The Toolbar

Many of the standard formatting tools you’ve grown to know and love in other word processors are available in the visual editor’s toolbar. From left to right, you’ve got the following options:

Bold

Bolds your selected text.

Italic

Italicizes your selected text.

Underline

Underlines your selected text.

Add an index entry

An index is a collection of key words, concepts, and phrases that are found throughout your project. To create an index, add index terms to your project text by placing your cursor where the term is discussed, and then clicking this button; you’ll get a dialog box where you can add an index term, and optionally a secondary and tertiary term as well. When you build, Atlas will collect all of these terms into an alphabetical list linked to the tag locations that you specified. 

Add a link

Converts your selected text to a link. To link to a location within your project, instead of typing the full path, simply type the id of the element, preceded by a # sign, like this: #buildsettings—no file name is necessary. When you build, Atlas will make sure to correctly convert all of those link destinations to include the correct file name.

Convert to or insert a numbered list

If you have some text selected, that text will be converted to a numbered list. If not, Atlas will insert an empty numbered list item to get your list started.

Convert to or insert a bulleted list

If you have some text selected, that text will be converted to a bulleted list. If not, Atlas will insert an empty bulleted list item to get your list started.

Outdent a paragraph

Outdents the selected paragraph.

Indent a paragraph

Indents the selected paragraph.

Insert a blockquote

If you have some text selected, this will be converted to a blockquote. If not, Atlas will insert an empty blockquote paragraph for you to type in.

Insert a table

This button opens up a menu for you to set up a table that will be inserted at the current location of your cursor. You can set the number of columns and rows, and tell Atlas whether your table should include heading rows.  

Insert a code block or format inline code

If you have some text selected, Atlas will format it as inline code. If not, Atlas will insert a new placeholder code block for you to type in. If you hover over that code block, you’ll see a little </> icon at bottom center. Click this icon to tell Atlas what code language this block uses, so Atlas will know how to apply syntax highlighting when you build.

Figure 5-1. Click the icon to add the language for the code block.

Paste from Word or Paste Plain Text

This menu helps with copying over pieces from a Word document or from a plain text file. Paste the text you are copying inside the dialog box that appears, and Atlas will do its best to transfer over your formatting (or strip it out, if you’re pasting plain text). 

Warning

This option is meant to be used only for short blocks of text, not for entire documents. If you’ve got an entire file that you want to put in Atlas, you should have that file converted to HTMLBook by a third-party vendor, and then add that converted HTML to Atlas instead.

The Insert... menu

The Insert... menu is your one-stop shop for adding predefined text blocks to your document. You can add smaller blocks like notes, warnings, and sidebars, or higher-level blocks like chapters and sections (see “Using and Adding Sections” for more on the latter). To add a block, place your cursor where you want the new block to appear, and then choose the kind of block you want from the drop-down menu. Atlas will insert the pre-formatted block along with some placeholder text that you can replace.

Warning

Not all elements are allowed everywhere—for example, you can’t insert a chapter inside a sidebar. If an element isn’t allowed, it’ll be grayed out in the menu.