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About this handbook

This handbook belongs to QuartzControl version 1.1.0 and explains every one of its screens; every screen links to its page here.

How to write notes so they make good pages is in the Example handbook.

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1.1 – What QuartzControl is

3 Min. Lesezeit

QuartzControl is the interface for Quartz. Without it you drive Quartz from the command line and edit its configuration file in a text editor; with it you click.

What it takes off your hands

A Quartz project consists of a configuration file, a folder full of notes, a handful of stylesheets and a list of installed plugins. All of it is a text file, and all of it can be edited by hand. QuartzControl gives each of those things a screen:

  • Create a project without driving git and npm yourself.
  • Edit the configuration without writing YAML — with a line under every field that needs one.
  • Link the content folder, straight to an Obsidian vault if you like — and switch between “real folder” and “link” without losing notes.
  • Install and configure plugins from a searchable marketplace instead of a list in the documentation.
  • Change colours, fonts and spacings in four layers that sit next to one another in the order in which they override each other.
  • Build the page grid in an editor with the mouse instead of in CSS.
  • Start the preview and build the site, with the output in the same window.
  • Publish, six ways, with a preview of what will be transferred.
  • Come back when something has gone wrong — QuartzControl takes a snapshot on its own before every larger change.

What it does not do

It is not an editor. Notes are written elsewhere — in Obsidian, in a text editor, anywhere. QuartzControl does not touch the content of the content folder; it builds a website from it.

It does not replace Quartz. What appears on the finished page is decided by Quartz and by its plugins. Where this handbook stops at “that is how Quartz does it”, the Quartz documentation carries on.

It does not hide the files. Every change lands in exactly the file it would have landed in had you made it by hand. A project set up with QuartzControl can be carried on by hand at any time — and the other way round.

Who it is for

For someone who writes notes and wants a website out of them. No prior knowledge of Quartz is needed; none of git either, although git turns up in three places (see 1.2 – The tools).

Anyone already using Quartz will find mainly one thing here: the same files, but with a preview next to every switch — and a way back when an update breaks something.