Developer Tools — The Mammoth Steppes

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Explanatory Notes

Mammoth Steppes Content & Formatting Guide

🌟 Dynamic Publishing Architecture

Chapters are served dynamically by the reader at book.themammothsteppes.com/chapters/<slug> without requiring website code redeployments.

📁 Crucial Folder Rule: Each chapter must have its own sub-folder in Storage: chapters/<chapter_slug>/
Never save chapter HTML, banners, or illustrations into the root chapters/ container.

chapters/
├── chapter-metadata.json              ← Global metadata index
└── escape-through-the-hollow-ways/      ← Chapter folder
    ├── escape-through-the-hollow-ways.html ← Chapter prose
    ├── banner.webp                          ← 16:9 banner (max 1920 px)
    ├── blur.webp                            ← 64×36 blurred placeholder
    └── in-the-hollow-ways.png               ← Inline scene art

✍️ Plain Text & Typography Rules

Google Docs & Markdown (.md) Upload: Write in Google Docs and export via File → Download → Markdown (.md). Click 📄 Upload Markdown File or drag-and-drop the .md file (or .zip file containing images) straight onto the editor. Escaped brackets (such as [image: ...]), smart quotes, scene breaks, headings, and paragraph spacing are cleaned and parsed automatically.
Paragraph Spacing: Leave a single blank line between paragraphs. Text pasted straight from Google Docs (one paragraph per line, no blank lines) is detected automatically — hover the ¶ chip in the Live Preview to see which mode was used.
Drop Caps: The first paragraph, and the first paragraph after every section break or ## heading, gets a golden drop cap automatically (untick Drop caps after section breaks & headings to limit it to the opening). Start any paragraph with [dropcap], [dropcap: illuminated] or [no-dropcap] to override — or use the A Drop Cap toolbar menu with the cursor in the paragraph.
Live Preview: The right-hand pane redraws as you type and follows your cursor. Use 📱 to see phone width — floated images drop below the text there, just as they will for readers.
Chapter Title & № Detection: Place Chapter 2: Escape Through the Hollow Ways on the very first line. The converter extracts the number, title, and generates the URL slug automatically.
Smart Quotes & Em-Dashes: Straight quotes (" ", ' ') convert automatically to typographic curly quotes (“ ”, ‘ ’) and double hyphens (--) convert to em-dashes (—). Corrupted Windows-1252 sequences are cleaned on conversion.
Bold & Italics: Use standard markdown: *italics* or _italics_, and **bold**.
Drag-and-Drop Ornaments: In the left-hand tools, drag a Scene Break, Section Break, Divider or any Ornament glyph onto the text and drop it where you want it. It lands as a stand-alone line; clicking the glyph instead inserts it at the cursor.
Quick Shorthand: * * * scene break · § section break (drop cap follows) · ## Title titled section · [image: wolf.png "Caption" right] image. Drag image files straight onto the text box to add them.

✨ Special Narrative Elements

✦ Scene Break Ornament

A small pause between scenes: centred golden stars (✦ ✦ ✦). The next paragraph starts without an indent, but no drop cap.

* * *   (or  ✦ ✦ ✦  or  — ✦ —  or  [scene])

❦ Section Break

A heavier, untitled break — a fleuron between two fading gold rules. The next paragraph opens with a fresh drop cap. Choose a different glyph with [section: ❧].

§   (or  ~~~  or  [section]  or  [section: ❧])

― Decorative Divider

Pure decoration — doesn't reset the drop cap. Styles: line, double, dots, stars, flourish.

[divider]   [divider: dots]   [divider: flourish]

❧ Text Ornament

A single centred fleuron. A line containing only one of ❦ ❧ ☙ ✦ ⁂ ❈ ✥ ❖ ✧ ⚜ works too.

[ornament]   [ornament: ⁂]   ❦

§ Section Heading

Renders a styled Cinzel sub-heading and automatically registers the section for table of contents navigation. Tip: Select text in the editor before clicking to wrap it directly!

## Svetlana's Discovery

❝ Pull Quote

Renders an excerpt in an elegant, centered quote callout.

> "You are deep in the mercy," Svetlana said.

🖼 Inline Illustration Tag

Embeds an illustration with an optional caption and layout: full, small, left or right (floated beside the text on wide screens, full-width on phones). Leave the layout off for centred. Click 🖼 Image to open the tray — pick an image already in chapters/<slug>/, or add/drag one from your computer and it uploads with the chapter. Missing images show as a red dashed box in the preview and are listed in the Pre-flight Check.

[image: in-the-hollow-ways.png "To the Hollow Ways"]
[image: wolf.png "At the fire's edge" right]

Markdown syntax also supported: ![To the Hollow Ways](in-the-hollow-ways.png)

🖼 Images & Chapter Folder Organisation

⚠️ Important Chapter Folder Rule: When uploading chapter covers or scene art, select Chapter Covers & Images in the Image Uploader, then pick or enter the Target Chapter Folder.

This ensures images land in chapters/<chapter_name>/<file> and never get dumped into the root chapters/ container.

Chapter Banner: Make it in Midjourney with --ar 16:9 and drop the PNG into Images → Chapter Covers. The uploader crops to 16:9 if needed, caps it at 1920 px, and saves banner.webp (~88% quality) and blur.webp (a 64×36 blurred placeholder) into chapters/<slug>/. Keep the original PNG in Google Photos. Use Chrome or Edge, because Safari cannot save WebP.
Scene Illustrations: Midjourney or AI illustrations matching prose. Upload to chapters/<chapter_slug>/, then reference using the [image: filename.png "Caption"] tag.
Other Categories: Character portraits go to images/characters/, maps to images/maps/, and miscellaneous assets to images/misc/.

📜 Opening Epigraph / Quote (Optional)

An atmospheric quote or proverb placed before the chapter body, separated by the gradient gold ornamental divider.

Quote Text: e.g. "The Hollow Ways do not guide all who enter them. They only remember those they were made to remember."
Attribution: e.g. Sayings of the Sanctuary Keepers
Click Opening Epigraph / Quote above the plain text editor to expand and enter these fields before converting.

⚙️ Metadata & Publishing Form

🔄 Auto-Link Nav: Click this button to automatically scan chapters/chapter-metadata.json and pre-fill previous (№ - 1) and next (№ + 1) chapter links.
Status:
- Published — Instantly readable on live site.
- Coming Soon — Appears on chapters carousel with coming soon badge.
- Planned — Listed as upcoming.
Dual Preview: Use Visual Reader Preview to verify formatting with exact novel styling, or HTML Source to fine-tune HTML markup directly before publishing.
Upload & Publish: Saves the HTML to chapters/<slug>/<slug>.html and updates chapters/chapter-metadata.json.