Veronica Berglyd Olsen
164 lines
5.0 KiB
ReStructuredText
164 lines
5.0 KiB
ReStructuredText
.. _docs_usage_comments:
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******************
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Comments and Notes
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******************
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You can add comments to your text that are not a part of the story. Regular comments are intended
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for you to add notes to yourself inside the text, which may be useful when you revise your drafts.
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However, there are several types of comments you can use.
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This section covers the basic comment types. There are a couple of advanced features that sue
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comment syntax too, but they are covered later.
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.. _docs_usage_comments_plain:
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Plain Comments
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==============
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A plain comment is a line or paragraph that starts with the character ``%`` as its first character.
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You can put them wherever you like in your documents, and you can chose to include or exclude them
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from your manuscript.
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For the most part, novelWriter completely ignores these comments. They are not included in your
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word or character count, and are only displayed in the document viewer panel if you enable them.
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:bdg-info:`Example`
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.. code-block:: md
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### Scene
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A regular text paragraph in the scene.
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% A comment you've added for your own notes.
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Another regular text paragraph in the scene.
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.. _docs_usage_comments_synopsis:
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Synopsis or Description Comments
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================================
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A special kind of comments are **Synopsis** and **Short Description** comments. They are different
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from plain comments in that they can be displayed alongside other information about a scene or a
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character or other story element described in a note. As with plain comments, they can be included
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in your manuscript, but they are formatted differently than plain comments.
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.. note::
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A summary or description comment can only be used once for each heading as they are considered a
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description of the content of the text under that heading. If you add two such comments under
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the same heading, the last one will be used.
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Synopsis
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--------
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A **Synopsis** comment is intended for adding a summary of your chapters and scenes.
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:bdg-info:`Example`
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.. code-block:: md
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### Scene
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%Synopsis: A summary of the content of the scene.
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The actual scene text.
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Short Description
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-----------------
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A **Short Description** comment behaves exactly the same as a synopsis comment, but is intended as
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a description of a story element, like a character.
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:bdg-info:`Example`
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.. code-block:: md
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# Characters
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## Darth Vader
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%Short: A Sith Lord that used to be a Jedi.
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Your text about the character.
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## Luke Skywalker
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%Short: A Jedi. The son of Darth Vader.
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Your text about the character.
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.. note::
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The ``%Synopsis:`` and ``%Short:`` comment prefixes are interchangeable, but when you include
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them in the manuscript, they are labelled based on the prefix, so the latter may make more sense
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for a Character note than the former.
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.. _docs_usage_comments_footnotes:
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Footnote Comments
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=================
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Footnotes are added with a shortcode, paired with a matching comment for the actual footnote text.
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The matching is done with a key that links the two. If you insert a footnote from the **Insert**
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menu, a unique key is generated for you. Shortcodes in general are covered in more detail in
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:ref:`docs_usage_formatting_shortcodes`.
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The insert feature will add the footnote shortcode marker at the position of your cursor in the
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editor panel, and create the associated footnote comment right after the paragraph. It will then
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move the cursor there so you can immediately start typing the footnote text.
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The footnote comment can be anywhere in the document, so if you wish to move them to, say, the
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bottom of the text, you are free to do so.
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Footnote keys are only required to be unique within a document, so if you copy, move or merge text,
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you must make sure the keys are not duplicated. If you use the automatically generated keys from
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the **Insert** menu, they are unique among all indexed documents. They are not guaranteed to be
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unique against footnotes in the **Archive** or **Trash** folder though, but the chance of
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accidentally generating the same key twice in a project is relatively small.
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:bdg-info:`Example`
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.. code-block:: md
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### Scene
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This is a text paragraph with a footnote[footnote:fn1] in the middle.
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%Footnote.fn1: This is the text of the footnote.
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.. versionadded:: 2.5
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.. _docs_usage_comments_ignored:
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Ignored Text
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============
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If you want to completely ignore some of the text in your documents, but are not ready to delete
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it, you can add ``%~`` before the text paragraph or line. This will cause novelWriter to skip the
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text entirely when generating previews or building manuscripts.
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This is a better way of removing text than converting them to regular comments, as you may want to
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include regular comments in your previews or draft manuscript.
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You can toggle the ignored text feature on and off for a paragraph by pressing :kbd:`Ctrl+Shift+D`
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on your keyboard with your cursor somewhere in the paragraph.
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:bdg-info:`Example`
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.. code-block:: md
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### Scene
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%~ This text is completely ignored.
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This text is a regular paragraph.
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