Veronica K. B. Olsen
139 lines
6.4 KiB
Markdown
139 lines
6.4 KiB
Markdown
# novelWriter
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[](https://travis-ci.com/vkbo/novelWriter)
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[](https://codecov.io/gh/vkbo/novelWriter)
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[](https://novelwriter.readthedocs.io/en/latest/?badge=latest)
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novelWriter is a markdown-like text editor designed fro writing novels and larger projects of many smaller plain text documents.
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The documentation is available here: [novelwriter.readthedocs.io](https://novelwriter.readthedocs.io/).
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### Note
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The application is under initial development, and not all planned features are included.
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The core functionality is, however, in place and has been used for a while by the author and collaborators.
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New features are being added regularly, until the core toolset is complete.
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When all planned initial features are in place, a release 1.0 will be made.
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Until then, novelWriter is in a pre-release alpha state, and should be considered experimental.
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If you do use it for real projects, please run backups frequently to avoid data losses.
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There is a built in backup feature that can pack the entire project into a zip file on close.
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Please check the documentation for further details.
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## Implementation
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The application is written in Python3 using Qt5 via PyQt5.
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It is developed on Linux, but it should in principle work fine on other operating systems as well as long as dependencies are met.
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The application can be started from the source folder with the command:
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```
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./novelWriter.py
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```
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It also takes a few parameters for debugging and such, which can be listed with the switch `--help`.
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There are no launcher icons yet.
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Consult your operating system documentation for how to make those.
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These will be added at some point, and I would appreciate any assistance from people working on Windows and MacOS as I don't use either of those operating systems.
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## Dependencies
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For the apt package manager on Debian systems, the following Python3 packages are needed:
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* `python3-pyqt5` for the GUI
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* `python3-pyqt5.qtsvg` may need to be installed separately
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* `python3-appdirs` for locating the system's config folder
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* `python3-lxml` for writing project files
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These are optional, but recommended:
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* `python3-enchant` for spell checking
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* `python3-pycountry` for translating language codes to language names
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* `python3-latexcodec` for escaping unicode characters in LaTeX export
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* `python3-pandoc` for additional exports to Word, Open Office, eBooks, etc.
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Alternatively, the packages can be installed with `pip` by running
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```
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python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt
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```
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in the application folder.
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You can also do them one at a time, skipping the ones you don't need:
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```
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python3 -m pip install pyqt5
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python3 -m pip install appdirs
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python3 -m pip install lxml
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python3 -m pip install pyenchant
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python3 -m pip install pycountry
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python3 -m pip install latexcodec
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python3 -m pip install pypandoc
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```
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On Windows,`pyenchant` may cause problems.
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I'm looking for a good alternative for spell checking.
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Note: On Windows, make sure Python3 is in your PATH if you want to launch novelWriter from command line.
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You can also right click the `novelWriter.py` file, create a shortcut, then right click again, select "Properties" and change the target to your python executable and `novelWriter.py`.
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It should look something like this:
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```
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C:\...\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python38\python.exe novelWriter.py
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```
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## Key Features
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The text documents of novelWriter uses a format similar to markdown, but with a few extensions and a few omissions.
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Project meta data is stored as XML.
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### Colour Themes
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The editor has syntax highlighting for the features it supports, and includes a set of different syntax highlighting themes.
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The GUI also has an optional dark theme in addition to the default system theme.
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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.
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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.
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New themes can easily be added to the `nw/themes` folder.
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Have a look in the existing folders for examples of how to define the colours.
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### Auto-Saving and Document Stats
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Open documents and the project file itself is saved regularly on a timer if they have been altered.
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The status of this is indicated by two indicators in the right corner of the status bar.
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Unsaved changes are in yellow, and saved is indicated by green.
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Latest character count, word count, and paragraph count is shown next to these indicators in the status bar.
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The counts are updated regularly, but not as-you-type.
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### Easy Organising of Project Files
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The structure of the project is shown on the left hand side of the main GUI.
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Project files are organised into root folders, indicating what class of file they are.
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The most important root folder is the Novel folder, which contains all of the files that makes up the finished novel.
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Each root folder can have subfolders.
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Folders have no impact on the project structure, they are purely tools for organising the files in whatever way the user needs.
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The editor supports four levels of headings, which determines what level the following text belongs to.
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Headings of level one signify a book or partition title.
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Headings of level two signify the start of a new chapter.
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Headings of level three signify the start of a new scene.
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Headings of level four can be used internally in each scene to separate sections.
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Each novel file can be assigned a layout format, which shows up as a flag next to the item in the tree view.
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These are mostly to help the user see what they contain, but some of them have impact on the format of the exported document.
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See the documentation for further details.
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#### Project Notes
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Supporting note files can be added for the story plot, characters, locations, story timeline, etc.
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These have their separate root folders.
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These are optional files.
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### Visualisation of Story Elements
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The different notes can be assigned tags, which the novel files can refer back to using special meta keywords.
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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.
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Further features using this meta data will be added in the future.
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## Screenshot
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