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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

#141

Post by nix23 »

ordinaryradical wrote: post #110
kadrian12 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

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.

I see you hate the Unix philosophy....for conversions use pandoc. A Song of Ice and Fire was not written with Word.

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

#142

Post by TeaDrunk »

lhenk wrote: post #129
michaericalribo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This can be accomplished by exporting to PDF

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.)

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

#143

Post by TeaDrunk »

evolve2k wrote: post #128
vikingcaffiene wrote: post #88

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…

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.

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

#144

Post by barkingcat »

lhenk wrote: post #129
michaericalribo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This can be accomplished by exporting to PDF

exporting to pdf is exactly what you don't want as an editor receiving files from a writer.

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

#145

Post by em-bee »

powersnail wrote: post #140
jonnycomputer wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but won't get you all the way there, unfortunately, since novel format is pretty specific.

What are some specific requirements? Aren't most formatting done by the publisher anyway?

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 #"

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

#146

Post by TeaDrunk »

notjustanymike wrote: post #104
vikingcaffiene wrote: post #88

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…

Trying to unseat Scrivener is like competing with IntelliJ.

Scrivener does in fact have competition. (Highland 2 for screenwriting for example.)

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

#147

Post by em-bee »

powersnail wrote: post #97
em-bee wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you convert from markdown to standard manuscript format which is often required for submissions?

pandoc is pretty handy. It's pretty much plain text anyway, whatever format is used.

yup, and here is how to use pandoc to convert to standard manuscript format: http://www.autodidacts.io/convert-markdown-to-standard-manus...

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

#148

Post by em-bee »

em-bee wrote: post #99
vikingcaffiene wrote: post #88

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…

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.

found the answer: http://www.autodidacts.io/convert-markdown-to-standard-manus...

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

#149

Post by codetrotter »

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.

However, since NovelWriter is GPLv3 licensed, they could in theory incorporate code from Pandoc, which is GPLv2 licensed, directly into NovelWriter.

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

#150

Post by madsbuch »

vikingcaffiene wrote: post #88

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…

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.

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