The editor

The left pane is a full CodeMirror code editor, not a plain text box: it has syntax highlighting for the markup you're writing, a formatting toolbar (bold, italic, headings, lists, links and more), and a find-and-replace search. Standard editing shortcuts — copy, paste, undo, redo — work as you'd expect.

You write in one of seven lightweight markup languages. These are plain-text formats that express structure with punctuation (# for a heading, * for emphasis) instead of hidden styling, so a document stays readable as text and diff-friendly in version control. Markzen reads all seven and decides which one a file is by its extension — you never pick the format manually:

Markup language	Opens files ending in
Markdown	.md, .markdown
AsciiDoc	.adoc, .asciidoc, .asc
reStructuredText	.rst, .rest
Org	.org
Textile	.textile
Djot	.dj
MediaWiki	.wiki, .mediawiki

Each language has its own conventions and its own existing ecosystem of documents; Markzen renders each in its own dialect rather than converting everything to Markdown first. To switch the kind of markup a document is written in, use the toolbar's Convert to menu (see Convert & export below).

The text size is set with the toolbar's Increase font size and Decrease font size buttons. The editor pane can also be hidden entirely — when it is, Markzen becomes a pure reader (see Live preview).