶ Βαρβάροις, / 化 外 人 、 / and to Barbarians, / और अन्यभाषियों / y á bárbaros, / والبرابرة 
/ σοφοῖς / 聰 明 人 、 / to the wise / का और बुद्धिमानों / á sabios / للحكماء
/ τε καὶ ἀνοήτοις / 愚 拙 人 、 / and to the foolish, / और निर्बुद्धियों / y á no sabios /  والجهلاء
/ ὀφειλέτης εἰμί. / 我 都 欠 他 們 的 債 。 / am I obligated. / का कर्जदार हूं। / soy deudor. / اني مديون

The " character adds a visible, compact note, with an outline around it.

(Regular paragraph continues here...)

" *Block notes* appear as their own paragraphs, but in a much smaller font, and with a box around them.

(Regular paragraph continues here...)

The % character indicates a comment that is not displayed to the reader.  However, while this text does not appear in HTML (or PDF or ePub, as a result), it is not fully hidden, because a reader can always look at the source in the online editor.  A note can also be used in the title paragraph if you don’t want the title to be visible, say if writing a letter.

* * *

% This text will not be displayed.

* * *

Whenever you encounter some special formatting requirements – anything past the point where wiki formatting remains a convenience – then you should expect to find a special function block that lets you enter data in a form that really is convenient, and just knows what to do with it.

Functions, like y = f(x), will be familiar from maths, spreadsheets, or programming; function blocks look like that.

The BOX function just puts a box around a section of text.  The COMPACT function lets you write a digression, or supply a transcript that is not necessarily going to be read, so should occupy minimal space.  Because small text reads better in columns, it takes the options 2cols or 3cols.

BOX ===
COMPACT (2cols) ---
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. 

Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
---
===

COMPACT is one of a set of core functions implemented within the wiki; these handle alignment, table formatting, and whitespace, among a few other common tasks.  If you’re curious about how wiki markup is being placed side-by-side with its formatted output in these examples, that’s done with a function too, called DEMO, wrapped around whatever text is to be displayed.

Also, if you have some skill in programming, you can fairly easily write your own functions.

You can use functions inside other functions so long as you use different delimiters for each layer.  Try:

Note.  Right alignment is not dependable for generating eBooks.

The LEFT, CENTER and RIGHT function blocks allow blocks of text to be aligned.  To write a well formatted letter, for example:

RIGHT ---
. Some Fine Locality
. In Yonder Province

. Dec. 1656
---

. Addressee
. Locality
. State

; *_[RE: IMPORTANT]

Dear sir, 

I would have written you a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.

~

RIGHT ---
. Yours etc.,
. 
. 
. ..........................

. Blaise Pascal
---

If you wanted to align the right-blocks perfectly, you could write RIGHT (30%) to give them both a fixed width.  Also, to write a letter in the editor, remember to comment out the title line (use %) so it isn’t visible.

Quotations can be formatted in the same way, with indents and a smaller font size, which is helpful for poetry:

QUOTE ---
. Quote line 1
: Quote line 2 (indented)
, Quote Source
---

We’ve seen in Character Blocks (§4.b) that simple tables are easily arranged with ! and |.  We can control their positioning and width with CENTER and similar functions.  This covers many simple cases.

CENTER (80%) ---
! Header ! Header
| Data goes here | Data goes here
| Data goes here | Data goes here
---

= Table $[t++]. ** A simple table block. 

But this has obvious limitations.  We would normally obtain data in CSV format, so why not just use that instead of reformatting?

TABLE (crl$, headers) ---
ID, First Name, Last Name, Salary
123, Felicity, Masters, 160000
7, Clive, Warner, 45000
---

= Table $[t++]. ** Tables from CSV data.

Note.  Article Wiki does not support more complex table features such as row or column spans.  Some more complex formatting can be done with grids.

GRID +++
Ut enim ad minim veniam.

Quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
---
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
===
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
---
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
+++

= Table $[t++]. ** A `GRID` of square areas.

When you want to preserve text exactly, use VERBATIM.  For the same effect, but with wiki formatting, use TEXT, with or without the ‘verse’ option.

VERBATIM ---
1 2  3   *[4]    5
    Excuse me stewardess,
        I speak jive.
---

TEXT ---
1 2  3   *[4]    5
    Excuse me stewardess,
        I speak jive.
---

TEXT (verse) ---
1 2  3   *[4]    5
    Excuse me stewardess,
        I speak jive.
---

1 2  3   *[4]    5
    Excuse me stewardess,
        I speak jive.

1 2  3   4    5
    Excuse me stewardess,
        I speak jive.

1 2  3   4    5
    Excuse me stewardess,
        I speak jive.

Some patterns of one to three characters have special meaning when used as a paragraph; they create spaces and dividers.  Tilde symbols create vertical space, up to four lines worth for four tildes.

Single space...

~ 

To here. Quadruple space...

~ ~ ~ ~

To here.

Otherwise, asterisks, periods, dashes, equals and at symbols can be used to make dividers.  Lines made with three characters will be full-width.  Best used sparingly!

* 

- 

- - -

. . .

= = =

* * *

A full-width divider in a CENTER block takes the width of that block, if finer width control is needed.  Note the tildes for spacing.

The most interesting and useful kinds of wiki formatting are those that manage information – links, footnotes, indexes, bibliographies, and more.  Data handling is a central part of Article Wiki’s design.

In The Index Page (§2) we saw how document information could be supplied with settings.  In Character Blocks (§4.b) we saw how they can be used to control wiki behaviour.  The same syntax lets users store their own values in variables.

$ word = Bird
$ date = 1 Jan 2017
$ website = https://article.wiki

; ** $[word] is the word!
; $[website]
; $[date]

Values set in your index.txt can be used in all other sections.  Values can be changed at any point throughout your document, although this only affects the remainder of that section.

$ name = Smith

~ $[name]. // Hello. My
name is $[name].

$ name = Jones

~ $[name]. // I'm $[name].
Good to meet you.

| $[x++] | $[y++] | $[z++]
| $[x++] | $[y++] | $[z++]
| $[x++] | $[y++] | $[z++]

= Table $[t++]. ** A different counter in each column.

The wiki will format ^[this text] into a link or footnote using the next contextual link in this section.  A contextual link is just a character block that begins with a ^ character.  See Character Blocks (§4.b) for more.  Contextual links allows URLs to stay near to the text in which they are used, but without disrupting the flow of that text or affecting its readability.

Links and footnotes will both have footnote markers added, since, for the benefit of print readers, links will also be displayed as footnotes.  To avoid gaps in formatting, footnote markers will follow any [trailing punctuation: punctuation, trailing].

. This is a ^[link].
. This is a ^[link to myself].
. This is a ^[footnote].

. Text continues...

^ http://example.org
^ http://example.org|rel=me
^ Footnote goes here.

Footnotes will appear at the end of the full document in which they appear.  References can be entered after each paragraph, or at any convenient point in the same section, including at the end, so long as they appear in the same order as the links they will be matched with.  When there are many links, it may be more convenient to list them after each paragraph, but this is a matter of personal preference.

Article Wiki supports easy cross referencing between the sections of a document.  Entering @[cross-references] will produce a link to the current subheading, Cross References (§5.c), with the section number added for the benefit of print readers.  Entering @[-cross-references], with a minus at the start, will produce an abbreviated reference, in this case §5.c. You will notice them used throughout this document.  At present, only section headings can be cross-referenced.

Matching is performed in this way.  The wiki will look through the table of contents for an exact match, then for the first one that contains all of the terms in the cross reference.  If there is still no match, or if more than one match was found, an error will be displayed.

While bibliographies can be formatted entirely manually, or with footnotes, there are often better way to work with references.  Bibliographies can be added at the end of each section, or in a single biblio.txt file, or both.

When adding references in a section (rather than in biblio.txt), separate them from the body of your text with a dividing line containing only underscores (10 works well).  Citations appear in round brackets by default, but these can be hidden with a leading minus character.

@ Citation Examples

See ~[Hays 1996] or ~[-Hays 2005].

* ~[Hays 2005, p.26]
* ~[Hays, /Conversion/, p.32]
* See ~[-Hays, /Moral Vision/, p.63].
* ~[ibid, pp.30-32]

For future development...

* ~[loc. cit.]
* ~[Hays, op. cit., p.67]


_____

Hays, Richard B. 1996. The Moral Vision of the New Testament. 1st edition. San Francisco: HarperOne.
Hays, Richard B. 2005. The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel’s Scripture. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans.

Your bibliography sections should contain only bibliography lines.  This allows easy export from bibliographical software.  In Zotero,¹ for instance, use the export option “Create Bibliography from Items”, selecting your preferred citation style and “Output to clipboard”.  Then just paste it into your bibliography block or file.

Note that when a citation simply reads @[ibid], it will be indexed to the previous citation (though op.  cit. does not track previous works, or loc.cit. previous references).

The main thing to remember with cross-references is that the first heading or bibliography entry to match all the words in the reference will be used.  Headings will be checked first.  Any punctuation or markup will be ignored for the purpose of cross-referencing.  See Cross References (§5.c) for more.

Click the Edit button to see how any effect was achieved in an article or section.  This opens that section in the /playground.  That also lets you print a single section – like this cheat sheet!

Character blocks.  Note that captions can be added to tables and headings as well as quotes.

Inline Square Brackets.  For incidental formatting…

• These are combinable, e.g.  /*[bold italic] for bold italic.
• Some have shorthand: *bold* /italic/ _underline_
• Some (*/=) can be used as inline subheadings.

Inline Information Brackets.  For links and other data operations.

Next

• Fully responsive menu with multiple layouts and drop menus.
• Allow shorthand FUNCTION Blocks.  HEADER/FOOTER as variations of COMPACT.

Bugs

• Double-stops don’t accommodate trailing punctuation.  Bold. Bold.  Bold. Bold.  Bold. Bold.  Bold. Bold.  Bold. Bold.
• Inline markup for links clashes with angled brackets: <http://example.org>;.  (Extra semi-colon appears.)  In &gt; the link is matched until the ;.
• Putting icons in the wrong place in lists .  (Eliminate icons as unused.  Add Unicode completion to editor.)
• Wrong spacing in e.g.  (pp.  16–17) . Handle brackets/numbers separately, or require backslashes always?

New Features

• Ability to cycle checkboxes to ticked and sort them by priorities.
• < < < and > > > for COMPACT headers and footers.
• Bibliographies should become the last numbered sections and be more easily editable (side link).
• Machine-readable CC licenses.
• Self-documentation functions.  For use in /help especially.
• Vue textarea: Ctrl-Up/Dn to move lines or selected lines; Ctrl-Up/Dn to move blocks or selected blocks.  Regular shortcuts and autocompletions.
• Login without returning to home page.
• Plugins.  BIBLE, MATH:jax, MUSIC:ly, SLIDES, QUIZ, etc

Big changes

• Multiuser through Github logins; retain local admin.
• Convert Bottle to FastAPI and run in Lambda; use Saas Redis Store.
• Assemble articles into larger books as .epub/PDF; + in TOC to recurse; syntax to link between books.
• Airium for faster/neater HTML generation.
• Fully relative CSS, so that DEMO or QUOTE blocks will have their content stay in proportion.  (Only for one layer deep.)
• Figures should become the second last numbered section, and allow text-based image formats like SVG or DOT.  (Implement figures as an attachement to a book page section?)
• Behavioural testing.
• Containerised for Docker, with a simple import-archive setup.
• Show cross-references when editing documents._ Login without returning to home page.

Ideas

• Git integration; committing major version changes and suggested changes; with version incrementing in any part of a document, and in the header.  1.2.3 = Major.Minor.Subminor versions.
• Outline slides in documents (hidden, -); use section heading and counter as title?  Possibly Abbreviated block type for slides/quizzes, etc?

SLIDE 
* xxx
* yyy
* zzz

• Inherit settings from parent in hierarchy (ChainMap).
• Insert standard or customised templates into documents (popover or dropdown)
• Allow date (or date-updated) to auto-update.
• QUIZ blocks (?, with answers collated and rotated 180 degrees?)
• Template imsertion and completion in the editor.  Tab-through and select patterns?