Veronica Berglyd Olsen
101 lines
4.5 KiB
ReStructuredText
101 lines
4.5 KiB
ReStructuredText
.. _a_reading:
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******************
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What to Read First
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******************
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The documentation of novelWriter is quite extensive. There are a lot of features to get used to,
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but you don't need to know all of them to get started.
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The chapters below labelled "Essential Information" are the ones you need to know to use the
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application correctly. By "correctly" it is meant: in a way so novelWriter understands the basic
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structure of your text. It collects a lot of information from your text and uses it to display the
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structure of it in various ways to help you get an overview of your writing.
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The chapters labelled "Recommended Reading" includes additional information on how the different
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parts of the application work and what the features do.
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The "Optional" and "Lookup" chapters contain additional information or lookup tables that are not
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essential for using the application.
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Using novelWriter
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=================
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In order to use novelWriter effectively, you need to know the basics of how it works. The following
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chapters will explain the main principles. They start with the basics, and get more detailed as you
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read on.
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:ref:`a_breakdown` -- Essential Information
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This chapter explains the basics of how the application works and what it can and cannot do.
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:ref:`a_ui_project` -- Recommended Reading
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This chapter will give you a more detailed explanation of how you can use the user interface
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components to organise and view your project work.
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:ref:`a_ui_writing` -- Recommended Reading
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This chapter will give you a more detailed explanation of how the text editor and viewer work.
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:ref:`a_fmt` -- Essential Information
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This chapter covers how you should format your text. The editor is plain text, so text
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formatting requires some basic markup. The structure of your novel is also inferred from how you
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use headings. Tags and references are implemented by special keywords.
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:ref:`a_kb` -- Optional / Lookup
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This chapter lists all the keyboard shortcuts in novelWriter and what they do. Most of the
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shortcuts are also listed next to their menu entries inside the app, or in tool tips. This
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chapter is mostly for reference.
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:ref:`a_typ` -- Optional
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This chapter gives you an overview of the special typographical symbols available in
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novelWriter. The auto-replace feature can handle the insertion of standard quote symbols for
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your language, and other special characters. If you use any symbols aside from these, their
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intended use is explained here.
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Organising Your Projects
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========================
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In addition to managing a collection of plain text files, novelWriter can interpret and map the
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structure of your novel and show you additional information about its flow and content. In order
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to take advantage of these features, you must structure your text in a specific way and add some
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meta data for it to extract.
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:ref:`a_proj` -- Essential Information
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This chapter explains how you organise the content of your project, and how to set up automated
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backups of your work.
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:ref:`a_struct` -- Essential Information
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This chapter covers the way your novel's structure is encoded into the text documents. It
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explains how the different levels of headings are used, and some special formatting for
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different kinds of headings.
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:ref:`a_references` -- Recommended Reading
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This chapter explains how you organise your notes, and how the Tags and References system works.
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This system lets you cross-link your documents in your project, and display these references in
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the application interface.
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:ref:`a_manuscript` -- Recommended Reading
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This chapter explains how the **Manuscript Build** tool works, how you can control the way
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chapter titles are formatted, and how scene and section breaks are handled.
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Writing Aids
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============
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We are in the process of adding tools to novelWriter that can be used to track more information
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about your project to assist in your writing. These tools are entirely optional and will not be in
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your way if you choose to not use them.
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:ref:`a_story_structure` -- Writing Tools
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Story structure comments are a way to add meta data that can be used to analyse the structure of
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your writing. These comments can be exported to spreadsheets for analysis.
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Additional Details & Technical Topics
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=====================================
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The Additional Details and the Technical Topics sections contain more in-depth information about
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how various bits of novelWriter works. This information is not essential to getting started using
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novelWriter.
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