The markdown Colletta writes
Every Colletta document is plain markdown: CommonMark with GitHub Flavored Markdown, plus the extensions below. Download .md keeps that syntax. Download .md for other tools adapts some extensions, and a zip download rewrites the links to the images it bundles. Comments, suggestions and history are stored separately from the document’s text.
What’s included
Section titled “What’s included”- Headings, bold, italic, strikethrough, inline code, links and lists
- Tables, task lists (
- [ ]and- [x]), footnotes and automatic links - Code blocks with a language
- Callouts in GitHub’s form,
> [!NOTE] - Front matter at the top of a file (YAML between
---lines), which Live view hides
On top of that, Colletta reads a few widely used extensions:
- Math with
$...$,$$blocks andmathcode blocks, and Mermaid diagrams inmermaidcode blocks (see Math and diagrams) ==highlight==,~sub~,^sup^and++inserted++(see Formatting)- Collapsible sections with
<details>and<summary>, and numbered code blocks such as```js=101(see Callouts, code, tasks and more)
A single ~ is subscript in Colletta, so strikethrough is always ~~.
Colletta writes markdown in a common, predictable style: - for bullets, * for italic, ** for bold, # headings
and backtick code fences.
How it looks in other tools
Section titled “How it looks in other tools”Most of a document looks the same anywhere. These are the places where tools differ:
| Feature | In other tools |
|---|---|
Callouts > [!NOTE] | shown as callouts in GitHub, GitLab and Obsidian; elsewhere as a quote starting with [!NOTE] |
Image sizes  | used by Obsidian; elsewhere the image shows at full size |
Math $...$ and Mermaid diagrams | drawn by GitHub, GitLab, Obsidian, HackMD and Typora; elsewhere shown as their text |
Collapsible sections <details> | shown by GitHub, GitLab, Obsidian, HackMD, Typora and VS Code |
==highlight== | read by Obsidian, HackMD and Typora; elsewhere shown as typed |
~sub~ and ^sup^ | read by HackMD, Typora and Pandoc; elsewhere shown as typed |
++inserted++ | read by HackMD; elsewhere shown as typed |
Numbered code ```js=101 | read by HackMD; elsewhere the language may not be recognized |
Mentions [@Name](/w/.../people/...) | a link reading “@Name” that only works inside Colletta |
| Links between documents | point at Colletta (/w/.../d/...), so they don’t open in other tools |
| A single line break | a space in Colletta and GitHub; a new line in Obsidian and some other editors |
| HTML in a document | never shown as HTML in Colletta (apart from collapsible sections); other tools may show it |
Download .md for other tools smooths over most of these: it writes mentions as plain @Name, drops image sizes,
turns callouts into a bold title, writes the four marks as HTML tags and removes the line-number suffix. See
Download, copy and print.
Before moving many files, try a sample document in the tool you’re moving to.
What isn’t kept
Section titled “What isn’t kept”When you paste from Word, Google Docs or a web page, underline, colors, highlighting, and superscript or subscript are dropped. Markdown has no standard way to write them, and smart paste doesn’t turn them into Colletta‘s marks yet.
Coming later
Section titled “Coming later”We plan exports that rewrite links between documents so they work in other tools, and backups to GitHub. Neither is available yet.