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📝 Letters — quick start

Letters is the word processor: letters-core (a GTK-free document engine) under a GTK4/Libadwaita shell. Install it first — see the Office Suite overview — then come back here.

Create or open a document​

  • New document: launch Letters, or open a new tab from the header bar.
  • Open: the file picker accepts .md, .txt, .html, .docx, and .odt. When you open a .docx/.odt, it round-trips through the real format's paragraph, run, and table structure — not a flattened text dump.
  • Save: pick a filename with the extension you want. The extension decides the writer: .docx and .odt write the real format via the letters-core::docx/odt modules; anything else (including .txt) serializes as Markdown. There isn't a separate HTML writer — .html is an open-side format only, so don't rely on .html as a save target.

Formatting and structure​

Everything is reachable from the command palette (Ctrl+K) or the selection toolbar. The actions below are the ones behind those UI paths, if you want to know the action name:

WhatAction
Bold / italic / underline / strikethroughapp.bold, app.italic, app.underline, app.strikethrough
Headings (H1–H6), body text, quote, code blockapp.style-h1 … app.style-h6, app.style-p, app.style-quote, app.style-code
Bullet / numbered listapp.bullet-list, app.numbered-list
Alignmentapp.align-left, app.align-center, app.align-right, app.align-justify
Insert table / image / link / footnoteapp.insert-table, app.insertimage, app.insertlink, app.insert-footnote
Highlight, font sizeapp.highlight, app.increase-font / app.decrease-font
Headers, page setupapp.edit-headers, app.page-setup

Press Ctrl+? anytime for the full shortcuts overlay — it's generated from the same action list, so it never drifts from what's bound.

Export to PDF​

Ctrl+K → "Export as PDF…" (app.export-pdf) renders the document through a Typst-backed pipeline. It is a separate path from the DOCX/ODT writers above, used specifically for print-quality PDF output.

What's next​