Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NovelWriter 1.0 – A markdown-like editor for writing novels

novelwriter.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 277 posts

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

#211

Post by spijdar »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #204
nix23 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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 wa…

> (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.

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

#212

Post by nickelcitymario »

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.

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

#213

Post by michaericalribo »

aeroevan wrote: post #203
michaericalribo wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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?

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...

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

#214

Post by jzer0cool »

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!

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

#215

Post by rusticpenn »

nix23 wrote: post #169
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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?

How are you going to handle editor comments without losing history?

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

#216

Post by swansonc »

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?

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

#217

Post by Merg »

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.

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

#218

Post by michaericalribo »

wyclif wrote: post #197
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 missin…

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).

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)

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

#219

Post by chipotle_coyote »

spijdar wrote: post #211
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wa…

> (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 tha…

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. :)

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

#220

Post by youngtaff »

TeaDrunk wrote: post #143
evolve2k wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

This is now significantly more steps than downloading Scrivener.

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
Post reply on HN