Markdown support was already complete and documented, but nothing in the
composer pointed at it -- unlike @, # and : (which advertise themselves
when typed), formatting syntax was only discoverable via Help, buried in
the account menu.
The composer stays a plain markdown textarea; a new "Aa" button opens a
toolbar that inserts the syntax for you: bold, italic, strikethrough,
inline code, code block, link, quote, bulleted/numbered lists, H1-H3,
sub/superscript. Collapsed by default, remembered across reloads and
room switches. Clicking a button again removes the formatting (native
undo doesn't track programmatic edits), and bold/italic/sub/strike
toggles are run-length aware so "***x***" is handled correctly. The
selection math is pure functions in lib/markdownFormat.ts, unit-tested.
The "?" opens /help#formatting in a new tab so the draft isn't lost;
HelpPage now scrolls to the hash once the guide has loaded, since the
browser's own hash scroll fired before the async-fetched headings
existed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
markdown-to-jsx has no plugin hook for new inline/block syntax, but it
does correctly parse ordinary links and exposes a slugify callback for
heading anchors -- both get reused the same way this app's own
@mention/#room-reference highlighting already works: ~sub~/^sup^ are
rewritten to a link before compiling (the "URL" is just a carrier for
meaning the parser was never told about), then re-rendered as
<sub>/<sup> instead of an anchor; a heading's {#custom-id} suffix is
stripped from its own text before compiling, and slugify substitutes
the requested id for the auto-generated one.
Applied everywhere markdown renders (chat messages, file previews, the
Help page), not just chat -- MARKDOWN_OPTIONS became a per-render
createMarkdownOptions() since slugify needs each render's own heading
ids.
Definition lists deliberately left unsupported -- no block-level
equivalent to the link-trick exists, and faking one would mean either
reopening the disableParsingRawHTML XSS mitigation or unreliably
misusing blockquote syntax. Documented on the issue.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
USER_GUIDE.md at the repo root is the single source of truth --
frontend/public/USER_GUIDE.md symlinks to it so the same file is both
readable directly in the repo and served by the app, rendered on a new
/help page reusing the existing markdown renderer. Scoped to regular
member features (messaging, rooms, attachments, notifications,
profile); room admin/site admin features are intentionally left out.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
ksmithandClaude Sonnet 5.5