Clew Writing
Callouts
A callout is a blockquote that says what kind of thing it is. Put
> [!type] on the first line and the quote becomes a
coloured box with an icon — the same syntax Obsidian uses, and the same
class names, so a vault written there looks like itself here.
You write
> [!note]
> Everything else in the quote is the body.
The type is case-insensitive: [!note],
[!Note] and [!NOTE] are the same callout. (GFM's
own alert syntax, which Clew also accepts, is stricter about this; Clew
treats them all alike.)
Titles
Anything after the type becomes the title, and it may contain markdown —
emphasis, code, even a [[wikilink]]. Without one, the type's
own name is used.
You write
> [!tip] Titles can carry *emphasis* and [[links]]
> Body follows as usual.Foldable callouts
Add - or + immediately after the type to make a
callout collapsible. Both fold; the sign only decides how it starts.
| You write | Behaviour |
|---|---|
> [!note] | Always open, not collapsible |
> [!note]- | Collapsible, starts collapsed |
> [!note]+ | Collapsible, starts expanded |
The mnemonic is slightly back-to-front: - does not mean "no
callout", it means "start minimised". Click the title to toggle.
<details>, not a script. So a
foldable callout survives a live re-render while you type, works in a
site exported from your vault with no
JavaScript at all, and prints expanded — which is what you want on
paper.
The types
Fourteen types, several answering to more than one name. Aliases are not
merely tolerated: they resolve to the same callout, so
[!tldr] and [!abstract] are identical.
| Type | Also called | For |
|---|---|---|
note | — | A remark worth setting apart |
abstract | summary, tldr | The short version |
info | — | Context the reader may not have |
todo | — | Something still to do |
tip | hint, important | Advice worth taking |
success | check, done | It worked |
question | help, faq | A question, or an answer to one |
warning | caution, attention | Mind this |
failure | fail, missing | It did not work |
danger | error | This will hurt |
bug | — | A known defect |
example | — | A worked case |
quote | cite | Someone else's words |
compatibility | — | Version or platform caveats |
An unknown type
A type Clew does not recognise is not turned into a
callout with a guessed colour. It stays an ordinary blockquote, with the
[!whatever] visible as text. That is the honest failure: the
note remains readable, and it is obvious what happened rather than
silently approximated.
Admonition fences — the older spelling
Before Obsidian had callouts, vaults used the Admonition plugin, which writes fenced blocks instead of blockquotes. Clew reads those too, and renders them as the callouts they always meant — the same types, the same look:
You write (Admonition's syntax)
```ad-warning
title: Careful now
collapse: closed
The body, in ordinary markdown.
```
title: and collapse: (open /
closed) are honoured; icon: and
color: were the plugin's cosmetic overrides and the
callout's own type styling applies instead. An ad- type
Clew's table does not know renders as a note titled with the raw type
name, which is how the plugin treated user-defined types too.
Styling and compatibility
Each type has one accent colour, which drives its border, icon and title; the body keeps the page's own text colour, so a callout reads as emphasis rather than as a coloured slab. The background tint is mixed from that same colour, which is why callouts look right in both the dark and light themes without a second set of rules.
The markup carries both Obsidian's class names
(callout, data-callout="note") and the
jmarkdown engine's (markdown-alert). A CSS snippet written
for Obsidian therefore keeps working in Clew — see
Theming — and so does anything that targeted
the engine's alert classes.
Icons are Font Awesome Free, embedded as inline SVG rather than fetched at render time, so they appear in reading mode, in an exported site, and on paper alike.