Stories

A story is what a folder says about itself. In Reveal it is a note: a Markdown file that sits in the folder, named after it, with one line per photo and your words between them. You compose it on screen, as it will read. Underneath, it stays a text file that any editor can open.

What a story is on disk

The note is <folder>/<folder name>.md. A photo in it is a line like ![[DSCF4074.jpg]]; a caption is a small quote block under it; a paragraph is a paragraph. Photos on consecutive lines with nothing between them make one row when the note is published. A blank line, a caption or a paragraph ends the row.

You never have to look at any of this. But it is why you can open the note in Obsidian, read it, fix a word, and why deleting the note deletes the story and nothing else.

Starting a story

A story starts the moment the folder has a pick. Press q on a photo, or let AI culling propose some (see Ratings and picks). The folder then shows a dot in the sidebar.

To compose it, press s, or choose Editorial at the top of the sidebar. The composer replaces the grid:

• The story fills the window, laid out as it will read.
• The film roll (labelled FILM ROLL) runs under it with every photo of the folder in view. Click a frame to add it at the end, or drag it where you want it. A frame already in the story carries a check.

A new story invites you to start: drag or click a photo of the roll.

Rows

Several photos side by side form a row, and the composer shows them as one.

• Drag a photo next to another to join its row, to the left or to the right.
• Drag it above or below a row to give it a row of its own.
• Split onto its own row, on a photo, takes it out of the row it is in.
• Split into individual rows, at the top, puts every photo on its own row.
• By date puts the photos back in the order they were taken.

The two buttons at the top appear once the story has more than one photo.

Captions

Under a photo, Add a caption… writes its caption. A row of several photos has one caption for the whole row, under it: Add a caption for this row…

A caption closes the row: the next photo starts a new one. This is how the note says it, and it is what the Garden does with it.

Paragraphs

Your own words go between the rows.

• Add a paragraph, at the bottom, adds one at the end.
• Between two rows, a Paragraph button appears when you rest the pointer there. It adds a paragraph at that place, including before the first photo.
• A paragraph has arrows to move it up or down, a handle to drag it, and a button to delete it.

Reordering and removing

Drag a photo or a paragraph to move it. The × on a photo takes it out of the story; the photo stays in the folder. A photo that is in the note but no longer in the folder shows as a grey tile with its name, so you can see what went missing.

Saving

There is no Save button. A moment after you stop changing something, Reveal writes it into the note. It writes only the body: the note’s theme and its pinned state, which live in its header, are never overwritten by a save. Each write is read back and compared before it replaces the file; if a drive misbehaves (a network folder, say), the note on disk stays as it was.

Publishing

In the Editorial tab of the sidebar, under the Theme menu (see Themes): Develop develops every photo of the story, Export exports them to a folder, and Publish to Garden puts the story online. The last one is described in Publishing to the Garden.