Hot answers tagged software
7
There are two concepts in git that can help: branches and tags.
Tags.
Think of a tag as a name for a specific revision. Any time you want to remember a version, create a tag for it. For example, when you finish a draft, you can tag it like this:
git tag first_draft
When to use tags.
Tags are good for marking any version that you might want to remember ...
5
According to these figures, 55% of ebook buyers use the amazon kindle, regardless of their accuracy, the kindle is a very popular device. The (non-drm) format which works best with the kindle is the mobi. Pdf on the kindle is sometimes unreliable.
All other popular ereaders I know of support epub, and people on a pc will be fine with html and/or PDF.
5
None of them. There is no commercial grammar checker that I know of which even approaches the ability of a halfway-competent native speaker. If you're thinking that grammar-checking software will help you with your typos and grammar mistakes, think again. This is one thing that still requires human intelligence.
5
As silly as this may sound: the ability to turn every single function OFF if desired.
Bells and whistles are great. Some people love them. I hate a lot of them, although not always.
Sometimes I want my word processor to catch my CApitalization typos and repeated words. Sometimes I don't. I don't want it looking over my shoulder so it can complain if I use ...
5
I think you can use "click" with relative impunity. Even someone on a tablet or smartphone knows that "click" equates to "tap" with a touch interface. If you really feel strongly about it, you can say "Click or tap" or "Click/tap," but ask around to make sure it doesn't sound clunky.
I agree that "select" is the right word for "choose one or more of these ...
4
Check out Sigil. It's a multi-platform EPUB ebook editor with the following features:
Online Sigil User's Guide, FAQ, and Wiki documentation
Free and open source software under GPLv3
Multi-platform: runs on Windows, Linux and Mac
Full UTF-8 support
Full EPUB 2 spec support
Multiple Views: Book View, Code View and Split View
WYSIWYG editing in Book View, ...
4
I use git for version control, and it's terrific for writing projects.
I've used GitHub to share work in progress while collaborating with a friend. We wrote plain text files in markdown format.
GitHub also has an Issues tracker that can easily be used to assign, accept, and track individual tasks. My friend and I didn't need that to collaborate, but ...
2
I've been writing on the Mac for a number of years now. Over that time, I've settled into using Scrivener for project organization, version control, and major publishing; and Sublime Text 2 + Markdown Editing for Sublime Text 2 for most of the actual writing. I use Marked for the publishing right now (I mostly blog at Wordpress, and this workflow lets me ...
2
"Click" is pretty standard in my experience.
As far as the typography, my personal preference is to use bold for anything you want the user to click on or select (button names, etc.) and italics for names of screens or windows. It calls the most attention to the items you want the reader to actually do something with.
Microsoft does have a style guide, ...
2
Wrong question. You don't choose the ebook format, the retailer(distributor) does.
My advice is, don't waste time creating dozens of formats. The two main ones are: Mobi for Kindle and Epub for everyone else. When you go to upload a book, the retailer will tell you which format they accept.
My only other advice is: Many retailers will say they accept MS ...
2
Generators, I've found, tend to produce bland characters. There are few, if any, substitutes for spending time with your characters. Obviously you can't meet your characters in-person. What you can do is use writing prompts to put characters in everyday situations and see how they handle themselves.
A useful tool is stereotyping your character. Think about ...
2
I'm not sure that this is a choice that you really have to make -- there are services that will do these conversions for you. I saw a presentation at the Digital Minds Conference 2013 by Autharium that seemed to be suitable. (I'm not associated with them, just in the general publishing software business area).
1
If you are self-publishing, there is no reason not to offer both EPUB and MOBI formats to ensure that the final output looks the way you want it to on the respective readers(EPUB for iOS/Nook and MOBI for Kindle). Since you have the scripts to generate these formats from your XHTML source, you are set.
If you are going to publish through one of the ...
1
Final Draft will open a text file exported from Celtx and give you the option of converting it to standard formatting for a screenplay.
Quite detailed instructions are given in the Final Draft support forum
1
Take a good long look at Scrivener. Note that the link has a Scrivener for Dummies title as the first thing you see. That is either insulting or an admission of failure.
Scrivener is software makes it easy to write and organize a book. But there are certain things about it that are maddening, because they look trivial and simple but are actually unintuitive ...
1
I'm actually at the point now where I want to take hundreds of scrappy scenes and bits and pieces and try to give my novel some structure. So the question you've asked is actually uppermost in my mind.
So I like Scrivener. I use it for all my drafting. But it doesn't quite cut it for the big-picture structure stuff, I'm finding.
When I tried to use ...
1
I wrote a piece of software that converts OpenOffice (or LibreOffice) files to Kindle and ePub.
To answer your questions:
It automatically recognize chapters and creates a table of content for both Kindle and ePub
You can easily add front and back matter, it will be recognized and added to the table of content. To do that, you just add a heading to the ...
1
First, as someone who has used world builders extensively, a warning: When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
World builders are all limited to certain things. None are as realistic as they say on the box, and you'll find yourself with a few odd looking flaws which actually damage immersion. I strongly suggest you design your world first and ...
1
UniverseSandbox has a relatively new powerful Astrophysics and celestial mechanics simulator if you are writing a Sci-Fi universe and would like something that will give you a chance to make sure your orbits, day/month/year lengths, number of moons, etc are reasonable and workable.
It also has a gross calculation of planetary surface temperatures based on ...
1
Since no one else has suggested it, I would suggest LaTeX for this.
You probably haven't heard of it. (Hipster pose; TeX is over 35 years old and is guaranteed to be bug-free, where the current bounty for any bug is $327.16, that is, 2^15 cents.)
Simply put, LaTeX is a way to create content that allows the writer to forget about format. This separation ...
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