A novelWriter project requires a dedicated folder for storing its files. See the Technical Information section for further details.
A new project can be created from the Project menu by selecting Project > New Project. A list of recently opened projects is also maintained and can be selected from the menu.
The project specific settings are available in Project > Project Settings. See further details below.
Projects are structured into a set of root folders in the left side tree view panel.
The core novel files go into a root folder of type NOVEL. Other supporting files go into root folders of types PLOT, CHARACTER, WORLD, TIMELINE, OBJECT or CUSTOM. These other root folder types are intended for your notes on the various elements of your story. Using these are of course entirely optional.
Deleted files will be moved into a special TRASH root folder. Currently, these files cannot be permanently deleted from the project.
In the event the editor crashes or otherwise exits without saving the project state, files that have been added to the project tree and are saved to disk will appear in a special "Orphaned Items" root folder next time the application is started. These orphaned files will not have any meta data associated with them, so the title and other information has to be set again, and the files moved back to the correct location in the project.
Folders, aside from root folders, have no structural significance to the project. They are there purely as a way for the user to organise the files in meaningful sections and to be able to close them in the tree view. When processing the files in the novel, the folders are ignored.
The project settings can be accessed from the Project > Project Settings menu entry. This will open a dialog box.
The Settings tab holds the project title and author settings. Working Title can be set to a different title than the Book Title. The difference between them is simply that the Working Title is used for the GUI (main window title) and when the export features are added can optionally be printed to the cover sheet. The Book Title, on the other hand, will only be printed to the title page on export.
The Book Authors text box takes one author per line. The line breaks matter in that this is converted to a list for later correct formatting.
Each file of type NOVEL can be given a status level, signified by a coloured icon. These are purely there for the user's convenience, and you are not required to use them for any other feature to work. The intention is to use this list to set what stage of writing you are on, although you can in principle make them whatever you want.
Note that status levels currently in use by a file cannot be deleted.
Each file of types PLOT, CHARACTER, WORLD, TIMELINE, OBJECT or CUSTOM can be given an importance level, signified by a coloured icon like for status level. These are also purely there for the user's convenience, and you are not required to use them for any other feature to work. The intention is to use this list to set how important the character, plot element, or otherwise, is for the story. Again, these can in principle be used for whatever you want.
Note that importance levels currently in use by a file cannot be deleted.
A set of automatically replaced keywords can be added in this tab. The keywords in the left column wile be replaced by the text in the right column when documents are opened in the viewer. This will also be applied to exports when the feature is added.
Note that a keyword cannot contain any spaces. The angle brackets are dded by default, and when used in the text are a part of the keyword to be replaced. This is to ensure that parts of the text isn't unintentionally replaced by the content of the list.
New document files can be created from the Document menu, or by pressing Ctrl+N while in the tree view pane. This will create a new, empty file, and open the item settings dialog where the filename and various other settings can be set. This dialog can also be opened again later from either the menu, Project > Edit item, or by pressing Ctrl+E or F2 with the item selected.
The different classes of documents have some restrictions.
Files that exist under the NOVEL type root folder can have a number of layouts set. See overview below. These layouts are currently not used for any internal feature, but when the export feature is added they will be important in determining how the different sections of the novel is formatted.
| Title Page | The title page layout. The title should be formatted as a heading of level 1, that is one hash: # Book Title |
| Book | In principle, the entire novel can be contained in a single file. In that case, use the Book layout on this file. The internal structure is then controlled by the heading levels. |
| Plain Page | A plain page is just that, It is not included into content and the heading levels are ignored. |
| Partition | A partition can be used to split a the novel into parts. Use a level one heading for this. |
All features are available as keyboard shortcuts. These are as following:
| Ctrl+1 | Switch focus to tree view pane. |
| Ctrl+2 | Switch focus to document editor pane. |
| Ctrl+3 | Switch focus to document viewer pane. |
| Return | If in tree view, open a document for editing. |
| Ctrl+R | If in tree view, open a document for viewing. If in editor pane, open current document for viewing. |
| Ctrl+E | If in tree view, edit a document or folder settings. |
| Ctrl+Del | If in tree view, move a document to trash, or delete a folder. |
| Ctrl+S | Save the current document in the editor. |
| Ctrl+Shift+S | Save the current project. |
| Ctrl+A | Select all text in document. |
| Ctrl+Shift+A | Select all text in current paragraph. |
| Ctrl+B | Format selected text, or word under cursor, as bold. |
| Ctrl+I | Format selected text, or word under cursor, as italic. |
| Ctrl+U | Format selected text, or word under cursor, as underline. |
| Ctrl+D | Wrap selected text, or word under cursor, in double quotes. |
| Ctrl+Shift+D | Wrap selected text, or word under cursor, in single quotes. |
| Ctrl+F7 | Toggle spell checking. |
| F7 | Re-run spell checker. |
| Ctrl+. | Correct word under cursor. |
This section contains details of how novelWriter stores and handles the project data.
The project itself requires a dedicated folder for storing its files. The main project file is stored as an XML file with the name nwProject.nwx. This file contains all the meta data unique for the project. That includes project settings.
If this file is lost or corrupted, the structure of the project is lost. It is important to keep this file backed up.
The project XML file is suitable for diff tools and version control, although a timesetamp is set in the meta section on line 2 each time the file is saved.
The project documents are saved in folders staring with data_. Each document has a file handle taken from the first 13 characters of a SHA256 hash of the system time. the documents are saved with a folder and filename derived from this hash.
The reason for this is to avoid issues with file naming conventions and restrictions. The file name set in the tree view is only saved in the project XML file.
Each document file contains a plain text version of the text from the editor. The file can in principle be edited in any text editor, and is suitable for diffing and version control if so desired.