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NovelWriter 1.0 – A markdown-like editor for writing novels

novelwriter.io

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Re: NovelWriter 1.0 – A markdown-like editor for writing novels

#41

Post by isaacimagine »

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.

Re: NovelWriter 1.0 – A markdown-like editor for writing novels

#43

Post by vidarh »

sleepysysadmin wrote: post #34
Veen wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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…

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)

Re: NovelWriter 1.0 – A markdown-like editor for writing novels

#44

Post by jonnycomputer »

em-bee wrote: post #36
dangoor wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 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.

Re: NovelWriter 1.0 – A markdown-like editor for writing novels

#45

Post by chank »

globular-toast wrote: post #40
chank wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Markdown is "rich text". What distinction are you trying to draw here?

no it isn't.

Re: NovelWriter 1.0 – A markdown-like editor for writing novels

#46

Post by vidarh »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #39
chank wrote: post #17

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 te…

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 noveli…

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...

Re: NovelWriter 1.0 – A markdown-like editor for writing novels

#47

Post by tclancy »

vidarh wrote: post #28
zx321 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're looking for proselint. https://github.com/amperser/proselint

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…

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.

Re: NovelWriter 1.0 – A markdown-like editor for writing novels

#48

Post by chank »

gebt wrote: post #42

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.

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.

Re: NovelWriter 1.0 – A markdown-like editor for writing novels

#49

Post by jonathanstrange »

vidarh wrote: post #46
jonathanstrange wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 noveli…

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 lit…

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.

Re: NovelWriter 1.0 – A markdown-like editor for writing novels

#50

Post by nahuel0x »

app4soft wrote: post #38
nahuel0x wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just found typora[0] and Emacs "M-x markdown-toggle-markup-hiding" :) [0] https://typora.io/

> https://support.typora.io/License-Agreement/ EULA?! Thanks, but NO. P.S. ghtostwriter is fully free & open-source, instead of proprietary Typora .

Also found MarkText, MIT Licensed: https://marktext.app/
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