If anyone is looking for a paid product, Scriviner has been amazing for my novel writing productivity. You can sync your smart phone version to your desktop version using Dropbox. It gives you Jira level power over how your organize your project and has really easy export functionality that turns your writing into all kinds of industry standard sizing and layouts.<p>I know it sounds like I'm affiliated based on that gushing review but I am not, just a really happy writer that finally found a good tool and wanted to share!
My open-source plain text editor, KeenWrite, is strikingly similar:<p><a href="https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite/blob/master/docs/screenshots.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite/blob/master/docs/scr...</a><p>I've taken a slightly different approach for novel outlines. Rather than use the `@` syntax, KeenWrite includes support for pandoc's ::: div syntax, which is quite flexible. Here's a screenshot showing an exported PDF generated from a Markdown document:<p><a href="https://i.ibb.co/gTytTs1/novel-outline.png" rel="nofollow">https://i.ibb.co/gTytTs1/novel-outline.png</a><p>On the left, variables are shown. Those variables can be fed into R statements. In the screen shot, the R code performs date calculations so that the dates are guaranteed to be consistent and correct, which is useful to keep complex timelines straight.
Although I'm happy to stick with vim, so I'm not in the target audience, I do appreciate these additions to markdown:
1. `%` for comments
2. `synopsis:` for helping with indexing etc
3. `@` for a keyword-value system<p>Regarding the last, it seems a shame that this collides with a scheme commonly used for bibliographic references, but I guess the idea is that a novel won't have such things.
I don't know if the developer will see this, but I don't feel like it's worth making a bug; I almost always prefer screenshots to be near the top of a readme like this. I could glean most of the selling points from a glance at the screenshots, and especially for an interface for creative outlet I need to see the UI anyways.<p>"A picture is worth a thousand words"
As a fan of personal knowledge bases, siloing my novel(s) in a separate app from the rest of my writing would bother me.<p>In fact my data is already split between Semantic Synchrony[1] and org-roam[2], and it's a bummer.<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/synchrony/smsn/" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/synchrony/smsn/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam</a>
Tiny alternative:<p>Groff+Mom.<p>You can create profesional books with just a 486/Pentium.<p><a href="https://www.schaffter.ca/mom/mom-01.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.schaffter.ca/mom/mom-01.html</a>
I've been using vs code more and more for markdown editing. A couple of extensions help make that a decent experience. There are a few extensions that help with grammar and style as well that are really helping me to write better text.<p>Vale is a nice one (a bit of work to configure and figure out) for enforcing style rules. Ltex for spelling and grammar. Markdownlint for making sure the markdown is right. Proselint is another one. Some of these overlap in what they do of course.<p>I also configured vscode to turn soft wrapping on for markdown.
I once wrote in a comment in an Emacs Lisp todo list program that "Of all forms of time-wasting, writing time-management software is most sublime."<p>I would say that of all forms of procrastinating writing that novel, writing novel-writing software is most sublime. That, or maybe taking a "research trip" to Tibet or something.
Why is use Scrivener, is I need a tool where I can easily move sections and subsections around and give each a status/flag. There some other things in Scrivener that are nice, but this is core to me. Any other editor for writing books where I can easily see and move sections around is not for me.
I don't suppose anyone knows of something like this, but for a thesis? I have trouble keeping clarity and pulling disparate sections together. Though there is a chance that this is procrastination talking....
So, some feedback should a developer come here:<p>You absolutely need to offer controls to zoom the text. On a HD (retina, 4k, etc) display, the text is insufferably small.