Manuscript Bind#
Bind assembles a set of notes — or a single long note — into one formatted, ready-to-share document: PDF, Word (DOCX), EPUB, or HTML. Your notes stay exactly as they are; Bind produces a separate file. macOS only.
Opening Bind#
- File → Bind Manuscript… — opens the Bind sheet.
- Right-click a tag in the sidebar → Bind Manuscript… — starts a bind pre-set to that tag.
What you can bind#
A tag (multi-note book). Every note carrying a chosen tag becomes a chapter, assembled in your manual-sort order — drag the notes into the sequence you want, then bind. This is the usual way to turn a folder of chapter-notes into a book.
A single book note. A note marked fn-book: true (set it in the Properties panel or front matter) is bound on its own. Inside a book note you can split sections with H1 role markers:
| Marker | Becomes |
|---|---|
# Front: … |
front matter (title page, copyright) |
# Part: … |
a part divider |
# Chapter: … |
a numbered chapter |
# Back: … |
back matter (acknowledgements, about) |
# Skip: … |
omitted from the output (private notes) |
Output formats#
| Format | Best for |
|---|---|
| Print-ready, paginated, with a navigable heading outline (bookmarks) | |
| DOCX | Word — proper styles, real footnotes or endnotes |
| EPUB | E-readers (Apple Books, Kindle via conversion) |
| HTML | A single self-contained web page |
Styling#
The Bind sheet lets you tune the result:
- Style — the page preset: Standard (manuscript), Paperback, or Plain.
- Theme — the visual look for PDF / HTML / EPUB: Manuscript (classic serif, the default), GitHub, Swiss, or Academic.
- Page size, margins, orientation.
- Chapter heading — numbers and titles, numbers only, or titles only.
- Header / footer — published-book page numbers, agent-submission (Shunn) header, or none.
- Contents page — include an automatic table of contents (PDF / EPUB).
- Keep checklists — keep task lines (
- [ ]) in the output, or strip them for a clean manuscript. - Footnotes (DOCX) — per-page (bottom of each page), end-of-book (endnotes at the end), or end-of-chapter.
Rich content#
Bind renders the things a working document needs: GFM tables, syntax-highlighted code blocks (multiple languages), and Mermaid diagrams (flowcharts, sequence, Gantt) — all embedded directly in the PDF, DOCX, and EPUB. Images from your .attachments folder are embedded too.
From the command line#
Everything above is also available through the fn command-line tool:
fn bind --tag "novel" --format pdf --theme academic --output novel.pdf
fn bind --book "My Manuscript" --format docx --footnotes end-of-book
See the Command Reference for all bind options.