Files & formats

Your writing lives in plain markdown files that any editor can read, today and in twenty years. When a piece goes out into the world, Blank hands it over as a finely typeset PDF or as a Word document. And when someone sends you a Word document, Blank opens that too.

Which format for what

Format	Open	Save or export	Best for
Markdown (.md)	Mod O	Mod S	your own writing
PDF		Mod Alt P	reading and printing
Word (.docx)	Mod O	Mod Alt W	people who use Word

Mod is Cmd on macOS and Ctrl on Windows and Linux.

Your documents: markdown

Everything you write is kept as markdown: plain text with a few marks like # for headings, so the file stays small, readable and yours.

Command	Shortcut
New file	Mod N
Open	Mod O
Save	Mod S
Save as	Mod Shift S

The open dialog shows your markdown files and Word documents together. Closed Blank without saving? It keeps your text anyway, see Blank remembers your document.

Properties on top of the file

Notes from Obsidian, pandoc or a static site generator often start with a few properties between two --- lines, called frontmatter:

---
title: The Lighthouse
author: Ada Lovelace
tags: [sea, light]
---

# Chapter 1

Blank keeps this block exactly as it is, down to the comments and spacing, and saves it back unchanged. Instead of the raw lines, a quiet line above your text sums it up: The Lighthouse · by Ada Lovelace · tags.

The title and author also go into your PDF and Word documents, where readers and search show them. Without a title, Blank uses your first heading.

Share a PDF

Press Mod Alt P and choose where to put the PDF. Blank suggests your document's name with .pdf.

The PDF is typeset with care, in the same font, sizes and spacing as the editor:

• set in IBM Plex Sans on the paper of your region, or the page setup you chose,
• a heading never ends a page on its own; it moves to the next page with its text,
• page breaks start a new page, and horizontal lines are drawn across the text,
• your page numbers, header and footer are on every page,
• quotes keep their bar on the left and everything inside them,
• line breaks you made with Shift Enter stay, and a numbered list that starts at 3 starts at 3,
• tables look like in the editor, repeat their header row on every page, and keep their rows whole,
• links stay clickable.

Images come along at the size they have in Blank, up to the width of the page. Images from the web are downloaded for the PDF, so that needs an internet connection. If an image can't be loaded, the PDF shows its description in its place, and Blank tells you which one it was.

Word documents

Send a Word document

When someone needs your text in Word, press Mod Alt W. Blank suggests your document's name with .docx.

The Word document looks like your PDF, and stays easy to edit: headings, quotes and code use real Word styles, so they show up in Word's style gallery, navigation pane and table of contents. Lists keep their numbers, links and images come along, and headers, footers and page numbers are Word's own, so they stay right however the document grows. Tables become real Word tables, with their header row repeated on every page, merged cells and their caption in Word's caption style. Blank's font is embedded, so Word shows it even on computers that don't have it installed. LibreOffice and Google Docs use a similar font instead.

Your markdown file stays exactly as it is. The document's title and author come along, and so do the properties at the top of your file: open the Word document in Blank again and they're back, including the ones Word has no place for. If someone changed the title or author in Word, you get their version.

Open a Word document

Open a Word document like any other file: with Mod O, by starting Blank with it (blank report.docx), or with Open With → Blank in your file manager (see Install). Blank also opens .docm, .dotx and .dotm files, up to 50 MB.

Blank turns the document into a new, untitled markdown document, and the top of the window shows report.docx (imported). Press Mod S to keep it: Blank suggests report.md, right next to the original.

Your Word file stays untouched

Blank never writes to the Word document you opened. It won't even save markdown over a .docx or .pdf if you pick one in the save dialog.

What comes along

Headings, bold and italic text, links, lists, quotes, code, line breaks, page breaks, images and tables make it into your document, and so do the header, the footer and the page numbers. Tables keep their merged cells, header rows and header columns, and their caption. A table without a header row gets its first row as the header, since a markdown table needs one. Images are stored inside the markdown file, so it stays a single file you can move and send; large pictures are scaled down to a size that still prints well.

Word can do more than markdown, so a few things change on the way:

• a table inside a table cell becomes text, one line per row with the cells separated by |,
• the alignment of table columns is left out,
• footnotes move to the end of the document,
• comments, underlining and colours are left out,
• tracked changes count as accepted,
• charts and drawings Blank can't show are replaced by their description,
• numbered lists start at 1.

Nothing gets lost unnoticed

Right after opening, Blank tells you what changed, for example 1 table inside a table became text or 2 comments left out.

Back and forth with Word users

A colleague sends you a Word document to work on:

1. Open it with Mod O.
2. Write, and keep your version with Mod S, as markdown.
3. Send it back with Mod Alt W.

On their side, headings, quotes, lists, links, images and tables arrive as they know them from Word. When they send it back, only the alignment of table columns needs setting again.

Good to know

File names. On Linux, the save dialog doesn't add the extension for you. The name Blank suggests already has it, and an export refuses a name with another extension, such as an existing .md file, instead of overwriting it.

Other formats. Blank can't open .doc, .odt, .rtf or .pages files. Save them as .docx in the app they come from, then open that.

Password-protected documents. Blank can't open a Word document that is protected with a password. Remove the password in Word, or ask for an unprotected copy.