Nacho
Nacho is a lightweight variation of Markdown designed for note-taking. It makes it easy to organize notes into headings and subheadings so you can navigate large files quickly through code folding and the symbol quick panel (cmd/ctrl + R).
How it differs from Markdown
Indented headings
Headings (##, ###, ####, …) can be indented to mirror your note structure, and they still appear in the symbols quick panel and Outline view:
## This is an h2
This is a paragraph.
### This is an h3
This is a paragraph.
### This is another h3
This is another paragraph.
Each heading nests under the nearest shallower heading above it, so the Outline view reflects your indentation hierarchy.
A single hash starts a comment (rather than an h1). Words in a comment are highlighted when surrounded by asterisks or backticks:
# This is a comment with two highlights: *highlight 1* and `highlight 2`.
Lines starting with // or -- are also treated as comments.
Other syntax
- Emphasis anywhere in the document:
*text* and `text`.
- Strings:
"...", "..." (curly quotes), and «...» (Spanish guillemets).
- Blockquotes: lines starting with
>.
- Numbers, arithmetic/assignment/comparison/logical operators, and HTML (
<!-- ... -->) comments are highlighted.
Navigation
cmd/ctrl + R—jump to any heading via the symbol quick panel.- The Outline view shows the full heading hierarchy.
- Folding works on any line with an indented block under it, not just headings. A heading folds down to its deepest subheading; every other line folds down to the last line indented under it. Blank lines belong to the block that surrounds them, and a fold never ends on one.
- To keep all heading levels visible in sticky scroll, raise
editor.stickyScroll.maxLineCount in your settings.
Note on file associations
Nacho currently registers itself for the .txt extension, so plain-text files open in Nacho mode. You can override this per file with the language selector in the status bar.
Development
The TextMate grammar is authored in syntaxes/nacho.tmLanguage.yaml. After editing it, regenerate the JSON that VS Code loads:
npm run syntax
