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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

#231

Post by spicybright »

socialdemocrat wrote: post #190
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…

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.

A table of contents you don't have to manually maintain. Built-in interface to insert special characters you can't type with the keyboard. Automatic grammar checks. Auto-corrections. Macros. All of the above in one program instead of a hodge-podge of programs. Being able to send and receive documents from people with no conversion needed.

No offense but you don't sound like someone who writes a lot?

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

#232

Post by eslaught »

michaericalribo wrote: post #201
eslaught wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

I think version history doesn't work the way you think. It seems to be supported when you use Microsoft's cloud storage product (which I do not use):

> Version history in Office only works for files stored in OneDrive or SharePoint in Microsoft 365.

> https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/view-previous-ver...

Or alternatively you can sort of hack it with track changes, but it's not automatic and there is a long list of caveats. In short, track changes is really intended for a single round of changes on top of a base document, not for permanently tracking the changes on a document over its entire lifetime:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/view-previous-ver...

Now maybe a Word expert will come along and tell me how to do it properly. :-) But even if they do that sort of proves my point, which is that Word is a large, complex piece of software and even if it hypothetically supports some feature, doesn't make it intuitive or easy to use in that way. (Or that you won't hit a bunch of corner cases when you try to use it.)

I do stand corrected about the find-replace formatting, so thanks for that. But on the other hand, I don't think it really contradicts my point either.

To be clear, I do think Word serves its user base! For low- to moderate- tech savvy users, it's does exactly what it needs to. And I'm not saying everyone should switch to Markdown. But for those of us who have the technical chops to go beyond it, there are some real advantages to working with other tools that shouldn't be discounted.

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

#233

Post by dznodes »

I went to the documentation to SEE the software's User Interface. (i.e. what does it look like to use this software?) But sadly, like many open source projects they don't make the UI easy to see in the documentation or github pages. It's like they require to you install it before showing you how it works???

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

#234

Post by michaericalribo »

eslaught wrote: post #232
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…

I think version history doesn't work the way you think. It seems to be supported when you use Microsoft's cloud storage product (which I do not use): > Version history in Office only works for files stored in OneDrive or SharePoint in Microsoft 365. > https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/view-previous-ver... Or alternatively you can sort of hack it with track changes, but it's not automatic and there is a long…

Well said! Though, I would say that this statement is a good description of git, too:

> a large, complex piece of software and even if it hypothetically supports some feature, doesn't make it intuitive or easy to use in that way. (Or that you won't hit a bunch of corner cases when you try to use it.)

A takeaway I get from this entire conversation is that the real pain point is not the drafting stage, but the editing stage. The latter is (a) collaborative, with (b) non-technical stakeholders...there doesn't seem to be a good way to both use my favorite editor, AND play nicely w my editor's stack (or lack thereof).

Good thing I don't have an editor...that would require me to actually write things :D

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

#235

Post by eslaught »

spicybright wrote: post #231
socialdemocrat wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A table of contents you don't have to manually maintain. Built-in interface to insert special characters you can't type with the keyboard. Automatic grammar checks. Auto-corrections. Macros. All of the above in one program instead of a hodge-podge of programs. Being able to send and receive documents from people with no conversion needed. No offense but you don't sound like someone who writes a lot?

* Table of contents: solved by Pandoc.

* Inserting special characters: personally I don't find those "character choosing" windows to be very convenient. Hunt and peck is a slow way to type! Anyway, you can do this in Markdown with either Unicode (if you have the right keyboard) or you can write HTML escape codes (&tm; etc.)

* Automatic (grammar/spelling). I don't like check as I type, but sure. Anyway, Emacs provides this if I want it.

* Macros. Hello? Emacs? (Also, Pandoc has a scripting interface.)

I may not be published yet but I've written my own book. I've also published books for other people. I did both of those with a Markdown-based toolchain. It works.

Edit: Just to prove the point: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0692553916 . Go see for yourself how the book is formatted.

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

#236

Post by michaericalribo »

eslaught wrote: post #235
spicybright wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A table of contents you don't have to manually maintain. Built-in interface to insert special characters you can't type with the keyboard. Automatic grammar checks. Auto-corrections. Macros. All of the above in one program instead of a hodge-podge of programs. Being able to send and receive documents from people with no conversion needed. No offense but you don't sound like someone who writes a lot?

* Table of contents: solved by Pandoc. * Inserting special characters: personally I don't find those "character choosing" windows to be very convenient. Hunt and peck is a slow way to type! Anyway, you can do this in Markdown with either Unicode (if you have the right keyboard) or you can write HTML escape codes (&tm; etc.) * Automatic (grammar/spelling). I don't like check as I type, but sure. Anyway, Emacs provides…

And in emacs, you can insert essentially any Unicode character with `C-x 8 RET`...add swiper and you're off to the races :)

Also, if emacs was good enough for Neal Stephenson, I'm sold...though I hear he uses Scrivener now!

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

#238

Post by chipotle_coyote »

spicybright wrote: post #231
socialdemocrat wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A table of contents you don't have to manually maintain. Built-in interface to insert special characters you can't type with the keyboard. Automatic grammar checks. Auto-corrections. Macros. All of the above in one program instead of a hodge-podge of programs. Being able to send and receive documents from people with no conversion needed. No offense but you don't sound like someone who writes a lot?

"What does MS Word offer over Markdown" isn't a good question, because they're not the same thing -- Word is a program and Markdown is a file type. There's nothing that stops a Markdown-based editor from having a full set of features. I've very rarely felt that I was missing out on features when using iA Writer or Ulysses compared to a word processor, although occasionally I wished for either the kind of document juggling that Scrivener is so good at or actual full-blown text editor features like BBEdit. But I haven't reached for an old school word processor as my first choice as a composition tool in... probably 15 years. And I definitely do write a lot.

The most obvious WYSIWYG competitor for novelWriter is Scrivener, which is similar to Ulysses -- and also shares the limitation that it can only export to Word rather than import. Nevertheless, its testimonials page is filled with praise from people who arguably write more than I do. :)

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

#239

Post by app4soft »

dang wrote: post #76
app4soft wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

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.

Thanks!

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

#240

Post by chipotle_coyote »

eslaught wrote: post #235
spicybright wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A table of contents you don't have to manually maintain. Built-in interface to insert special characters you can't type with the keyboard. Automatic grammar checks. Auto-corrections. Macros. All of the above in one program instead of a hodge-podge of programs. Being able to send and receive documents from people with no conversion needed. No offense but you don't sound like someone who writes a lot?

* Table of contents: solved by Pandoc. * Inserting special characters: personally I don't find those "character choosing" windows to be very convenient. Hunt and peck is a slow way to type! Anyway, you can do this in Markdown with either Unicode (if you have the right keyboard) or you can write HTML escape codes (&tm; etc.) * Automatic (grammar/spelling). I don't like check as I type, but sure. Anyway, Emacs provides…

The "inserting special characters" one is a bit of a "eh?" for most of us Mac users, I think, since most special characters can be typed using the Option key and the character chooser (which is indeed not very convenient!) is system-wide and should work in a native build of at least the GUI version of Emacs. But, yep -- Markdown and Word aren't the same categories of things. How comfortable your Markdown editing experience is depends on how comfortable your Markdown editor is.

(Also, I wrote a Markdown-to-ePub script, too! Although I don't think anything I've got up online uses it anymore.)

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