[HN Gopher] NovelWriter 1.0 - A markdown-like editor for writing...
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NovelWriter 1.0 - A markdown-like editor for writing novels
Author : app4soft
Score : 281 points
Date : 2021-01-19 13:43 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (novelwriter.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (novelwriter.io)
| impalallama wrote:
| Very cool, I've always wanted a tool like this that uses Vim
| macros. This doesn't quite meet that need but looks very useful
| nonetheless.
| BenFeldman1930 wrote:
| Missing any reference to the one and only editor, every
| commentator was actually having in mind: Emacs.
| Cyber_squad wrote:
| Very very interesting reads, thanks for sharing!
| Merg wrote:
| It is certainly interesting. If you want to check out some free
| alternative, that are pretty neat for longer writing, I really
| like Quoll Writer.
|
| It does have few more useful features like password protected
| writing, pretty ergonomic, but less standard interface and few UI
| translations.
| underdeserver wrote:
| Screenshots:
| https://novelwriter.readthedocs.io/en/stable/int_introductio...
|
| From the main page (https://novelwriter.io):
|
| novelWriter is a Markdown-like text editor designed for writing
| novels and larger projects of many smaller plain text documents.
| It uses its own flavour of Markdown that supports a meta data
| syntax for comments, synopsis, and cross-referencing between
| files. It's designed to be a simple text editor that allows for
| easy organisation of text files and notes, built on plain text
| files for robustness.
| app4soft wrote:
| Homepage: https://novelwriter.io
|
| Message to HN Mods: _Please, replace actual topic link to news
| article link_ [0]
|
| [0] https://novelwriter.io/2021/01/03/release-1-0/
| dang wrote:
| In cases where a project hasn't been discussed on HN before,
| which it appears this one hasn't, we change the link to the
| project home page. I've changed it to that from
| https://github.com/vkbo/novelWriter/releases/tag/v1.0 now.
| ConfusedDog wrote:
| Looks really good. Like a simplified version of Scrivener,
| which is awesome. Would be awesome if I can import it to
| Scrivener and the other way around.
| unixhero wrote:
| Scrivener is the novelist standard now isn't it?
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Depends what you mean by "standard". It is very widely
| used, but the closest thing to a standard in the sense of
| something needed for interoperation is docx.
| falcolas wrote:
| > standard in the sense of something needed for
| interoperation is docx
|
| 100% this. Word, or docx more specifically, is used for
| exchanging documents all over the place. It's readable
| (and writable) by Google Docs, Word, Pages, Open Office,
| and more I'm not aware of.
|
| I do some proofreading, and I have done typesetting for a
| novel, and if the inputs I get are not in a Google Doc,
| it's in docx file.
| marvindanig wrote:
| Somewhat. However, their manuscript - markdown export has
| issues. I have seen people struggling with the flavor of
| its markdown a bit as well.
|
| OP has a great solution that focuses on markdown alone. And
| that's a welcome change!
| greenie_beans wrote:
| awesome, gonna give this a try. i've tried making something like
| this but got to a point where it was becoming more sophisticated
| and difficult, so i shelved the project. i've decided that my
| time is better spent working on writing projects, so thanks for
| sharing.
| vikingcaffiene wrote:
| This has no word export option (unless I missed it) which makes
| it infeasible for a lot of writers. Like it or not, docx is the
| format a lot of folks in mainstream publishing expect.
|
| Context: My partner is a published author and I've pitched stuff
| like this at her on multiple occasions as an alternative to
| Scrivener. In addition to her laughing at my insistence that
| markdown is a superior way to write, she cites the need for a
| rock solid word export option that "just works" as a requirement
| for any tool she uses.
| notjustanymike wrote:
| Trying to unseat Scrivener is like competing with IntelliJ.
| TeaDrunk wrote:
| Scrivener does in fact have competition. (Highland 2 for
| screenwriting for example.)
| mmastrac wrote:
| Ok, we're going down the hole of analogies a little too far
| but VS Code and the world of language services is a pretty
| decent replacement for a lot of use cases outside of
| IntelliJ's core Java strength.
|
| Every top dog eventually gets cut down by _someone_ over
| time.
| RandomWorker wrote:
| should be easy to implement using pandoc since the underlying
| code is python?
| ziftface wrote:
| Yeah I was surprised to see it didn't use pandoc for exports.
| I'm not sure why, and all these issues about exporting to
| word wouldn't exist.
| RandomWorker wrote:
| Might be due the GPL license of pandoc, this is a copyleft
| type license, requiring any code that is built with pandoc
| to be described, made available, and released under the
| same license.
|
| https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/blob/master/COPYRIGHT
| spijdar wrote:
| Given that novelWriter itself is GPL licensed, I doubt
| this is the problem. More likely it was a choice to avoid
| needing pandoc as a dependency, either explicitly
| (bundled or integrated in the code somehow) or implicitly
| (calling to the system's pandoc install), as pandoc is
| written in Haskell and kind of a PITA to build or
| integrate in that way.
|
| Since you can already export to a single ODT/PDF/MD, the
| benefits of additional pandoc integration are probably
| diminished.
| kadrian12 wrote:
| I applaud the author for keeping everything text file based.
|
| In general, I think we should strive for non-proprietary,
| standard file formats.
|
| Isn't docx far too one-sided and controlled in that regard? I
| wonder if anyone has some info on the "state of affairs" for
| the "document format race".
| michaericalribo wrote:
| To be fair, docx _is_ non-proprietary. And as an ISO
| standard, it is a _very_ standard format.
| ordinaryradical wrote:
| None of this matters because the industry relies on docx (and
| it's a crusty, oldschool industry so good luck changing
| that).
|
| A minimum for a novel writing tool is that one can actually
| send the novel out in a format where your agent and editor
| will read it. Otherwise you're not getting that novel
| published.
| nix23 wrote:
| I see you hate the Unix philosophy....for conversions use
| pandoc. A Song of Ice and Fire was not written with Word.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| > A Song of Ice and Fire was not written with Word.
|
| When startups haven't even started up yet but are
| worrying about how they can scale to billion-dollar
| unicorn level, a common refrain on Hacker News has been
| "you are not Google."
|
| Allow me to give you the fiction writers' equivalent: you
| are not George R.R. Martin.
| nix23 wrote:
| The output is md....dont you think you can convert that
| too let's say docx? You don't even have to be Google todo
| that.
|
| And if you want to let it proof read by George R.R.
| Martin you can even convert it to WordStar....magic eh?
| Pandoc can do that...your MS Word too?
| rusticpenn wrote:
| How are you going to handle editor comments without
| losing history?
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| You're missing the point that people are trying to make
| here.
|
| Yes, it's possible to convert Markdown to a Word file,
| with a variety of tools. You can use Pandoc to do this
| _if you are the sort of person who is comfortable using
| tools like Pandoc._ I can do that, along with all sorts
| of other things, because I am that sort of nerd.
|
| _However,_ most fiction writers and editors are _not_
| that sort of nerd. Most people don 't want to use
| Markdown in the first place. Of the people who _do_ want
| to use Markdown, not all of _them_ are that sort of nerd,
| either. They want an "Export to > DOCX" command in their
| editor, not "save the Markdown file, open your terminal
| app, change to your documents directory, and type "pandoc
| -o my-novel.docx my-novel.md". (And that's assuming
| they're not doing something like, well, what NovelWriter
| does, saving individual chapters and perhaps even
| individual _scenes_ as independent files.)
|
| Look, I love Pandoc. It's great. But it's not a tool for
| everyone. If someone is trying to embrace the plain text
| lifestyle with a tool like NovelWriter but pointing out
| not being able to export to a Word file is a problem for
| them, asking "are you comfortable with Unix command line
| tools" and then telling them about Pandoc if they say yes
| might be a great idea -- but starting out with "obviously
| you hate the Unix way", maybe not so much.
|
| > you can even convert it to WordStar....magic eh? Pandoc
| can do that.
|
| No, in fact it cannot. :)
| spijdar wrote:
| > (And that's assuming they're not doing something like,
| well, what NovelWriter does, saving individual chapters
| and perhaps even individual scenes as independent files.)
|
| This is _totally_ unrelated to the gist of this thread,
| but I just wanted to point out that novelWriter 's
| project builder outputs to a single file, which can be
| markdown, ODF, PDF, HTML, and others. Pandoc could then
| make a single DOCX file out of that.
|
| Your point still stands that this is too complicated for
| the average user, but I just wanted to mention this since
| it might make a difference for technically minded writers
| considering novelWriter.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| That makes sense (I figured novelWriter did that, since
| it looks an _awful_ lot like an attempt at a Markdown-
| based answer to Scrivener and that 's how Scrivener's
| "Compile" function works), and I suspect it won't be too
| difficult for novelWriter to add other file formats to
| its exporter. So not being able to output DOCX is
| probably not a long-term issue, unless the maintainers
| have a philosophical objection to it. :)
| nix23 wrote:
| First, your probably right and i may/really have missed
| the point.
|
| Second...it really cant.
|
| Shame on me, and sorry for my tone.
| falcolas wrote:
| When you too can afford to pay your editors,
| proofreaders, and publishers to accommodate your unique
| file formats and the associated changes to their
| workflow, you too can write in WordStar.
| nix23 wrote:
| Since you obvious don't know what unix philosophy is,
| it's a md writer..that's it, you want to convert it..take
| a converter like pandoc. If you really think every
| writing program should have it's own converters..well
| then you end up with less interchangeable stuff. One tool
| for Writing another one for conversion..is that so
| complicated?
| CJefferson wrote:
| If you have an editor, you need two way communication --
| they are going to make changes in your word document,
| using track changes, so you also need to be able to
| convert back.
| falcolas wrote:
| For a layman, err, editor? Absolutely. It's a completely
| different workflow than what they're used to.
|
| The Unix philosophy has nothing to do with this, since
| we're not talking about programming, we're talking about
| writing.
| nix23 wrote:
| >since we're not talking about programming
|
| Has nothing todo with programming, a real hammer is
| better as the backside of an axe. A Specialized Knife is
| better then a Swiss-Pocket Knife. One tool for one job
| but make that job perfect.
| youngtaff wrote:
| Depends on what industry... O'Reilly relies on Asciidoc
| falcolas wrote:
| If we're being fair, docx (or rather, tools that write docx
| files) offers a lot of tooling out of the box that is
| useful for proofreaders, editors, and typesetters. Revision
| history, suggestions, and non-printing comments are all
| incredibly useful.
| sigzero wrote:
| Use pandoc to export or transform it (if you can).
| spoiler wrote:
| From the documentation:
|
| > The core export format of novelWriter is HTML5. You can also
| export the entire project as a single novelWriter Markdown-
| flavour document. In addition, other exports to Open Document,
| PDF, and plain text is offered through the Qt library, although
| with limitations to formatting.
|
| So it seems like it can export to Open Document, which seems to
| be well-supported[1]; including Microsoft Office support.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument#Application_suppo...
| madsbuch wrote:
| Docx might be an appropriate format to communicate with a
| publisher. But to my very limited knowledge Markdown is a good
| choice for the initial authoring process. As it can easily be
| converted. These days publishing happens on all sorts of
| platforms and the end product needs to be prepared for the
| press, ePub, Kindle, PDF, audiobooks, etc.
|
| Until the distribution is decided my intuition is that Markdown
| provides this needed flexiblity.
| michaericalribo wrote:
| Just to add here, the question is not "is markdown (or tex or
| binary strings or...) better", but "can the person who
| determines whether I get paid open the file?"
|
| The fiction publishing world is cutthroat competitive. Trying
| to use nonstandard tools / "breaking the mold" adds even more
| friction to success.
| lhenk wrote:
| This can be accomplished by exporting to PDF
| TeaDrunk wrote:
| How is a copyeditor supposed to manage a PDF? PDFs are
| generally a huge no-no in submissions. (Source: I write
| short fiction & my short fiction has been published.)
| vidarh wrote:
| Unless you're already a big-name author you rarely get to
| choose. Docx will generally be an option, and if you're
| lucky a few other formats.
| barkingcat wrote:
| exporting to pdf is exactly what you _don 't_ want as an
| editor receiving files from a writer.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| I guess their editor can just cut and paste to Word if he
| really wants to make corrections.
| socialdemocrat wrote:
| Geez 99.99% of a Nobel is just plain text. MS Word adds no
| value. Getting plain text into MS Word is not rocket science.
|
| The point of using markdown is that you got many tools which
| are superior is aiding in you writing process and organizing
| your text.
|
| The final format is much less important than whatever aids
| your writing process.
|
| I have tried using traditional word processors for writing
| novels and I cannot say they measure up to tools like
| Ulysses.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| > MS Word adds no value.
|
| Word automates a lot of things in the editing cycle of a
| novel. Word's "Track Changes"/"Accept Changes" tools and
| the workflows they enable are by far the most common in a
| number of industries, but especially in edit workflows of
| most major publishers. That's why the Word format
| specifically is often requested/required, because people
| know and understand those tools and already have
| processes/workflows built around them.
|
| The closest equivalent tools for plain text are source
| control systems and text diff/patch. Those tools _are_
| great (and arguably fit some definitions of "superior",
| especially in capturing history earlier in the process and
| keeping history longer after the process). They are also
| nowhere as ubiquitously installed as Word, and nowhere near
| as easily taught (or already known/understood) as Word in
| today's world.
|
| Those "edit cycle" needs maybe aren't a huge reason to do
| the initial writing in Word, but they are certainly many
| steps above "no value", and thus the noted restriction that
| no matter what tool you use for the initial writing, if it
| doesn't have an _easy_ Word export to get it started down
| the edit cycle path then it doesn 't have an easy fit in
| today's publishing world.
| vikingcaffiene wrote:
| I'll tell her to let her editor know that. Lol.
| eslaught wrote:
| I will find out the answer to this question hopefully later
| this year. :-)
|
| But anyway, I do use Markdown and I have submitted to
| contests etc. that require Word formatted files. For the most
| part it's an nonissue. I can use Pandoc to export to Word,
| provide the reference file with the correct format, and boom,
| I'm done. None of the judges of my works so far have ever had
| any issues opening my files.
|
| I agree the publishing industry will never accept Markdown.
| That's ok. I can use the tools I like and still produce what
| they need to do their part of the job.
| michaericalribo wrote:
| I agree, and I draft my own fiction in emacs. The cost is
| lower to use my preferred editor, then do the post-hoc
| formatting adjustments once in Word.
|
| For a novelist, though, the editing process is quite
| iterative: make changes, send them to your editor, they
| send it back with comments and inline track changes and so
| on.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I'm an advocate for using tools you're
| most comfortable with...whatever gets you writing! But
| these small things can throw a wrench in the process. It
| sure sucks to have to do edits in Word!
|
| Good luck with the publishing project, though, it sounds
| like you're pretty far along!
| [deleted]
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| I'm an author and an software engineer. I can see why
| Markdown could be _slightly_ better for a writer - but not
| much better - and honestly it seems like a step down for an
| editor.
|
| Primarily, all a writer does is write plain text. Probably
| less than 1% of sentences are anything other than plain text.
|
| There's not a lot of headings or titles. There's not a lot of
| italics or bold text.
|
| What else is there? What am I missing? What's the benefit?
| TeaDrunk wrote:
| This sounds silly but as an author myself it's extremely
| important that I know what the story looks like to a final
| reader while I write it. It's like dogfooding my own prose.
| Too many short paragraphs, or too many long ones, or
| strange gaps, etc. are much more evident to me in docx or
| scrivener or any other text processor.
|
| I could never get over Markdown; Markdown doesn't show me
| the user experience of my own code(writing), while word and
| scrivener will show me _instantly_.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| Consider a book like The Lord of the Rings. It has gone
| through countless revisions and corrections. With markdown
| and git you could track those changes and corrections over
| time.
| michaericalribo wrote:
| Yes, you or I could...but Tolkien was much busier writing
| and world-building, and I seriously doubt George Allen &
| Unwin (the publishers) would have acceded to conditions
| on how the manuscript was sent to them!
| wyclif wrote:
| I write books in Vim. The way I work is that I do it all in
| plaintext until the final edit. Only after that do I add
| formatting (could be .docx or Markdown or whatever the
| editor expects).
| michaericalribo wrote:
| What happens when your editor requests changes? How are
| those edits communicated to you, and how do you integrate
| them back into plaintext?
|
| (Serious question--a big pain point for me is the choice
| between using my preferred tool to start, then switching
| to a bad tool later; or, using a bad tool the entire
| time)
| socialdemocrat wrote:
| You just sold everyone on markdown. This is the whole
| point. All the crap MS Word adds to support formatting and
| visual styles is in the way. With markdown you focus on the
| actual text. Exactly what an author should want to.
|
| What exactly does MS Word add over markdown which matters
| to an author? I am talking about the writing experience.
| You could always export to docx.
| citizenkeen wrote:
| Why would I want to write my first draft in a different
| tool than my subsequent drafts? Nobody cares about visual
| styles, but my editor sends back their thoughts with
| inline edits and comments in Word. It's so much easier to
| edit in Word. I'm a huge Markdown fan, but it raises the
| question:
|
| What does Markdown get me that makes it worth switching
| to for the first draft only?
| michaericalribo wrote:
| Ha! This is a really interesting perspective--I think
| you're saying, "it's all plain text, so there's no
| advantage to using Markdown instead of docx".
|
| I think others have an opposite view, but on the same
| grounds. The argument seems to be: it's all plain text, so
| docx is overkill, so markdown is more technically
| efficient!
|
| There's some benefit to using the tool I know best (emacs,
| for me), so it's nice to use a "native" format that also
| gives me my usual keybindings, macros, etc.
|
| But there's no doubt it just offloads the inefficiency to a
| different step of the process. I'm more comfortable with
| inputting text, but it requires post-hoc reformatting, and
| I'd have to use a different word processor for post-editor
| changes...
|
| The "markdown is a more efficient solution from a technical
| perspective" argument doesn't hold a lot of weight with
| me...the practical overhead of docx is minimal, so unless
| you prize technical purity over all else, I don't think
| there _is_ a benefit.
| eslaught wrote:
| The benefit is the rest of the pure text toolchain. Like
| being able to use Git. I can confirm, for example, how
| long a typo has existed in my book by looking at the Git
| history. Maybe that's a bit academic, but you get the
| point. I have the complete history of everything I've
| ever written.
|
| Another example: because formatting is reified in
| Markdown, I can grep for it. Did I misuse italics? With
| one command I can find every single place where I used
| italics in my entire book. I don't think you can even do
| that in Word. Good luck reading a multi-hundred page
| manuscript to find all of the places you may have made
| the same mistake.
|
| Another example: Word provides styles, but honestly, who
| has discipline to use them? Most people I know manually
| insert page breaks, centered text, and X number blank
| spaces at the top of a page to make a new chapter. In
| Markdown, all of my markup gets converted into Word
| styles automatically and then I can create a reference
| doc to apply the style I want. I'm writing semantically
| correct styles in my documents all the time with no
| additional effort.
| michaericalribo wrote:
| Well, to be fair, MS Word maintains a full history of
| every edit that was made.
|
| And, find-and-replace for specific formatting _is_
| supported out-of-the-box.
|
| Finally, cmd-i / cmd-u / cmd-b are pretty easy default
| bindings, and setting up shortcuts for more intricate,
| specific styles is straightforward in Word.
|
| I share your preference for using an efficient tool--I'm
| a die-hard md+git practitioner. But the "most people I
| know" argument is not a good basis for rejecting real,
| rich features in software that works well for other
| people.
|
| I am also curious: why do you care about semantic
| correctness? It's OK if that's just your preference, but
| it's not something that moves the needle for me....I'm
| not sure why I should care!
|
| (edit to add: my comment sounds glib and a little sharper
| that I intended. That wasn't my intent!)
| aeroevan wrote:
| > MS Word maintains a full history of every edit that was
| made
|
| This is only true while track changes is on, correct?
| Like can I see the state of a docx as I was writing it
| last month/year?
| michaericalribo wrote:
| I don't use Word so I can't say!
|
| But if you cared about the history, why wouldn't you
| always turn them on by default? "Full history" in git is
| also an opt-in model for maintaining a history...
| boplicity wrote:
| You also need a way to import changes from edits. Word's track
| changes feature is vital in professional contexts, even though
| it is not always intuitive. Once a manuscript gets to the
| editing stage, tracking revisions, comments, suggestions, etc
| is extremely important. I suppose at that stage, you could just
| move away from a tool like this, and just use Word, or Google
| Docs.
| vidarh wrote:
| It can export to ODT or HTML, both of which can be imported
| into word, or moved over by crudely cut and pasting into Word.
|
| I think the bigger issue if she already likes Scrivener is that
| if that is the functionality she wants, then unless she wants
| the flexibility of being able to customise a tool or process
| Markdown files with code or switch to Linux etc. is something
| she wants, then it's not likely the tools you've pitched, or
| this one, will be an improvement.
|
| I write in Markdown myself, so I absolutely sympathise with
| your POV on that, but I think the "rock solid word export" is
| more of a way to get you off her back because it works.
| barkingcat wrote:
| I agree with her - markdown is totally not a superior way to
| write. It's a good way to mark up text, but writing isn't just
| marking up text.
| socialdemocrat wrote:
| When writing you want a tool focused specifically on writing
| an organizing text. Programs like word is too focused on
| formatting and visual aspects.
|
| Markdown would be much better for authors. Just because they
| have become accustomed to something else doesn't mean that
| something else is better.
|
| Just watching the mess my dad makes when writing books in
| Word makes me convinced that anybody who claims Word is
| superior for an author simply have never watched and author
| in action.
| [deleted]
| em-bee wrote:
| it says it can exporting to ODF, but without much formatting
| requiring additional editing after conversion. instead it
| recommends exporting to HTML, and then importing that into
| writer or word for better results.
|
| but i could not tell from the docs how to get the end result
| into something like standard manuscript format without manual
| processing.
| em-bee wrote:
| found the answer: http://www.autodidacts.io/convert-markdown-
| to-standard-manus...
| coliveira wrote:
| She's correct. Only a programmer may entertain the idea that
| editing markdown is superior to any visual editor.
| kevincox wrote:
| Infeasible is maybe a stretch. However you will need to have a
| multi-step "Export for Publish" workflow which is definitely a
| hurdle. However assuming that 95% of the time is spent writing
| it may be worth it if you like the tool.
| lhorie wrote:
| > markdown is a superior way to write
|
| Is it though? I don't have any experience with book authoring
| but I would expect stuff like Geronimo Stilton to be hard to
| produce with markdown: it is peppered with creative text
| highlighting (e.g. words written in a custom cheese-pattern
| font) and this is common in primary school geared books.
|
| Even decidedly grown-up books like GEB might have illustrations
| and diagrams, and it's important to consider where said
| illustrations go - they must fit in a physical page.
|
| There are also other small quality of life things that word
| does automatically, e.g. replace ASCII 0x22 (keyboard quote)
| with 0x201C / 0x201D (left and right double quotes,
| respectively), etc.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I love to use markdown for programming
| documentation and it's pretty good for that, especially when
| you adopt flavors like GFM. But I'm legitimately curious what
| makes one consider markdown superior for book writing. It just
| seems like it would have a different set of priorities.
| ajarmst wrote:
| I think that _House of Leaves_ can be left as an unaddressed
| edge-case for most novel-writing tools.
| socialdemocrat wrote:
| Coming up with the text and doing the visual layout later are
| often separate step. And author does not do all the visual
| layout.
| edwinyzh wrote:
| Yes, almost publishers accept Word documents only, and that's
| why I've built DocxManager (https://docxmanager.com/) on top of
| Microsoft Word. ;)
|
| Basically, it's an outliner/corkboard/project manager for all
| kinds writers who uses Word.
| falcolas wrote:
| Windows only. Bummer. Completely understandable, but bummer.
| A lot of tools can output .docx files.
| evolve2k wrote:
| Acknowledge having an inbuilt export would be preferable but
| for what it's worth; If you're a dev it shouldn't be too hard
| to leverage pandoc, especially coming from a clean text based
| format.
|
| Something like:
|
| $ brew install pandoc (install on macOS)
|
| $ pandoc -t docx filename.md -o filename.docx
|
| Ref: https://opensource.com/article/19/5/convert-markdown-to-
| word...
| TeaDrunk wrote:
| This is now significantly more steps than downloading
| Scrivener.
| codetrotter wrote:
| However, since NovelWriter is GPLv3 licensed, they could in
| theory incorporate code from Pandoc, which is GPLv2
| licensed, directly into NovelWriter.
| gabereiser wrote:
| I think you guys are missing the point. The point isn't
| "how do we get from markdown to docx" but rather "why
| doesn't this tool support the format my publisher
| expects". Yes, pandoc is amazing, but the product needs
| to support exporting to docx for the publisher so that
| the _user_ of NovelWriter feels supported and empowered
| to write.
|
| TeaDrunk said it best: it's now significantly more steps
| the user shouldn't have to do.
| youngtaff wrote:
| Unless it's got better Scrivener is pretty awful though -
| bought it for my first book and gave up, both books I've
| written were written with other tools
| sien wrote:
| What did you use instead?
| buildbuildbuild wrote:
| Ulysses deciding to switch to a subscription model, locking all
| of my works in progress after I purchased their app for $50,
| pushed me back to vim for writing. It's remarkably unremarkable
| and fine.
|
| I wish this project the best of luck. Down with Ulysses.
| WesleyLivesay wrote:
| Looks pretty cool!
|
| I have ended up settling on a similar setup for my writing in VS
| Code. I am a heavy outliner so instead of
| [FileTree][Markdown][Preview] I use
| [FileTree][Outline][Markdown].
|
| I'm not sure I would find the various bits of stats useful,
| although I am sure there are some who do. I think it would
| probably just cause me anxiety or cause me to put too much focus
| on numbers.
| ar-nelson wrote:
| Tried installing via pip3 on Debian Buster, and it segfaults
| immediately. I'm sure it's an issue with my system, but I can't
| figure out what; there's no useful debug information, even though
| it tries to open KDE's bug report dialog.
| jdbiggs wrote:
| So this is really good for what it is - an open source Scrivener.
| If I didn't have the cash for Scrivener I'd use this until I
| could afford it.
| bronikowski wrote:
| It's true that with ideas, if you wait long enough, someone will
| do the work for you. I was toying with an idea of "novel markup",
| something that could let you track characters over scenes,
| geographical locations and interpersonal relationships.
|
| Things got hairy quickly so it died on pages of my notebook. Glad
| someone gave it a go. A header tagging is probably better than
| inline I wanted to have.
| nahuel0x wrote:
| Somebody feels we need to found a middle way between full WYSIYWG
| and two pane source/preview for Markdown writing?
| 5cents wrote:
| You may have a look at Zettlr: https://zettlr.com/ (open-
| source)
| cecja wrote:
| Joplin has both atm it's quite nice.
| app4soft wrote:
| Maybe _ghostwriter_ [0] is what you are looking for?
|
| [0] http://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter/
| nahuel0x wrote:
| I just found typora[0] and Emacs "M-x markdown-toggle-markup-
| hiding" :)
|
| [0] https://typora.io/
| app4soft wrote:
| > https://support.typora.io/License-Agreement/
|
| EULA?! Thanks, but NO.
|
| P.S. _ghtostwriter_ is fully free & open-source, instead
| of _proprietary Typora_.
| nahuel0x wrote:
| Also found MarkText, MIT Licensed: https://marktext.app/
| klunger wrote:
| I am currently making my way through "The Fantasy Fiction
| Formula" by Deborah Chester. It's my first stab at this kind of
| thing, so it has been really eye opening. When I read any kind of
| fiction now, I can't help but map out all the elements of plot
| and scene described by Chester. (This has had the unpleasant side
| effect of making reading fiction less pleasurable. ah well)
|
| So, I can see this kind of tool being very useful in structuring
| plots, sub-plots and scenes. I still haven't written that book
| though, so I am wondering if any seasoned writers here have a
| take on it.
| vidarh wrote:
| > This has had the unpleasant side effect of making reading
| fiction less pleasurable. ah well
|
| If it helps, I think this side-effect is likely to fade for
| good fiction. Bad-but-tolerable fiction gets ruined forever
| when you get better at spotting what they do and what it gets
| wrong...
|
| I haven't read the book you mention, but when I've read similar
| type of books before it's definitively been annoying for a
| while, but then it goes to the background and it seems to
| usually just pop into my mind when I either spot particularly
| good or bad examples. When I notice particularly _good_ uses of
| techniques now, it tends to make me appreciate the work more,
| if anything.
| prionassembly wrote:
| I bought "Save the cat!" (I'd read some parts of Vogler's
| "Writer's journey" in film school) hoping to adapt the formula
| to writing a bad novel. Then I never did.
|
| The weird thing about hobby projects is that they don't have an
| actual audience. So I write a lot about philosophy and social
| theory and such, but it's ultimately a lot of self-dialog. This
| doesn't work for fiction, even short stories. (I did write a
| handful of poems in the 2010s)
| ajarmst wrote:
| I don't get it. Why "markdown-like". Do people writing novels
| have some need that is unmet by an existing flavour of markdown?
| Because I have to say that the last thing that ecosystem needs is
| yet another flavour. I thought the entire point to markdown was
| that you _didn 't need a special editor_. Which of course has
| done nothing to reduce their mushrooms-in-a-damp-cellar
| proliferation.
| ajarmst wrote:
| NB: I'm an emacs/org-mode/pandoc toolchain devotee (aficionado?
| cultmember?), so I should disclose that I don't get the point
| of most editing tools.
| omarhaneef wrote:
| So I have been looking for something like this, and in fact the
| closest thing might be Highland 2. What I have been using is
| VScode with some scripts and other features. Really want an
| alternative to scrivener that keeps everything in markdown.
|
| The key thing I miss in all the other versions is something that
| will:
|
| 1. Count the words in a chapter/scene/section
|
| 2. Give me a total based on the "in work"
| chapters/scenes/sections
|
| For example suppose I am writing Chapter 1-9. I don't like
| Chapter 8 so I am rewriting an alternate. I want to know what the
| old chapter 8 word count is, what the new one is, and what the
| total word count is (and I can select which chapters or sections
| to include in the "total").
|
| Looks like this does something like that so long as I put all the
| relevant chapters together in the same folder. (Good enough if I
| get to use Markdown.)
|
| Only issue is, if I go into the folders, I don't see the Markdown
| files. Isn't that the point?
| Tallain wrote:
| Have you heard of Manuskript[0]? It's an open source editor
| with a lot of features similar to Scrivener, runs on
| Linux/Windows/Mac, and has a few features that Scrivener
| doesn't have that have helped me plan things more fully in the
| past. It's not perfect, but it's a solid tool. Also, it's
| backed by Markdown text files.
|
| [0]: https://www.theologeek.ch/manuskript/
| omarhaneef wrote:
| I have used it, and I liked it but back when I used it:
|
| 1. It was only for linux (and I hope OS a lot)
|
| 2. I either didn't know, or didn't appreciate, that it uses
| Markdown.
|
| Thanks for the tip.
|
| (I also think there was only an option to install it from a
| site I did not know if I could trust, and I hate building
| from source.)
| k_sze wrote:
| Interesting. Does that make it kinda midway between "pure"
| MarkDown and reStructuredText? As in, it's a bit more powerful
| than pure MarkDown, but still lighter to use than
| reStructuredText?
|
| I mean, if you don't mind summoning the awesome power of
| something like Visual Studio Code, you could also write
| reStructureText with live preview (there's a VSCode extension for
| that, IIRC).
| lazrgatr wrote:
| don't suppose you can make this, but aimed at thesis writing?
| soferio wrote:
| Looks great. I would be delighted to have the small task of
| converting to docx when the big task of actually writing a novel
| is made easier by this and finished! (Also python has docx
| libraries so docx is unlikely to be too much trouble in due
| course). Well done!
| cheph wrote:
| The proliferation of markdown forks is a mess. Can't you just use
| something better to begin with, like asciidoc? I think you can
| likely just use existing asciidoc mechanisms to support the same
| thing and then existing editors will still be usable.
| [deleted]
| chank wrote:
| The proliferation of markdown itself is also a mess IMO.
| Outside of web writing it seems really more effort than it's
| worth. Seems like everyone making a writing tool of any kind is
| ditching rich text in favor of it for no good reason.
| jotson wrote:
| For me, plaintext (like Markdown) is a strength over
| proprietary or binary formats and I've accepted the
| tradeoffs. It's the primary "good reason" I use Markdown. I
| have confidence that text will always be readable in the
| future even if I don't have the app that made it. Secondarily
| I find most word processors overkill with toolbars everywhere
| and I do not like using them.
| calebm wrote:
| Oh man, I'm definitely gonna try this. I recently did a good bit
| of research into how I could write a novel (or anything with
| footnotes) in plain text, and it was surprisingly difficult - so
| much so that I just decided to use Scrivener instead. But this
| looks promising!
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| Are there any minimal editors like this that support vim-like
| keybindings?
|
| I've been using Sublime-Text with a markdown plugin, but
| interested in something more focused on prose writing.
|
| (I also use 1Writer on iOS which is a solid plaintext/markdown
| editor.)
| premek wrote:
| is author here?
|
| - Is it suitable for non-technical writers? is there any feedback
| on them baing able to use markdown, @pov tags etc?
|
| - did you try some commercial competitors? How would you compare?
| I understand scrivener is one popular option
| vidarh wrote:
| I'm actually support for similar tagging to my own personal
| editor (for my first two novels I used a mix of Google Docs
| (yes, really) and Libre Office; using my own editor for my
| third). I'm definitively going to steal ideas from this one...
|
| I don't think using those kind of features requires any
| technical understanding at all. If anything, people are used to
| doing "ad hoc" tagging with easily searchable strings.
| [deleted]
| app4soft wrote:
| UPD: Dev just answered[0] to your qestions:
|
| Q: Is it suitable for non-technical writers? is there any
| feedback on them baing able to use markdown, @pov tags etc?
|
| A: _" non-technical" as in the person or the writing itself? I
| deliberately chose not to write a WYSIWYG editor in order to
| keep the files plain text and as simple as possible. I've
| written a WYSIWYG editor before, and didn't like the result. I
| guess having to use some markup makes it slightly technical in
| use, but I've also added menu entries and keyboard shortcuts
| for all the features, so it shouldn't be too difficult to get
| started._
|
| Q: Did you try some commercial competitors? How would you
| compare? I understand scrivener is one popular option
|
| A: _I 've used it, yes. It's excellent, and perfect if you want
| a full WYSIWYG editor with a lot of features. I went in a
| different direction exactly because I wanted something simpler.
| Also, as a Linux user, the lack of decent options was a
| factor._
|
| [0]
| https://github.com/vkbo/novelWriter/discussions/567#discussi...
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| As someone working on an alternative editor for novelists, I
| appreciate what the creator(s) are going for here.
|
| Creating ebooks is a pain in the butt for a non-technical user.
| But there's nothing to it if you've ever worked with HTML and
| CSS. Because the ebook formats are basically all variants of XML.
|
| I'm of the opinion that there really is a place on the market for
| editing software that is a) hyper-focused on the needs of
| novelists (allowing the design and features to be focused as
| well); and b) handles the technical aspects of ebooks for you.
|
| Most of the existing solutions require a certain amount of
| technical expertise, or are so bloated with features that
| managing the software becomes a project.
|
| But this is where NovelWriter falls short, in my opinion. It
| solves the ebook-creation process, but from the eyes of a
| developer. The thing is, developers don't have these problems,
| because we're comfortable with the tech. 5 minutes of Googling
| will solve the book writing problem for any developer.
|
| These problems persists for non-technical users. NovelWriter
| doesn't appear to solve them.
|
| The interface here looks like a code editor, which isn't going to
| be comforting to most writers. (Ever have someone walk up to your
| desk and declare the code editor on your screen to be immediately
| indecipherable? I think they're have the same gut reaction upon
| seeing this editor.)
|
| And Markdown is terrifying to non-coders. It looks like
| gobbledygook. _We_ love it, but every time I 've tried to show a
| non-developer what Markdown looked like, their eyes glazed over.
|
| So those are my critiques. But things that I think are awesome
| about this project:
|
| 1. Open-source. This should always be celebrated because it's not
| easy to just give away your hard work. (My own app will be SaaS.)
|
| 2. Word counts per chapter and for the book as a whole, viewable
| at all times.
|
| 3. Editor and preview at the same time. (Common feature for
| markdown editors, but still well done.)
|
| 4. Solution for outlining, character profiles, tracking
| locations, plot points, etc. The implementation for these appears
| to be quite simple, too. These are features that my own app may
| not have at launch, so hats off.
|
| 5. They actually delivered.
|
| I, for one, am excited about this project and will be following
| along.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I am writing a novel in Markdown using Emacs. For most of the
| novel writing process Markdown is enough. I have been toying with
| the idea of tweaking the markdown like this novelWriter does,
| mostly because I constantly find myself wanting to annotate my
| text, or temporarily mark out, but not delete, blocks of text.
| michaericalribo wrote:
| Lots of comments here to the effect of "novelists don't need
| full-featured rich styling*, it's all just plain text!" It's true
| for _many_ novels.
|
| But it's not true for _all_ novels! House of Leaves (Danielewski)
| and S. (Abrams/Dorst) are full-fledged multimedia novels. Many
| fantasy novels use maps; Crying of Lot 49 uses at least 1 image,
| in situ. And I would love to see an edition of Pale Fire
| (Nabokov) that interposes annotations between the "original
| formatting" of the poem!
|
| "The novel" isn't really a well-defined concept...there are many
| interpretations of the basic concept! The high % of novels that
| are "just text" is descriptive, not prescriptive.
|
| * Use whatever definition of "rich text" you like, I don't care
| ElBookleyTruth wrote:
| I'll learn you why formats doesn't matter. If your book is good
| we'll pirate it. And if your book is good it doesn't matter how
| you write it. The publishers will be willing to dig through your
| shit to get to the grains of it. Trust me. If you worry about
| formats you need to write better. Let that shit sink in. It
| really doesn't at all matter. And if you're popular you'll both
| earn a million and have a million pirates dude. Just write a good
| book. Bad books is nothing anyone cares about.
| jzer0cool wrote:
| Very nice from the screenshot provided and I would like to try
| running later this month.
|
| With new GNU license is it fine to release something new in same
| why there are different linux flavors? As I understand I must
| than return also provide the product source code as well and must
| also release under GNU, or is it something else?
|
| Or am I thinking here of GPL? If anyone has info please share!
| chank wrote:
| Outside of the more technically inclined; Does anyone who is a
| long-form (novel) writer actually use markdown? Outside of
| blogging, which it was invented for and makes total sense for
| syntax conversion of free formed text to html is there any real
| use for it?
|
| Obviously you don't have to use it if you don't want to, but it
| sort of feels odd to me that all these developers making
| writing/notes apps that neglect rich text editing entirely in
| favor of markdown simply because it's easy to implement. I am
| definitely tired of seeing my writing littered with a detritus of
| special characters when it's never going to get exported to
| anything other than text.
| ordinaryradical wrote:
| Published novelist.
|
| I use markdown for drafting via the delightfully minimalistic
| iA Writer. It is useful for first drafts and editing on a
| sentence by sentence level.
|
| However, it is not really ideal for getting the text into ms
| format or for organizing and editing something as complex as a
| finished draft, so I use Scrivener at that end of the process.
|
| I think there probably is no single tool that is ideal at all
| stages of writing a novel. In the beginning you want something
| that gets the hell out of your way and lets you write quickly.
| Once the first draft is done, you need structural editing
| tools. And during that process you will want to dip into
| tighter, sentence-by-sentence tooling for rewriting and
| revising.
| caconym_ wrote:
| I wrote the first draft of my first novel in Vim using
| Markdown. I've since switched to Scrivener, mostly for the
| general convenience it offers and especially the mobile apps
| and syncing, but there is a lot about that old workflow that I
| miss. It's really convenient to have everything in a single
| buffer optimized for keyboard-only navigation, and with Pandoc
| there aren't really any concerns around exporting to .docx.
|
| I absolutely hate WYSIWYG editing when I'm writing fiction,
| because it's totally unnecessary and only serves to muddy the
| waters when it's time to export the text, e.g. if some of the
| devices I was editing on were set to use smart quotes and some
| weren't. The text of a typical novel doesn't have much going on
| besides chapters, sections, and paragraphs, so Markdown really
| has everything you need, and for fancier formatting (like the
| side-by-side verse paragraphs in _Stand on Zanzibar_ , just to
| name one example off the top of my head) I get the feeling that
| Scrivener isn't really flexible enough. There are better tools,
| like Vellum, and I think traditional rich text editing exists
| in a sort of uncomfortable middle ground where it offers just
| enough functionality to get in the way.
|
| But obviously installing and using a command-line utility like
| Pandoc is not something the typical author can really be
| expected to do, so they're stuck using the standard industry-
| favorite tools that do it all from a GUI.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| i do, but i'm an unpublished writer. i didn't start using
| markdown until i learned to code. also, non-technical writers
| need to learn how to use git.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| Well, adding this condition:
|
| > Outside of the more technically inclined...
|
| Makes it hard to definitively answer your question:
|
| > Does anyone who is a long-form (novel) writer actually use
| Markdown?
|
| I am aware of published authors who've used Ulysses, a
| Markdown-based multi-document editor for the Mac, for writing
| novels.[1] Semi-famously, mystery author David Hewson is a huge
| Ulysses fan, and wrote his own book about his process. I don't
| get the impression Hewson is super technically inclined the
| way, say, Matt Gemmell -- a software engineer turned novelist
| who's also a huge Ulysses fan -- clearly is. Some of the appeal
| for non-nerds is, I think, part of what grognards like George
| R.R. Martin and Robert Sawyer argue gives WordStar for DOS a
| big appeal: it's just you and your text with very little else
| to distract you. I've personally found that a bit overstated
| (most word processors have some kind of "draft mode" that,
| while perhaps not as minimal as just You And Your Plain Text,
| gets the job done), but it's clearly a thing, and I admit I
| enjoy writing in Ulysses more than I would expect.
|
| Ulysses does, it's worth noting, have the capability to compile
| and export documents to Microsoft Word format. It's not as
| flexible (or overengineered) as Scrivener's compilation tools,
| but that's really something you should be saving until you have
| what you think is the final draft -- Ulysses and Scrivener, and
| for that matter NovelWriter, are ultimately composition tools,
| not editing tools. (Once you're in a "dialogue" with your
| editor sending Word documents with embedded revisions and
| comments, your manuscript is almost certainly going to stay in
| Word.)
|
| I've written two novels with Scrivener, but I am slowly moving
| toward Ulysses for a variety of reasons -- but they are,
| indeed, technical reasons. I don't find the "detritus of
| special characters" to be particularly annoying with a well-
| chosen Ulysses theme; the underlines/asterisks are faded out
| and the italics and bold are, well, italics and bold, and for
| fiction that's virtually all I need.
| voidhorse wrote:
| It's a problem I've grappled with for a while. I used to use
| Scrivener but eventually got tired of its syncing capabilities,
| as I took a lot of notes on my phone in markdown and wanted an
| easy way to integrate and transform these notes into longer
| form pieces. Scrivener does support this, but it's definitely
| not the most polished feature of the tool and it kind of clunky
| and annoying to work with in my opinion.
|
| Tried using vim+git for a while. This combo is great for
| portability, but my eyes get tired staring at a terminal all
| day, and while git feels nice, it doesn't give you huge
| advantages and is just more work when many GUI tools like
| scrivener have good enough version control built in -- some
| would probably find a complete git version history useful, and
| use branches for different drafts etc. but I personally have
| never needed this and find it's just another distraction from
| actually doing the work of writing.
|
| Now that I stare at a screen for several hours a day during my
| day job, I've settled on pen and paper for my own health. No
| idea yet whether or not I'll be able to translate this into
| finished products or if typing out handwritten text will prove
| too tedious.
| powersnail wrote:
| Given how many published novelist write their first draft by
| hand, I'd argue rich text is not useful at all.
|
| Manuscripts typically are just plain texts, at most some
| italics.
|
| The organization, however, is very important.
| joeldg wrote:
| I know authors who write directly into the Vellum app, so I
| think you are 100% right.
| sicher wrote:
| I'm halfway through my second novel. Both in very barebones
| markdown (using pretty much only headings). Plain text is a
| blessing. I can keep everything in git, searching in emacs with
| swiper is fantastic (and good search is a _must_ as the
| material grows) and any tool I lack I can hack together.
| em-bee wrote:
| how do you convert from markdown to standard manuscript
| format which is often required for submissions?
| powersnail wrote:
| pandoc is pretty handy. It's pretty much plain text anyway,
| whatever format is used.
| em-bee wrote:
| yup, and here is how to use pandoc to convert to standard
| manuscript format: http://www.autodidacts.io/convert-
| markdown-to-standard-manus...
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| thank you for this.
|
| huh. looks like i bookmarked this article for followup
| some time ago, and completely forgot about it.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| but won't get you all the way there, unfortunately, since
| novel format is pretty specific.
| powersnail wrote:
| What are some specific requirements? Aren't most
| formatting done by the publisher anyway?
| em-bee wrote:
| publishers format for print, but the submission needs to
| be in a specific format too.
|
| this stems from the days where manuscripts were submitted
| on paper, and not electronically. one could argue that
| with electronic submission such format requirements are
| no longer relevant, but we all know that people don't
| like change.
|
| standard manuscript format looks roughly like this:
|
| lines are double spaced
|
| first line of each paragraph is indented, but there is no
| space between paragraphs
|
| first page contains contact information and word count.
|
| section headers are centered
|
| each page (except the first) contains a header with:
| "authors lastname / story title / page #"
| powersnail wrote:
| These requirements seem to be easily within pandoc's
| ability though, as it can use a reference docx file.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| News to me, but in this case, I'm happy to be wrong.
| em-bee wrote:
| indeed, see my other reply above, linking to an article
| explaining exactly how that works
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| I'm using _Papyrus Autor_ because I write in German [1,2]. It
| 's expensive but superior to everything else for the German
| language. They're expanding to English users, but only offer a
| super-expensive subscription model for them [3]. If I wrote
| novels in English, I'd probably use _Scrivener_ [4].
|
| I'm very familiar with markdown, pandoc, and LaTeX, but none of
| these are relevant or important for writing novels. As a
| novelist, you need grammar and style correction features,
| pinboards for ideas, databases for characters and sources form
| the Net, easy snip management, advanced typography (especially
| quote correction and automatic quote conversion), name
| generators, non-continuous selections, selection by font,
| search & replace of formatting, automatic backups over network
| and advanced data integrity features, excellent ebook and PDF
| export, different views for writing/editing/correcting, etc.
|
| [1] https://www.papyrus.de/ [2] https://talumriel.de/ [3]
| https://www.papyrusauthor.com/ [4]
| https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview
| vidarh wrote:
| It's interesting to see differences in desired features here,
| because I'm currently writing my third novel, and ditched my
| previous editors because I realised I needed basically no
| features - I need a clean canvas without distractions, and
| ability to do some basic tagging for cross-references. That's
| it. So now I'm writing in my own editor, in windows with
| nothing but the text - not even a menu or title bar - and
| literally not a single one of the features you list.
|
| Some of it because I don't want to focus on it while writing
| and/or because it's something my editor or proofreader
| handles (grammar and style correction, typography, selection
| by font, search & replace of formatting, ebook export). Some
| of it because I'd rather pick and choose separate tools (name
| generators, backups, data integrity). Some because I've never
| had a use for it (pinboards, character databases beyond a
| folder of plain text files by name, snip management).
|
| To be clear, I'm not at all disputing that these features can
| be useful or essential for you. I just find it fascinating
| how different our expectations are.
|
| There's room for a lot of _very_ different editors for the
| writers market, as people have very strong and contradictory
| ideas about what you need... The UI for Papyrus Autor looks
| like something I might have nightmares about, for example...
| progx wrote:
| You can use zettlr.
| vidarh wrote:
| Thanks for the suggestion, but zettlr has too much UI for
| my taste. I use an editor I've written myself, with no UI
| at all by default.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| You can define arbitrary work views in Papyrus Autor,
| including distraction-free fullscreen mode, and there are
| plenty of reasonable "view" templates to chose from, too.
| It even has a special "typewriter mode" scrolling. I don't
| want to advertise the expensive subscription (don't think
| it's really worth it), but this program has been sold
| commercially since the 80s for a reason.
| vidarh wrote:
| It does seem like a fantastic tool for those who want
| more functionality. I'm absolutely not surprised there's
| a market for it - as I said, there's clearly a huge span
| in terms of what writers want.
| app4soft wrote:
| > _I 'm using Papyrus Autor because..._
|
| Proprietary?!
| progx wrote:
| And?
|
| You know a better tool that does the work?
| app4soft wrote:
| > You know a better tool that does the work?
|
| Yep, _KIT Scenarist_.[0]
|
| [0] https://github.com/dimkanovikov/KITScenarist
| 13415 wrote:
| Not even remotely...
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| I think most authors don't write in richer text format than
| markdown.
| mhd wrote:
| They don't _produce_ richer text, they might write in a
| richer format, if you can all it that. Non-printing notes
| /comments were quite common in the DOS days, similar to the
| "front matter" in the screen shots, or what people would put
| in separate UI sections in tools like Scrivener or Ulysses
| (chapter notes, marginalia, cork boards etc.)
|
| A more code-like (and probably extreme) perspective would be
| this screenshot from sci-fi author Vernor Vinge:
|
| http://www.norwescon.org/archives/norwescon33/images/Vinge_s.
| ..
|
| All kinds of annoations, references, etc - only the indented
| text is actual for publication.
| elcomet wrote:
| most authors write in Word, and use only one or two font
| variation bigger size for chapter titles).
| chank wrote:
| I think you're assuming and probably wrong.
| vidarh wrote:
| I think _you_ are assuming. I also think there 's a
| confusion here and that you're talking specifically about
| RTF while the people responding to you are talking about
| the capabilities provided when they use "rich". The point
| being that Markdown has far more formatting features than
| most people who write novels need, and so it is "rich
| enough" as a format.
|
| I've written two novels and I'm writing my third, and as
| others have also pointed out, there's rarely a need for
| more than headlines, bold and italics, all of which are
| trivial in Markdown.
|
| Whether or not the _editors_ are capable enough depends on
| peoples preferences and tools. But there 's nothing about
| writing a novel that requires a _format_ more complex while
| _writing_ (if you send it off to an _editor_ , they'll
| almost certainly insist on something they can import easily
| into word, though some accept Google Docs or ODT these
| days)
| chank wrote:
| But I am not assuming at all. In fact most professional
| writers still use Microsoft Word. It's sort of how people
| don't realize the world still runs on Microsoft Excel.
| Markdown is not "rich" in any way. It's syntactical
| representation for what you want the "exported" text to
| look like. It is not a drop in replacement for rich text
| editing.
|
| Of course people who come here are going to be the
| outliers of this use case and say markdown is fine. Go
| ask Neil Gaiman or Stephen King if they know markdown and
| after explaining what it is ask if they need it? And I'd
| be willing to put money on them just stating "why not
| just make my italic text italic, why do I really need to
| put special characters around it?"
| vidarh wrote:
| > Go ask Neil Gaiman or Stephen King if they know
| markdown and after explaining what it is ask if they need
| it? And I'd be willing to put money on them just stating
| "why not just make my italic text italic, why do I really
| need to put special characters around it?"
|
| Gaiman has at least in the past stated he prefers to
| write his first drafts with a fountain pen in a physical
| notebook, to the point where there's various lists of the
| specific brands of pens he uses.
|
| Stephen King prefers a Waterman fountain pen, though he's
| also been known to use typewriters, and may very well
| also use word processors. He's known to use Word for some
| work, certainly.
|
| But because of the tools a lot of novelists use, a lot
| are _used to_ using special marks to indicate the (very
| limited) formatting they do. Many people use multiple
| tools, including pens, text editors, smartphones,
| typewriters, or whatever is to hand. For some picking
| tools depending on what they work on is part of the
| process.
|
| You may be right that most professional _writers_ today
| use Word, but novelists makes up a very specific subset
| of professional writers and have very much idiosyncratic
| ideas about their preferred writing environment, ranging
| from the aforementioned fountain pens on anything from
| loose-leaf paper to very specific notebook choices, to
| old typewriters (some insisting on specific models of
| manual typewriters), via long outdated word processors,
| to modern word processors or editors written specifically
| for novelists (like Scrivener etc.). Or tools like the
| one linked here.
|
| The point remains that in terms for formatting, Markdown
| is _sufficient_ and _simple_. That does not mean it will
| be what everyone will prefer, like or even tolerate. But
| it has all the functionality needed to represent the
| formatting done in a typical novel, with minimal
| interference in the writing.
| dangoor wrote:
| I'm close to 60,000 words into my latest novel and I'm writing
| in Ulysses using Markdown.
|
| Novels, in particular, rarely need more than headings and
| occasional italics or boldface.
| atmosx wrote:
| I would be interested to know why you choose "Ulysses" and
| not "Odysseus"?
|
| ps. I followed a conversation about James Joyce novel which
| was hinted that there is a difference between the two names
| and Joyce didn't pick "Ulysses" randomly. I'd like to know if
| you went through the same process.
|
| UPDATE: Ok, I mis-read the comment, I though the name of the
| Novel was Ulysses, apparently it is an app.
| jmkb wrote:
| It's a writing-focused word processor for MacOS and iOS.
|
| https://ulysses.app/
| nbzso wrote:
| Which moved to subscription model and lost me completely.
| After trying Scrivener, I realised that for my needs is
| overkill, moved to something that I know will not bite me
| in the future: Folder organisation plus Vim - Org mode.
| Adobe in their infinite greed ruined propriety software
| model for all. SaaS is pure hell.
| atmosx wrote:
| Thanks for pointing that out!
| lelag wrote:
| I also use Ulysses and very happy with it (except for it
| being a subscription based product).
|
| The feature that I would miss the most by switching to
| novelWriter or another open source solution would be the
| following:
|
| - auto cloud sync across all devices (I can even write on my
| phone if I think of something while waiting for the bus)
|
| - print quality output in PDF and epub with a single click
| (and many available themes to choose from).
|
| - nice eye pleasing UI that put me in the right mood for
| writing
|
| - good integration with my third party writing assistance
| software (Antidote).
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| I use Ghostwriter, it's free. I write in a directory that
| is continuously synced to Dropbox. And I write in pandoc
| flavored markdown, so a single script can spit out compiled
| PDF or epub.
| lelag wrote:
| I've wanted to try it as it looks pretty slick but it's
| apparently "a [...] Markdown editor for Windows and
| Linux". Not much of an help if you are using macOS.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| "auto cloud sync across all devices"
|
| hmmm - if it is an editor that handles text files, then
| myself, I would rely on one of the myriad of sync
| tools/platforms available, rather than have someone else's
| implementation
| lelag wrote:
| True and it's actually possible to use any tools you want
| as it supports local directories of markdown files (I use
| git to version my writing) but the product does not
| target at a technical audience but writers in general and
| their cloud sync is pretty well implemented. I like their
| cloud sync for the ability to sync with ios devices
| without doing anything in particular.
| em-bee wrote:
| syncthing is the tool i use for that now
| chank wrote:
| That's the kind of need for text manipulation I would expect
| of a typical writer. Hence why bother with markdown at all
| (unless it's the only thing available). Rich text is a much
| cleaner solution for that. Markdown really shines when it
| comes to text that has to be formatted just so for web
| layout. e.g. tables, bullets, multi-headings and linking.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Markdown absolutely does _not_ shine when it comes to
| tables, at the very least. Unless you 're using a variation
| of the 'standard', of course.
| vidarh wrote:
| Because it's not a bother. It's pretty much just plain
| text.
|
| And having it as plain text means adding your own special
| annotations is easy. E.g. I'm writing my third novel in my
| own editor using Markdown, and key for me was that it was
| easy to write small little scripts to e.g. process front-
| matter with similar "@pov" tags etc. to let me trivially
| cross-reference things.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Markdown _is_ "rich text". What distinction are you trying
| to draw here?
| chank wrote:
| no it isn't.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| It's not rtf, but it _is_ rich text as opposed to plain
| text.
| chank wrote:
| The point I am getting at is that if an editor wants to
| use markdown in place of rtf, fine. But it should hide
| the syntax just like rtf editors do (unless you want to
| see it). No editor that supports markdown to date has
| been able to achieve the quality of editing that rtf
| editors already have. So in essence outside of markdowns
| original use case of web publishing, why bother using it?
| vidarh wrote:
| Here is the grand total of formatting supported by RTF in
| use in my novels:
|
| * headers
|
| * italics
|
| * maybe 2-3 instances of *bold* through the entire text.
|
| I don't need any additional "quality of editing". Hiding
| the syntax is _irrelevant_ because the needs are so
| limited. Hiding _the user interface_ on the other hand,
| matters to me, because it 's a distraction (to others it
| isn't). My editor color-codes the headers and the
| italics, and having it stand out matters far more to me
| than that it looks the way it will in the formatted book,
| because my draft looks nothing like the finished book
| will _anyway_.
|
| If you look at interviews with writers, you'll find a
| whole lot of obsession over the process, and things like
| how it feels to write with a pen vs. a typewriter vs. a
| word processor, and very, very little about what their
| drafts _look like_. It 's _far down_ the list of
| considerations you 'll find novelists care about.
|
| Nobody cares what the drafts look like, because they are
| transient. In fact you'll find a whole lot of authors
| advocate avoiding going back and editing and arguing for
| things like dictaphones etc. to make going back _harder_
| or using tools that won 't let scroll up in some cases to
| simulate the typewriter experience, and _all kinds of
| similar_ obsessions with spending as little time as
| possible on formatting and what the manuscript looks like
| in preference of being able to just dump the first draft
| into text the fastest way possible (while other authors
| _want_ writing the first draft to take longer _on
| purpose_ - to some that is a reason for using pens or
| pencils).
|
| You mentioned Gaiman in another reply - someone who has
| talked at length about how since he wrote Stardust in a
| fountain pen he has come to enjoy being forced to rewrite
| his second draft entirely instead of being able to go
| back and forth and editing it since he switched to
| writing with pen on paper.
|
| I'm sure you _can_ find novelists that want to see a
| beautifully formatted manuscript while writing it. They
| have tools they can use.
|
| But to suggest Markdown is some sort of big hindrance
| compared to some of the barriers novelists create for
| themselves on purpose doesn't pass the smell test for me.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| >If you look at interviews with writers, you'll find a
| whole lot of obsession over the process, and things like
| how it feels to write with a pen vs. a typewriter vs. a
| word processor, and very, very little about what their
| drafts look like. It's far down the list of
| considerations you'll find novelists care about.
|
| This.
|
| I chose emacs because I'm a programmer who uses emacs
| frequently. And its just damn text and I don't have to
| get all fiddly with everything. And like I don't want to
| have to fiddle around with Word, I don't want to fiddle
| around with some complicated markup langage like rst
| either. I just want to write.
|
| I wrote my thesis is Word, I know what it can be like.
| cgriswald wrote:
| Writing a novel is definitely a 'to each, his own'
| practice.
|
| I can format text all day. It's a huge distraction that
| allows me to also feel 'productive'; which gets in the
| way of actually writing. Using a markdown editor lets me
| do the formatting that is necessary for the work ( _e.g._
| , italics) without being hugely distracted.
|
| > But it should hide the syntax just like rtf editors do
| (unless you want to see it).
|
| I'm using Obsidian and wouldn't mind seeing this feature.
| However, it currently offers the option of toggling
| quickly between edit and preview modes, or opening up a
| second view for preview, which can optionally be scroll-
| locked with the editing window. That works great for me.
|
| I use copious amounts of _notes_ in my fiction writing,
| that sometimes include mathematical /physical formulas,
| data, and code. Obsidian supports (various amounts of)
| inline LaTeX, syntax-highlighting, and mermaid. (I'm also
| not above abusing these things for my own purposes: I've
| used mermaid graph to create a quick-and-dirty character
| family tree for my own reference, for instance.) And, of
| course, I use markdown to tie all these notes together
| and to the novel.
| thangalin wrote:
| > quick-and-dirty character family tree for my own
| reference
|
| KeenWrite supports inline TeX, Mermaid (via Kroki), R for
| calculations, and interpolated string variables:
|
| https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite#screenshots
|
| This allows me to create a family tree and, when I change
| a character's name, the diagram---along with every other
| reference to their name---is updated automatically.
| Here's a video showing how it works:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_dFd6UhdV8
| cgriswald wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation! This looks powerful and
| useful. I will definitely check it out.
| em-bee wrote:
| how do you convert from markdown to standard manuscript
| format?
|
| starting to write in markdown or even plain text is fine, but
| once the first draft is submitted to the editor or sent to a
| publisher for consideration it usually needs to be a word or
| rtf document in standard manuscript format.
|
| once converted i am stuck using libreoffice to revise and
| edit the story.
|
| i found tools that convert from markdown to ODF (which i can
| then load and export as word) but i have not found any way to
| apply a standard manuscript style in the conversion process.
|
| without that i'd have to manually reformat the document each
| time i want to submit a new revision.
| em-bee wrote:
| i found an answer to this question here:
| http://www.autodidacts.io/convert-markdown-to-standard-
| manus...
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I tried out and one issue I had was with indented
| paragraphs. I ended up using LibreWriter's regex search
| replace to remove all the extraneous newlines.
| em-bee wrote:
| can you describe the complete process you use to convert
| your documents?
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I only gave it a try for a chapter or two just to get a
| feel for what might be involved. I first tried pandoc.
| This mostly worked, except for the indentation of
| paragraphs. I took care of that by setting up
| LibreOffice's paragraph indentation, and used
| LibreOffice's search replace to remove the (now)
| extraneous new lines.
|
| My recommendation is to grab a decently long markdown
| document and give it a try.
| [deleted]
| falcolas wrote:
| Funnily enough, a lot of the work I've interacted with has
| been in the Lit RPG genre - which needs a lot more, since
| they're often including tables of "character data", not to
| mention "system" fonts. It's surprisingly challenging to
| typeset and make it broadly readable across devices.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| As an avid LitRPG reader, i can tell you most authors need
| to scale their system WAY back. I like the crunchy parts,
| but at the end of the day story should take the focus, not
| 10 page long stat tables. Either that, or there's just
| enough crunch to slap a litrpg label on a bucket of cliche
| fantasy tropes.
| falcolas wrote:
| > most authors need to scale their system WAY back
|
| Oh, no doubt. I've seen entire chapters devoted to
| "character evolutions" and the associated spew of
| repetitive skills/character sheets.
|
| What I personally like is when there's a secondary
| resource (aka a wiki) which tracks changes to the various
| character sheets and skills over time. Perhaps this could
| be done within the novel by using appendices? Wouldn't
| help extensively with Patreon-based web novels, sadly.
|
| All that said, litrpg - not to mention software
| development books, cookbooks, etc - do still need these
| kinds of extended typesetting resources.
| wishinghand wrote:
| I'm just getting into making RPGs and I was using Joplin.
| Switched to Zettlr for the linking and file folder == a
| project paradigm. What are you using? I was hoping to use
| the PHP based command line tool Ibis to convert to PDF but
| in order to auto-generate a table of contents I'd need to
| have way too much white space after each section. Ideally I
| could change the output formatting with a CSS file.
| Bakary wrote:
| I keep seeing references to markdown editors on HN. As a non-
| tech person it would have never crossed my mind to use
| something like this to write a novel or even keep notes, but it
| seems to really strike a chord here. Perhaps it's simply the
| comfort associated with code over a long period of time?
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| Part of it might be preference for plain text files with no
| vendor lock-in.
|
| Or it might be preference for explicitness, we've all fought
| with rich editors bleeding format from one word into another
| and struggling to un-format the text at the right location.
| michaericalribo wrote:
| To play devil's advocate, ODF is (a) open, and (b) native
| in Word.
|
| For that matter, docx is an ISO standard.
|
| On the other side, I perpetually have to unformat my hard-
| wrapped lines, before I paste plain text into eg an
| email...
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| On Fiction.live https://fiction.live (twitch for webfiction) we
| use straight up HTML through a WYSIWYG editor. If there's an
| easily extensible markdown-like with full features for stuff
| common in webfiction like spoiler tags we would like to adopt it.
| jotson wrote:
| Fiction.live looks really interesting. Thanks for sharing it.
| Might want to check out https://twinery.org/ if you haven't
| already
| isaacimagine wrote:
| Okay, so this looks incredible, congrats on the 1.0!
|
| Something a bit interesting but entirely unrelated: around
| 2018-06, I started a shell repo for a project named 'NovelWrite,'
| [1] (unrelated to this project, but a markdown novel serializer)
| then promptly forgot about it.
|
| Seeing novelWriter (this post) surface to the top spot was pretty
| interesting because, despite similar names, I was unaware of this
| project until now.
|
| 1: I'm not going to post the link to the repo as I'm not trying
| to advertise it; it's really quite a horrible project. I just
| found the coincidence mildly amusing.
| kleer001 wrote:
| Looks fantastic! But, too late for me.
|
| I'm writing a novel now in emacs' orgmode (spacemacs) with lots
| of customization. The killer app for me is orgmode's foldable
| hierarchies of text. Beyond that even typing speed isn't my main
| bottleneck, it's ideas and sitting down in front of the keyboard
| and actually typing.
| qorrect wrote:
| Here that OP, Foldable Regions ^.
| michaericalribo wrote:
| > it's ideas and sitting down in front of the keyboard and
| actually typing
|
| This is the crux of the challenge for every writer. At least
| for me, I use "finding the right tool" as a way to
| procrastinate from actually writing...
| em-bee wrote:
| i wrote my story in plain text in vim. when i was forced to
| convert to libre office in order to produce the format
| required for submission, editing became a pain, and i felt
| blocked from working on the story any further, since i no
| longer was able to just take any break i had to work on it.
|
| not being able to use my preferred editor, i too ended up
| searching for a better solution...
| michaericalribo wrote:
| What a pain! And there don't seem to be any good + easy
| answers...
|
| I'm addicted to my emacs bindings, and not using them trips
| me up--I might as well draft in plaintext, like you said
| preferred editor minimizes friction.
|
| But then there's the cost of switching tools at different
| stages of the writing process. Arguably, that's even more
| difficult!
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| Yeah and "building my own editor that's just right for me" is
| a tempting next level procrastination.
| diimdeep wrote:
| Why is there still no text editors as smart about the text as
| JetBrains IDE as smart about the code, or there is?
| gebt wrote:
| Great idea, great design! As I think markdown is good only for
| write simple texts (AND NOT FOR ADVANCED BLOGGING), a novel
| writing software would to be a choice; because authors don't use
| richer text format than markdown, as Nick mentioned.
| dyates wrote:
| Markdown is pretty good for advanced blogging if you use it as
| a superset of HTML, as originally intended.[1] That way you get
| simple syntax for the stuff you're likely to use most often and
| can still implement more complex formatting when you need to.
|
| [1]: https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#html
| chank wrote:
| I have the complete opposite view as you. Markdown is for
| advanced blogging and since novel writers don't need advanced
| html formatting they don't need markdown.
| falcolas wrote:
| Ebook formats are mostly HTML and (a strictly limited subset
| of) CSS. So, given that a book will eventually be rendered
| down to HTML, markdown isn't really that bad of a choice.
|
| Especially since things like tables can actually be useful,
| depending on what you're writing.
| ripperdoc wrote:
| Possibly relevant alternative product: Dabble, which includes
| plotting tools, etc, using Svelte as UI if I understood it
| correctly. https://www.dabblewriter.com/
| manojlds wrote:
| Probably a dumb question - what makes it not suitable for writing
| technical books?
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| It would be amazing if it fixed your grammar, removed cliches,
| fixed wordiness, activated passive language, swapped repeated
| words, fixed my run on sentences, overall just fixed my englitch.
|
| #featurerequest
| zx321 wrote:
| You're looking for proselint.
| https://github.com/amperser/proselint
| vidarh wrote:
| Looks very interesting, but the example given ("John is very
| unique") and the warning given by proselint for it
| illustrates why this is a veritable mine-field, and why what
| sleepysysadmin asks for isn't really possible (but that's ok
| - having a tool flag possible issues is still great)
|
| The example warning is certainly worth giving, but conversely
| Merriam-Webster points out that "very unique" is a common
| construction when "unique" is used in the sense "unusual",
| though most frequently used in less formal contexts. And so
| it may or may not be justified depending on what you're
| writing...
|
| Having gone back and forth with a real editor for a novel,
| half the effort was a conversation with the editor based on
| questions about intent and preferred tone and style, in order
| to come to agreement on things she had flagged as _possible_
| issues where it was not clear whether or not a change ought
| to be made or not.
|
| I'm absolutely going to take a closer look at proselint,
| though.
| tclancy wrote:
| Certainly. I think the idea is you pick and choose the
| plugins that suit you (so it's probably not a perfect fit
| for OP) based on what you think your strengths and
| weaknesses are. And taste: I want to slap everyone who
| sticks an adjective in front of "unique", so that rule
| works for me. No matter what Black says, all linters are an
| aggregation of someone's tastes and you are free to tweak
| as you see fit. Descriptivism beats prescriptivism where
| language is concerned IMHO.
| MyWorkComputer wrote:
| Scrivener should integrate this.
| chrisdbanks wrote:
| ProWritingAid integrates with Scrivener and provides
| grammar checking, repeated words, and much more to help you
| improve whatever you're writing. http://prowritingaid.com/
| cweagans wrote:
| Friendly advice: This is helpful to know about,
| contextually relevant, etc and I'm glad you posted it,
| but you should probably disclose that you're the CEO.
| Veen wrote:
| You'd need a human editor to do all that. Automatically fixing
| run-on sentences and removing repeated words is possible.
| Activating passive sentences is challenging; Grammarly gets it
| wrong all the time, in my experience. Replacing cliches and
| fixing wordiness would be very challenging without deep
| linguistic and cultural knowledge.
| vidarh wrote:
| I tried using Grammarly when writing a novel, and just had to
| turn it off. It gets things wrong so often that it just
| turned out to be a distraction. I still like using it for
| e-mails etc. but for anything that will pass through a
| professional editor anyway it's just not worth the hassle to
| me.
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| >You'd need a human editor to do all that. Automatically
| fixing run-on sentences and removing repeated words is
| possible. Activating passive sentences is challenging;
| Grammarly gets it wrong all the time, in my experience.
| Replacing cliches and fixing wordiness would be very
| challenging without deep linguistic and cultural knowledge.
|
| Well I don't know why I was downvoted so heavily. I dont
| disagree.
|
| My goal isn't so much to write a novel but rather improve
| upon my englitch. Now I have chosen writing a novel in order
| to improve but I dont know where I went wrong.
|
| I would love a human editor but that costs $. I doubt anyone
| is giving me a dime for my book. I don't have >$1000 to get
| my book edited.
|
| Of which any hired editor will just shoot themselves.
| vidarh wrote:
| For _that_ use, I think "proselint", as zx321 recommended,
| is probably a perfect start, as it references the source of
| the recommendation.
|
| (in terms of cost, though, you can get a decent editor for
| closer to the ~$300 mark for up ~60k-70k words, but of
| course if you're not intending on putting in a lot of
| effort - and more money - to market and sell it, that may
| well be too much too)
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| >For that use, I think "proselint", as zx321 recommended,
| is probably a perfect start, as it references the source
| of the recommendation.
|
| I see that, I will give it a try. Cant hurt.
|
| >(in terms of cost, though, you can get a decent editor
| for closer to the ~$300 mark for up ~60k-70k words, but
| of course if you're not intending on putting in a lot of
| effort - and more money - to market and sell it, that may
| well be too much too)
|
| Lets say there was a magical machine learning perfect
| editor for free. I input my trash and I get an amazing
| copy out.
|
| I might try marketing and selling it. I have put lots of
| effort into the book. Afterall just getting 75,000 words
| down is good effort by itself.
|
| The problem is that I put this in grammarly or prowriting
| aid it finds thousands of problems. You fix them. Then
| put it in another grammar thing and it finds thousands
| more.
| vidarh wrote:
| Yeah, Grammarly etc. is great for short things like
| e-mails and the like, but it's a massive pain for
| anything of any complexity...
| theSuda wrote:
| Thanks for mentioning proselint. I just took a quick look
| and it looks really interesting. Going to give it a try.
| swansonc wrote:
| I looked at the project, and the editor doesn't look to bad, but
| why, oh why, yet another markdown-ish format? Did you REALLY need
| to do that? There are multiple markdown flavors, and, if you want
| something a bit more 'bookish' there's a nice ecosystem around
| asciidoc(-tor). Did you REALLY need to introduce another
| markdown?
| pwinnski wrote:
| I used Scrivener (MacOS) for my first novel, but I did not use
| most of the features of the software. Now it's stuck as the last
| remaining 32-bit app on MacOS, and I've debating whether to pay
| for an upgrade or use something else for novel #2.
|
| I've learned about this at a very good time!
| dnw wrote:
| I am currently using Obsidian for writing a book-length tutorial
| with multiple docs. Support for comments and footnotes are really
| useful to have for projects like the one I am working on.
| ajarmst wrote:
| Two of my favourite authors draft by hand, which I still do
| (we're all in our fifties). What I want is not yet another (sigh)
| editor for writers but OCR tools that can be trained for cursive
| and don't soil the bed on encountering a crossed out word or
| insertion.
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