A notebook is a list of cells. Notebooks are different from a program with examples because they can tell a story, mixing properly formatted text with knowledge bases and queries. The story is interactive. The reader can edit program fragments and/or queries and see the result. This makes notebooks particularly interesting for writing tutorials as well as writing cookbooks that document data analysis and transformation steps. A Prolog notebook supports three types of cells:

• Markdown cells allow you to write text in the SWI-Prolog PlDoc variation of markdown.
• HTML cells allow you to write custom style web pages as well as interative web applications. See the HTML cell demo.
• Prolog cells contain a Prolog program.
• LPAD cells contain a LPAD program.
• Query cells contain a Prolog query, operating on the nearest program above it.
• HTML cells allow you to write custom style web pages as well as interative web applications. See the HTML cell demo.
• Program cells contain a (part of a) knowledge base.

Creating a notebook

Creating and managing a notebook is supposed to be intuitive. Below we describe the first starting point as well as some less obvious operations.

• To add a new cell, click the button and select the desired cell type. The other buttons allow for deleting, copy/paste and moving cells.
• To link to another notebook, create a markdown cell and use the markdown notation [label](reference), e.g., [All about lists](lists.swinb)
• To link to file in the store, create a markdown cell and use the markdown notation [label](myfile.pl), e.g., [Basic predicates](basics.pl)

Notebook queries and programs

A notebook query cell is executed against the program cell above it and all program cells marked as background using the button. Click the button to turn a normal program cell into a background cell.

Longer fragments of code that are required throughout a notebook and possibly on multiple notebooks are defined in a program tab, saved and included using, e.g., :- include(mybasics). in a background program kept at the bottom of the notebook.

If you want to have multiple related queries in a notebook you can add a background program at the end of the notebook and above this program pairs of a normal program and query where the normal program provides data and/or parameters by defining predicates that are missing from the background program.