EM4me

Subpages

Pages can have subpages at any depth, for example Process-A/Draft or Process-A/Implementation/Detail. The hierarchy is a logical structure and independent of which folders the files live in. This also allows subpages with the same name under different pages, such as a Draft for Process-A and one for Process-B.

Naming convention

The file name carries the hierarchy: the subpage separator is ∕ (Unicode U+2215, “division slash”). It looks like a slash but is not one: a real slash serves as the path separator on every system and is therefore ruled out in file names, whereas this character is allowed and practically never occurs in normal names — which is exactly what makes it unambiguous that a file is a subpage.

Process-A.md                        page
Process-A∕Draft.md                  subpage of Process-A
Process-A∕Implementation∕Detail.md  second level

You never need to type the character: new subpages are created via File → More File Functions → New Subpage… (a dialog asks for the name; the file is created in the folder of the active file and opens as a tab). For creating files manually in the file manager, copy the character from this page: ∕

Not to be confused with splitting large documents. That mechanism also carries its assignment in the file name, but uses the bullet • (U+2022) for it. A file like Process-A•part-00002.md is not a subpage but a piece of one single large document; the two characters are deliberately different.

In wiki links you always write the normal slash; the app translates it into the file name. Relative targets point to the page’s own subpage or its parent page and therefore work regardless of the current page’s name:

[[Process-A/Draft]]     opens the Draft subpage of Process-A
[[/Draft]]              Draft subpage of the CURRENT page
[[..]]                  parent page of the current subpage
![[Process-A/Draft]]    embeds the subpage

Resolution first looks for a real folder path ([[subfolder/File]] remains a path link), then for the subpage file — in the file’s own folder and across the search scope. If both exist, the Markdown linter marks the target as ambiguous. After [[, autocomplete suggests subpages in slash notation; after [[/, the subpages of the current page.

When a subpage is active, a breadcrumb above the document (reading, split and live view) shows the parent chain with clickable levels; intermediate levels that do not exist are dotted-underlined and not clickable. The Subpages sidebar section (View → Sidebar → Panels → Subpages, or the subpages icon in the status bar) lists the direct subpages of the active file; clicking opens them.

Renaming

File → More File Functions → Rename… (also in the tab context menu) renames the active file. Open tabs, bookmarks, the recent-files list and the history companion file follow along.

  • Renaming a page with subpages takes its whole subpage tree along; the dialog states the count beforehand.
  • Renaming a subpage changes only its own name segment; the parent chain is preserved. This holds at both places, including the title line above the document: there the parent part sits dimmed and unchangeable in front of the editable segment.
  • Change the full name: The option of that name in the rename dialog also releases the parent name parts of a subpage. It is deliberately off by default, because a change there moves the page under a different parent page and affects all of its own subpages.
  • Update links: The “Update links in other files” checkbox rewrites incoming wiki links, embeds and relative Markdown links to the new name; in the cascade also the references to every renamed subpage. A second checkbox shows a preview of the affected files beforehand; after the run a report summarises the renamed, updated and non-updatable files. The defaults are under Settings → Behavior → “Links when renaming”.
  • Open documents follow along; a document with unsaved changes receives the update in the editor as its own undo step, while on disk only the last saved state is updated.
  • With the document history enabled, every update is traceable as a revision and can be undone; without history there is no rollback.
  • In an area application the update covers the whole area; without an area the known search scope, and the linter remains the safety net for the rest.

Detaching

File → More File Functions → Detach from parent page… (also in the tab context menu of a subpage) turns a subpage into a standalone page: Prozess-A/Entwurf becomes Entwurf.

  • The dialog states the target and the number of own subpages that move along beforehand. Prozess-A/Entwurf/Tief becomes Entwurf/Tief, so the hierarchy below is preserved.
  • Links stay valid: Incoming links are updated the same way as when renaming, with the same checkboxes for preview and report.
  • The target name can be changed in the dialog. That helps when a file of that name already exists at the target level: nothing is renamed in that case, and a different name gets through on the second attempt.
  • A slash is not allowed in the target name, because the result is a standalone page. Moving a page under a different parent page is not part of this; whoever needs it changes the full name in the rename dialog.