Veronica K. B. Olsen
104 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
104 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
# novelWriter
|
|
|
|
[](https://travis-ci.com/vkbo/novelWriter)
|
|
[](https://codecov.io/gh/vkbo/novelWriter)
|
|
[](https://novelwriter.readthedocs.io/en/latest/?badge=latest)
|
|
|
|
novelWriter is a markdown-like text editor designed fro writing novels and larger projects of many smaller plain text documents.
|
|
|
|
It is under initial development, and not all planned features are included, but it is perfectly usable in the current state.
|
|
|
|
The application is written in Python3 using Qt5 via PyQt5.
|
|
It is developed on Linux, but it should in principle work fine on other operating systems as well as long as dependencies are met.
|
|
|
|
The documentation is available here: [novelwriter.readthedocs.io](https://novelwriter.readthedocs.io/).
|
|
|
|
The application can be started from the source folder with the command:
|
|
```
|
|
./novelWriter.py
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
It also takes a few parameters for debugging and such, which can be listed with the switch `--help`.
|
|
|
|
There are no launcher icons yet.
|
|
Consult your operating system documentation for how to make those.
|
|
I will add those later, and would appreciate any assistance from people working on Windows and MacOS as I don't use either of those operating systems.
|
|
|
|
## Dependencies
|
|
|
|
For the apt package manager on Debian systems, the following Python3 packages are needed:
|
|
|
|
* `python3-pyqt5` for the GUI
|
|
* `python3-pyqt5.qtsvg` may need to be installed separately
|
|
* `python3-appdirs` for locating the system's config folder
|
|
* `python3-lxml` for writing project files
|
|
|
|
These are optional, but recommended:
|
|
|
|
* `python3-enchant` for spell checking
|
|
* `python3-pycountry` for translating language codes to language names
|
|
|
|
Alternatively, the packages can be installed with `pip` by running
|
|
```
|
|
pip install -r requirements.txt
|
|
```
|
|
in the application folder.
|
|
|
|
## Key Features
|
|
|
|
The text documents of novelWriter uses a format similar to markdown, but with a few extensions and a few omissions.
|
|
Project meta data is stored as XML.
|
|
|
|
### Colour Themes
|
|
|
|
The editor has syntax highlighting for the features it supports, and includes a set of different syntax highlighting themes.
|
|
The GUI also has an optional dark theme in addition to the default system theme.
|
|
|
|
Note that the dark theme may not render all elements of the GUI as dark colours if you are running an early version of Qt5.
|
|
This is not due to a bug in novelWriter, but due to the fact that the the styling options in the Qt API in some versions were incomplete.
|
|
|
|
New themes can easily be added to the `nw/themes` folder.
|
|
Have a look in the existing folders for examples of how to define the colours.
|
|
|
|
### Auto-Saving and Document Stats
|
|
|
|
Open documents and the project file itself is saved regularly on a timer if they have been altered.
|
|
The status of this is indicated by two indicators in the right corner of the status bar.
|
|
Unsaved changes are in yellow, and saved is indicated by green.
|
|
Latest character count, word count, and paragraph count is shown next to these indicators in the status bar.
|
|
The counts are updated regularly, but not as-you-type.
|
|
|
|
### Easy Organising of Project Files
|
|
|
|
The structure of the project is shown on the left hand side of the main GUI.
|
|
Project files are organised into root folders, indicating what class of file they are.
|
|
The most important root folder is the Novel folder, which contains all of the files that makes up the finished novel.
|
|
Each root folder can have subfolders.
|
|
Folders have no impact on the project structure, they are purely tools for organising the files in whatever way the user needs.
|
|
|
|
The editor supports four levels of headings, which determines what level the following text belongs to.
|
|
Headings of level one signify a book or partition title.
|
|
Headings of level two signify the start of a new chapter.
|
|
Headings of level three signify the start of a new scene.
|
|
Headings of level four can be used internally in each scene to separate sections.
|
|
|
|
Each novel file can be assigned a layout format, which shows up as a flag next to the item in the tree view.
|
|
These are mostly to help the user see what they contain, but some of them have impact on the format of the exported document.
|
|
See the documentation for further details.
|
|
|
|
#### Project Notes
|
|
|
|
Supporting note files can be added for the story plot, characters, locations, story timeline, etc.
|
|
These have their separate root folders.
|
|
These are optional files.
|
|
|
|
### Visualisation of Story Elements
|
|
|
|
The different notes can be assigned tags, which the novel files can refer back to using special meta keywords.
|
|
Currently, this information can be used to display a Timeline View of the story, showing where each scene connects to the plot, and which characters, etc. occur in them.
|
|
Further features using this meta data will be added in the future.
|
|
|
|
## Screenshot
|
|
|
|
|