A Writano document has one canonical source, but you can edit it through three different surfaces: a true WYSIWYG view, the raw LaTeX, and — for documents authored that way — Markdown. The mode toggle lives in the editor toolbar.
The three modes
- WYSIWYG renders your document the way it will look, with math typeset live as you type. There are no blue boxes around commands; formatting behaves the way it does in a word processor while the underlying LaTeX stays intact.
- LaTeX is the raw source in a full-featured code editor with syntax highlighting, autocomplete, and a matching-brace guide.
- Markdown is available for documents created as Markdown. You write Markdown with inline math, and Writano compiles it to a typeset PDF.
Switching modes never rewrites your file behind your back. The preamble is preserved across a WYSIWYG ↔ LaTeX toggle, and math survives the round trip.
How the projection works
Under the hood the document is parsed into a model rather than transformed with fragile regexes. Math and any LaTeX that has no visual equivalent are kept as atomic “islands” — you can open an island and edit its source in a small popover without leaving the visual view. When you type in one surface, the change is written back to the shared source with a minimal diff, which is also what keeps real-time collaboration consistent across people editing in different modes.
Choosing a mode
| You want to… | Use |
|---|---|
| See the finished look while you write | WYSIWYG |
| Hand-tune packages, environments, or macros | LaTeX |
| Draft quickly with light markup | Markdown |
The toggle is tier-gated for some modes, and your choice is remembered per document, so a paper you prefer to hand-edit in LaTeX keeps opening in LaTeX.
Note: Collaborators can each pick their own mode. Their presence badge shows which surface they are editing in, so “In Visual mode” or “In LaTeX mode” appears on their avatar.