.. _docs_usage:

************
Introduction
************

.. _Markdown: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown

In a nutshell, novelWriter is a plain text editor that lets you organise one or more novels and
associated notes as many smaller documents. You can at any time generate standard document formats
from these plain text documents. Whether it is an outline of your story, a draft, a complete
manuscript, or even a collection of your character notes or other notes.


Why Plain Text?
===============

The idea is to let you be creative without having to deal with formatting while you are writing, or
be distracted by it.

Of course, you probably need *some* form of minimal formatting for your text. At the very least you
need emphasis. Most people are familiar with adding emphasis using ``_underscores_`` and
``**asterisks**``. This formatting standard comes from Markdown_ and is supported by novelWriter.
It also uses Markdown formatting for defining document headings, which is how you distinguish
between chapters and scenes.

For those special cases where you need more complex formatting, a set of shortcodes are available.
To make these codes easier to use, a dropdown button bar is available in the editor panel with
standard format buttons. So don't worry. You don't have to learn any of these codes.


Adding Meta Data
================

In addition to the body text of your story, novelWriter allows you to enter some additional meta
data into your text documents to indicate things like which characters are present in a chapter or
scene, whose point of view we're seeing, what location the events take place in, and so on.

Since the editor is plain text, this is done on special lines of text starting with an ``@``
character. The editor will show an auto-complete menu to help you write these lines. We will talk
more about this later.

You can also add your own author's comments in your text, without these comments becoming a part of
the story itself. A comment line starts with a ``%`` character. There are different types of
comments, and an auto-complete menu can help you here too. More about this later as well.

.. admonition:: Limitations

   Please keep in mind that novelWriter is designed for writing fiction, so the formatting features
   available are limited to those relevant for this purpose. It is *not* suitable for technical
   writing. It is also *not* a full-featured Markdown editor.

   In addition, novelWriter is not intended as a tool for organising research for writing, and
   therefore lacks formatting features you may need for this purpose. The notes feature in is
   mainly intended for character profiles and plot outlines. It is recommended to use a proper
   note-taking tool for research. This is anyway more practical as you may use the same research
   for multiple projects.
