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This has no word export option (unless I missed it) which makes it infeasible for a lot of writers. Like it or not, docx is the format a lot of folks in mainstr
by vikingcaffiene 6y ago
This has no word export option (unless I missed it) which makes it infeasible for a lot of writers. Like it or not, docx is the format a lot of folks in mainstream publishing expect.
Context: My partner is a published author and I've pitched stuff like this at her on multiple occasions as an alternative to Scrivener. In addition to her laughing at my insistence that markdown is a superior way to write, she cites the need for a rock solid word export option that "just works" as a requirement for any tool she uses.
- michaericalribo 6y agoJust to add here, the question is not “is markdown (or tex or binary strings or...) better”, but “can the person who determines whether I get paid open the file?” The fiction publishing world is cutthroat competitive. Trying to use nonstandard tools / “breaking the mold” adds even more friction to success.
- lhenk 6y agoThis can be accomplished by exporting to PDF
- vidarh 6y agoUnless you're already a big-name author you rarely get to choose. Docx will generally be an option, and if you're lucky a few other formats.
- ASalazarMX 6y agoI guess their editor can just cut and paste to Word if he really wants to make corrections.
- FalconSensei 6y ago> their editor can just cut and paste to Word if he really wants to make corrections Is it sarcasm? I mean... make corrections/changes is what an editor does.
- ASalazarMX 6y agoHes, it was sarcasm. A write-only format is the worst way to send a novel to a publisher/editor.
- TeaDrunk 6y agoHow is a copyeditor supposed to manage a PDF? PDFs are generally a huge no-no in submissions. (Source: I write short fiction & my short fiction has been published.)
- barkingcat 6y agoexporting to pdf is exactly what you don't want as an editor receiving files from a writer.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- onlyrealcuzzo 6y agoI'm an author and an software engineer. I can see why Markdown could be slightly better for a writer - but not much better - and honestly it seems like a step down for an editor. Primarily, all a writer does is write plain text. Probably less than 1% of sentences are anything other than plain text. There's not a lot of headings or titles. There's not a lot of italics or bold text. What else is there? What am I missing? What's the benefit?
- michaericalribo 6y agoHa! This is a really interesting perspective—I think you're saying, "it's all plain text, so there's no advantage to using Markdown instead of docx". I think others have an opposite view, but on the same grounds. The argument seems to be: it's all plain text, so docx is overkill, so markdown is more technically efficient! There's some benefit to using the tool I know best (emacs, for me), so it's nice to use a "native" format that also gives me my usual keybindings, macros, etc. But there's no doubt it just offloads the inefficiency to a different step of the process. I'm more comfortable with inputting text, but it requires post-hoc reformatting, and I'd have to use a different word processor for post-editor changes... The "markdown is a more efficient solution from a technical perspective" argument doesn't hold a lot of weight with me...the practical overhead of docx is minimal, so unless you prize technical purity over all else, I don't think there _is_ a benefit.
- eslaught 6y agoThe benefit is the rest of the pure text toolchain. Like being able to use Git. I can confirm, for example, how long a typo has existed in my book by looking at the Git history. Maybe that's a bit academic, but you get the point. I have the complete history of everything I've ever written. Another example: because formatting is reified in Markdown, I can grep for it. Did I misuse italics? With one command I can find every single place where I used italics in my entire book. I don't think you can even do that in Word. Good luck reading a multi-hundred page manuscript to find all of the places you may have made the same mistake. Another example: Word provides styles, but honestly, who has discipline to use them? Most people I know manually insert page breaks, centered text, and X number blank spaces at the top of a page to make a new chapter. In Markdown, all of my markup gets converted into Word styles automatically and then I can create a reference doc to apply the style I want. I'm writing semantically correct styles in my documents all the time with no additional effort.
- eslaught 6y agoI will find out the answer to this question hopefully later this year. :-) But anyway, I do use Markdown and I have submitted to contests etc. that require Word formatted files. For the most part it's an nonissue. I can use Pandoc to export to Word, provide the reference file with the correct format, and boom, I'm done. None of the judges of my works so far have ever had any issues opening my files. I agree the publishing industry will never accept Markdown. That's ok. I can use the tools I like and still produce what they need to do their part of the job.
- michaericalribo 6y agoI agree, and I draft my own fiction in emacs. The cost is lower to use my preferred editor, then do the post-hoc formatting adjustments once in Word. For a novelist, though, the editing process is quite iterative: make changes, send them to your editor, they send it back with comments and inline track changes and so on. Don't get me wrong, I'm an advocate for using tools you're most comfortable with...whatever gets you writing! But these small things can throw a wrench in the process. It sure sucks to have to do edits in Word! Good luck with the publishing project, though, it sounds like you're pretty far along!
- eslaught 6y agoUnrelated, but what do you write? (Feel free to contact me on Keybase if you prefer, username is in profile.)
- socialdemocrat 6y agoGeez 99.99% of a Nobel is just plain text. MS Word adds no value. Getting plain text into MS Word is not rocket science. The point of using markdown is that you got many tools which are superior is aiding in you writing process and organizing your text. The final format is much less important than whatever aids your writing process. I have tried using traditional word processors for writing novels and I cannot say they measure up to tools like Ulysses.
- vikingcaffiene 6y agoI'll tell her to let her editor know that. Lol.
- WorldMaker 6y ago> MS Word adds no value. Word automates a lot of things in the editing cycle of a novel. Word's "Track Changes"/"Accept Changes" tools and the workflows they enable are by far the most common in a number of industries, but especially in edit workflows of most major publishers. That's why the Word format specifically is often requested/required, because people know and understand those tools and already have processes/workflows built around them. The closest equivalent tools for plain text are source control systems and text diff/patch. Those tools are great (and arguably fit some definitions of "superior", especially in capturing history earlier in the process and keeping history longer after the process). They are also nowhere as ubiquitously installed as Word, and nowhere near as easily taught (or already known/understood) as Word in today's world. Those "edit cycle" needs maybe aren't a huge reason to do the initial writing in Word, but they are certainly many steps above "no value", and thus the noted restriction that no matter what tool you use for the initial writing, if it doesn't have an easy Word export to get it started down the edit cycle path then it doesn't have an easy fit in today's publishing world.
- em-bee 6y agoit says it can exporting to ODF, but without much formatting requiring additional editing after conversion. instead it recommends exporting to HTML, and then importing that into writer or word for better results. but i could not tell from the docs how to get the end result into something like standard manuscript format without manual processing.
- em-bee 6y agofound the answer: http://www.autodidacts.io/convert-markdown-to-standard-manuscript-format-odts-docs-and-pdfs-with-pandoc/ http://www.autodidacts.io/convert-markdown-to-standard-manus...
- kevincox 6y agoInfeasible is maybe a stretch. However you will need to have a multi-step "Export for Publish" workflow which is definitely a hurdle. However assuming that 95% of the time is spent writing it may be worth it if you like the tool.
- zikzak 6y agoThe hardest part of writing a novel is definitely not converting it to docx. I can't even express how crazy this discussion sounds. It's like people who post on writer's forums about how they have an idea for a novel and ask what the best way to get it published is.
- notjustanymike 6y agoTrying to unseat Scrivener is like competing with IntelliJ.
- mmastrac 6y agoOk, we're going down the hole of analogies a little too far but VS Code and the world of language services is a pretty decent replacement for a lot of use cases outside of IntelliJ's core Java strength. Every top dog eventually gets cut down by _someone_ over time.
- TeaDrunk 6y agoScrivener does in fact have competition. (Highland 2 for screenwriting for example.)
- pattrn 6y agoAs a competitor to Scrivener, I'd love to know why you think that. (I just deleted a paragraph of text so that I don't influence your response with my own opinions.)
- kadrian12 6y agoI applaud the author for keeping everything text file based. In general, I think we should strive for non-proprietary, standard file formats. Isn't docx far too one-sided and controlled in that regard? I wonder if anyone has some info on the "state of affairs" for the "document format race".
- ordinaryradical 6y agoNone of this matters because the industry relies on docx (and it's a crusty, oldschool industry so good luck changing that). A minimum for a novel writing tool is that one can actually send the novel out in a format where your agent and editor will read it. Otherwise you're not getting that novel published.
- falcolas 6y agoIf we're being fair, docx (or rather, tools that write docx files) offers a lot of tooling out of the box that is useful for proofreaders, editors, and typesetters. Revision history, suggestions, and non-printing comments are all incredibly useful.
- nix23 6y agoI see you hate the Unix philosophy....for conversions use pandoc. A Song of Ice and Fire was not written with Word.
- chipotle_coyote 6y ago> A Song of Ice and Fire was not written with Word. When startups haven't even started up yet but are worrying about how they can scale to billion-dollar unicorn level, a common refrain on Hacker News has been "you are not Google." Allow me to give you the fiction writers' equivalent: you are not George R.R. Martin.
- nix23 6y agoThe output is md....dont you think you can convert that too let's say docx? You don't even have to be Google todo that. And if you want to let it proof read by George R.R. Martin you can even convert it to WordStar....magic eh? Pandoc can do that...your MS Word too?
- vidarh 6y agoIt can export to ODT or HTML, both of which can be imported into word, or moved over by crudely cut and pasting into Word. I think the bigger issue if she already likes Scrivener is that if that is the functionality she wants, then unless she wants the flexibility of being able to customise a tool or process Markdown files with code or switch to Linux etc. is something she wants, then it's not likely the tools you've pitched, or this one, will be an improvement. I write in Markdown myself, so I absolutely sympathise with your POV on that, but I think the "rock solid word export" is more of a way to get you off her back because it works.
- edwinyzh 6y agoYes, almost publishers accept Word documents only, and that's why I've built DocxManager (https://docxmanager.com/ https://docxmanager.com/) on top of Microsoft Word. ;) Basically, it's an outliner/corkboard/project manager for all kinds writers who uses Word.
- falcolas 6y agoWindows only. Bummer. Completely understandable, but bummer. A lot of tools can output .docx files.
- RandomWorker 6y agoshould be easy to implement using pandoc since the underlying code is python?
- ziftface 6y agoYeah I was surprised to see it didn't use pandoc for exports. I'm not sure why, and all these issues about exporting to word wouldn't exist.
- RandomWorker 6y agoMight be due the GPL license of pandoc, this is a copyleft type license, requiring any code that is built with pandoc to be described, made available, and released under the same license. https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/blob/master/COPYRIGHT https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/blob/master/COPYRIGHT
- spijdar 6y agoGiven that novelWriter itself is GPL licensed, I doubt this is the problem. More likely it was a choice to avoid needing pandoc as a dependency, either explicitly (bundled or integrated in the code somehow) or implicitly (calling to the system's pandoc install), as pandoc is written in Haskell and kind of a PITA to build or integrate in that way. Since you can already export to a single ODT/PDF/MD, the benefits of additional pandoc integration are probably diminished.
- barkingcat 6y agoI agree with her - markdown is totally not a superior way to write. It's a good way to mark up text, but writing isn't just marking up text.
- socialdemocrat 6y agoWhen writing you want a tool focused specifically on writing an organizing text. Programs like word is too focused on formatting and visual aspects. Markdown would be much better for authors. Just because they have become accustomed to something else doesn’t mean that something else is better. Just watching the mess my dad makes when writing books in Word makes me convinced that anybody who claims Word is superior for an author simply have never watched and author in action.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- evolve2k 6y agoAcknowledge having an inbuilt export would be preferable but for what it’s worth; If you’re a dev it shouldn’t be too hard to leverage pandoc, especially coming from a clean text based format. Something like: $ brew install pandoc (install on macOS) $ pandoc -t docx filename.md -o filename.docx Ref: https://opensource.com/article/19/5/convert-markdown-to-word-pandoc https://opensource.com/article/19/5/convert-markdown-to-word...
- TeaDrunk 6y agoThis is now significantly more steps than downloading Scrivener.
- codetrotter 6y agoHowever, since NovelWriter is GPLv3 licensed, they could in theory incorporate code from Pandoc, which is GPLv2 licensed, directly into NovelWriter.
- gabereiser 6y agoI think you guys are missing the point. The point isn’t “how do we get from markdown to docx” but rather “why doesn’t this tool support the format my publisher expects”. Yes, pandoc is amazing, but the product needs to support exporting to docx for the publisher so that the user of NovelWriter feels supported and empowered to write. TeaDrunk said it best: it’s now significantly more steps the user shouldn’t have to do.
- vikingcaffiene 6y agoThis is the correct take. If it's so easy to do then there should be a button or menu option that does it.
- codetrotter 6y agoThat’s what I am saying. Integrate Pandoc into NovelWriter so that users can export directly to docx. You and parent commenter seem to think that you are disagreeing with what I said but we are agreeing.
- coliveira 6y agoShe's correct. Only a programmer may entertain the idea that editing markdown is superior to any visual editor.
- madsbuch 6y agoDocx might be an appropriate format to communicate with a publisher. But to my very limited knowledge Markdown is a good choice for the initial authoring process. As it can easily be converted. These days publishing happens on all sorts of platforms and the end product needs to be prepared for the press, ePub, Kindle, PDF, audiobooks, etc. Until the distribution is decided my intuition is that Markdown provides this needed flexiblity.
- spoiler 6y agoFrom the documentation: > The core export format of novelWriter is HTML5. You can also export the entire project as a single novelWriter Markdown-flavour document. In addition, other exports to Open Document, PDF, and plain text is offered through the Qt library, although with limitations to formatting. So it seems like it can export to Open Document, which seems to be well-supported[1]; including Microsoft Office support. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument#Application_support https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument#Application_suppo...
- vikingcaffiene 6y agoIf she sends ODT to her publisher or editor, they will laugh at her and throw it in the trash. There are very specific rules about this stuff and no wiggle room for interpretation. It _has_ to be in docx format or it's not getting read.
- lhorie 6y ago> markdown is a superior way to write Is it though? I don't have any experience with book authoring but I would expect stuff like Geronimo Stilton to be hard to produce with markdown: it is peppered with creative text highlighting (e.g. words written in a custom cheese-pattern font) and this is common in primary school geared books. Even decidedly grown-up books like GEB might have illustrations and diagrams, and it's important to consider where said illustrations go - they must fit in a physical page. There are also other small quality of life things that word does automatically, e.g. replace ASCII 0x22 (keyboard quote) with 0x201C / 0x201D (left and right double quotes, respectively), etc. Don't get me wrong, I love to use markdown for programming documentation and it's pretty good for that, especially when you adopt flavors like GFM. But I'm legitimately curious what makes one consider markdown superior for book writing. It just seems like it would have a different set of priorities.
- ajarmst 6y agoI think that House of Leaves can be left as an unaddressed edge-case for most novel-writing tools.
- socialdemocrat 6y agoComing up with the text and doing the visual layout later are often separate step. And author does not do all the visual layout.
- rtpg 6y agoEven ignoring diagrams, etc, there's a reason that like word processing applications are killer apps for personal computing. WYSIWYG is a pretty convincing abstraction! And yeah, you have the invisible format issue but at least you can make tables and resize them with your mouse. Markdown's value add comes from having really good implementations to transform it into rich text, and being "unambiguous" (it's not really in a lot of cases but there aren't many great alternatives with widespread implementation). But like... Word is pretty magical overall.
- boplicity 6y agoYou also need a way to import changes from edits. Word's track changes feature is vital in professional contexts, even though it is not always intuitive. Once a manuscript gets to the editing stage, tracking revisions, comments, suggestions, etc is extremely important. I suppose at that stage, you could just move away from a tool like this, and just use Word, or Google Docs.
- sigzero 6y agoUse pandoc to export or transform it (if you can).