writing-specific features

bashosfrog — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 13:33:13 +0000

This forum has got me interested in using NB as my primary writer’s tool, but investigation of this possibility brought up a couple of issues:- No “live” word count. I can use WordServices, but I like to keep an eye on things as I write.- The interface isn’t as clean as, say, Mellel. One of the joys of using a real notebook is taking that fresh, clean page and filling it in with deathless prose (hopefully). While CP NB offers plenty of notebook metaphors, this isn’t one of them. Any writing has to be done within a cell, and that cell is bordered, heavily so on the left. Call me precious, but I like to work with a tabula rasa, and find this is enough to be off-putting. For the moment, I’ll be staying with Mellel for writing, but watching NB’s evolution with interest.

rthawley commented

rthawley — Thu, 13 Nov 2003 12:48:23 +0000

This would give you a cleaner page.

My two cents.

Markus Böing commented

Markus Böing — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 01:47:53 +0000

I think it is a matter of using the right tool for the task at hand. NB is not a word processor such as Mellel. So you shouldn't use if for writing. The merits of NB are more in the area of sketching out ideas and collecting reserach material (and finding it again if you need it at a later stage!).

I use NB for a lot of things but not to do the actual writing. I use Mellel for private purposes, DocBook for technical documentation, and MS Word if I do writing for my company.

My 0,02€.

/Markus.

david commented

david — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 10:58:41 +0000

quote:
Originally posted by Matt C.:
This forum has got me interested in using NB as my primary writer's tool, but investigation of this possibility brought up a couple of issues:
- No "live" word count. I can use WordServices, but I like to keep an eye on things as I write.

I wonder if that would be hard to implement. I wouldn't use it, but maybe there are more who would like it.

quote:
- The interface isn't as clean as, say, Mellel. One of the joys of using a real notebook is taking that fresh, clean page and filling it in with deathless prose (hopefully). While CP NB offers plenty of notebook metaphors, this isn't one of them. Any writing has to be done within a cell, and that cell is bordered, heavily so on the left. Call me precious, but I like to work with a *tabula rasa*, and find this is enough to be off-putting. For the moment, I'll be staying with Mellel for writing, but watching NB's evolution with interest.

You're not precious (unless you'd prefer to be) , but one of the main reasons for using NoteBook is that it has all those tools for rearranging things. Since many of them are visually-oriented, especially the app's basic idea of a "cell", they sort of need to be showing, in my opinion anyway.
As someone else mentioned, there are ways of minimizing but not eliminating their appearance when you aren't using some of the tools.

I think if I were doing a lot of "straight-ahead writing", without the need for outlines or "snippet storage", or especially the index (My favorite thing about NB is that I don't lose stuff from months ago anymore, because it's all in the index), that perhaps I would share what you've expressed.

If you *do* want to work with NoteBook's outline, storage, and index capabilities, but not all the time, you might find it useful (for instance) to do preliminary work in NoteBook, export to RTF format, then open that in the word processor. When you do that, you get the outline as you saw it in the notebook, but without the cells surrounding everything.

Hope this helps
David

Jayson commented

Jayson — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 14:49:27 +0000

quote:
Originally posted by Matt C.:
This forum has got me interested in using NB as my primary writer's tool, but investigation of this possibility brought up a couple of issues:
- No "live" word count. I can use WordServices, but I like to keep an eye on things as I write.
- The interface isn't as clean as, say, Mellel. One of the joys of using a real notebook is taking that fresh, clean page and filling it in with deathless prose (hopefully). While CP NB offers plenty of notebook metaphors, this isn't one of them. Any writing has to be done within a cell, and that cell is bordered, heavily so on the left. Call me precious, but I like to work with a *tabula rasa*, and find this is enough to be off-putting. For the moment, I'll be staying with Mellel for writing, but watching NB's evolution with interest.

A live word count function would be useful.

Interesting point about the heavy selection border on the left. I will give this some thought. There are people who want to or are using NoteBook as a word processor and I think it would be great if NoteBook could accommodate them where possible and where it makes sense.

bashosfrog commented

bashosfrog — Sat, 15 Nov 2003 15:51:27 +0000

quote:
Originally posted by Markus Böing:
I think it is a matter of using the right tool for the task at hand. NB is not a word processor such as Mellel. So you shouldn't use if for writing. The merits of NB are more in the area of sketching out ideas and collecting reserach material (and finding it again if you need it at a later stage!).

I agree - except that much of my work is in the form of ~600-word newspaper stories. Instead of punching out 600 words in Mellel, then copying the article across to NB or Devonthink for archiving, I'd like to be able to write it in NB and just export a file for emailing.

I don't imagine I'll be using NB for feature articles or books, or the Novel that I'll be writing someday. But there must be many out there who, like me, want somewhere to tap out sub-1000 word articles/letters/stuff that they prefer to file in NB than Finder. That's very possible right now, of course: I'm just suggesting a cleaner page would make the scenario more inviting.

Of course, I need to export my stories out of NB for emailing. The ultimate, for me, would be a hotkey/menu item that gave me the ability to email a cell *as an attachment* with one click or a hotkey. I don't have much use for the inline "Send Selection..." option in Apple's Services menu. Clients want attachments.

I understand that these suggestions cause me no pain, but involve at lot of work at Circus Ponies. Thanks for listening Jayson, even if you decide the pain isn't worth it!

Matt

zo219 commented

zo219 — Tue, 02 Dec 2003 21:51:27 +0000

If you're going to think about the left sidebar, Jayson - I find deleting a cell requires rather too much precision. Again and again, the click ends up going to the page. Not enough grab space? Need a second color? Dunno.

Thanks,
Zo

simon commented

simon — Wed, 03 Dec 2003 06:07:00 +0000

quote:
Originally posted by Zo-1:
If you're going to think about the left sidebar, Jayson - I find deleting a cell requires rather too much precision. Again and again, the click ends up going to the page. Not enough grab space? Need a second color? Dunno.

Thanks,
Zo

Good point. I think a rollover icon appearing would be a good thing, i.e. when the cursor moves over an area which would allow the cell to be selected a small icon appears on the left edge. Something like that anyway.

armadillo1 commented

armadillo1 — Sat, 06 May 2006 09:27:54 +0000

Please add my name to the list of those requesting live word count... I can see several uses for that in various writing projects that came to mind immediately when I started looking at Notebook.

bodsham commented

bodsham — Sun, 28 May 2006 04:21:39 +0000

I think writing an entire book in Notebook could be very interesting. But for me it would need more than just a word count - also rudimentary formatting and the ability to handle lots of text. I tried importing a 60,000 word word doc but it didn't all come through.

swellmel commented

swellmel — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 06:28:17 +0000

This is my first time posting, so apologies if I'm not doing this right.

In reply to Matt C., I also found the cells cumbersome at first, but they really come in handy for screenwriting, where they mimic index cards pretty well, making it easy to reorder scenes. I don't use NB to write the final script, but it sure comes in handy for beat sheets, outlines, and keeping my notes and research organized.

So, like you, I wind up using another program as my final word processor (in my case, a program that works in script forma), but NB makes a nice companion.

And I had never heard of Mellel before. I'll check it out.

Stox commented

Stox — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 08:56:53 +0000

i write a LOT. reports, articles. i keep tons of notes in NB. i keep it open along with MS Word. it's easy to go back/forth with just a click. btw,anybody use GLASS WRITER PRO for writing? i saw some nice things about it in a MAC magazine?

rickl commented

rickl — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 02:46:16 +0000

Yes, I did try Glass Writer Pro once, and liked it, but I never got round to changing my workflow to accommodate it. I guess WriteRoom is my present strongest candidate for addition to my arsenal of tools.

rickl commented

rickl — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 03:14:41 +0000

quote:
The interface isn't as clean as, say, Mellel. One of the joys of using a real notebook is taking that fresh, clean page and filling it in with deathless prose (hopefully). While CP NB offers plenty of notebook metaphors, this isn't one of them. Any writing has to be done within a cell, and that cell is bordered, heavily so on the left. Call me precious, but I like to work with a *tabula rasa*, and find this is enough to be off-putting. For the moment, I'll be staying with Mellel for writing, but watching NB's evolution with interest.

I hope you're still watching. Notebook is now a good tool for writing, thanks to the new-ish "writing" page type. It isn't however, a good tool for checking writing, nor for assembling lots of bits of writing into one extended piece of work destined to end up on paper. And that's no problem, since there are other tools that do that quite well.

Ajay commented

Ajay — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 20:00:27 +0000

I use Notebook for research and Word for drafting technical and non-fiction work. For fiction, I've been trying out Jer's Novel Writer (JNW). I find it invaluable for organising structure and for keeping track of spur-of-the-moment ideas. For some reason I can't put into words yet, I don't feel intimidated or locked-in writing a draft in JNW the way I do in Word. It's a beta version at the moment but well worth a look. Also, a number of the people on the associated forum use Notebook. I think the two make a terriffic combination.

Markus Böing commented

Markus Böing — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 03:15:59 +0000

quote:
Originally posted by Ajay:
For fiction, I've been trying out Jer's Novel Writer (JNW).

Margin notes, I whish Notebook would support Marginalia! Well, maybe one day. :-(

rosinalippi commented

rosinalippi — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 17:36:50 +0000

Uh-oh.

I knew I should have done the thirty day trial. Why didn't I? Because this looked like exactly what I've been seeking. A way to outline a novel in progress and write it, too.

Except it sounds like that's not really what Notebook is designed for. I love this software, but I don't think I can experiment with trying to write a 300k long novel on it. I'll have to go back to awful Word.

Maybe in a couple of generations this will work for a wider range of writer-types. I'll keep watching.

tasteele commented

tasteele — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 17:49:55 +0000

I have suggested the work count function some time ago, and the response was that it was coming. Hope that is being worked on.

Another suggestion I made was to have a "page tear out" function. This would allow you to tear out a page temporarily so two notebook pages could sit side by side. For example, I use a research page and a writing page. With the ability to "tear out" a page, I could sit the two pages side by side without the problem of having to go back and forth between two notebook pages.

Does that make sense?

Ursula commented

Ursula — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 06:35:44 +0000

quote:
Originally posted by greenery:
Uh-oh.

I knew I should have done the thirty day trial. Why didn't I? Because this looked like exactly what I've been seeking. A way to outline a novel in progress and write it, too.

Except it sounds like that's not really what Notebook is designed for. I love this software, but I don't think I can experiment with trying to write a 300k long novel on it. I'll have to go back to awful Word.

Did you try Scrivener?

Scrivener has been designed for writing. I'm using it in conjunction with NoteBook and DevonThink.

rosinalippi commented

rosinalippi — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 08:14:22 +0000

quote:
Originally posted by Ursula:

Did you try Scrivener?

Scrivener has been designed for writing. I'm using it in conjunction with NoteBook and DevonThink.

I just went to have a look. I wish I had seen it earlier.

I've tried to work with two applications on the same project, but I haven't been able to do that effectively. I can hardly imagine working with three.

Thanks for the good suggestion.

Ursula commented

Ursula — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 02:18:46 +0000

I must admit you are right, there are some problems using three different applictions. It is like an old habit and increasingly most of my creative work is done in Scrivener.

But for researching DevonThink is my universal collecting tool. Every little snippet goes in there. I prefer it to NoteBook, because I can have different views open at the same time.

NoteBook, Scrivener and DevonThink can create clippings from a website for instance, but unlike Scrivener NoteBook and DevonThink are capturing the original link, and this is important for me.

Sometimes when writing I need NoteBook’s numbering ability. But I am using it less and less. I miss Typewriter Scrolling and the ability to have more than one page open at the same time.

I detected Scrivener years after DevonThink and NoteBook. Each application has something special I need, so why not using them?

amc commented

amc — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 07:31:30 +0000

I’m just revisiting Notebook and was astonished to find that I’d written the original post on this thread. (I can’t seem to re-sign in as bashosfrog). I came here to say almost the same thing, having forgotten about this post.

I’m really impressed with the refinement that Notebook has undergone since I last used it in earnest, including some of the work on the writing pages. So impressed that I think I’ll pick it up again in earnest.

But … I still think the writing page idea needs some love.

- still no word count. Who writes without word counts?
- a non-editable margin. This would be the perfect place for line/paragraph numbers.
- Styles. Tortuously clunky – it takes me five mouse clicks and a lot of incidental mousing to re-set the style I want, with tab-indents and white space, every time I open a writing page. Nice to be able to set-and-forget this in the Inspector.

While I’m at it, I really like the ability to highlight the line I’m working on. :)

Given a little massaging along these lines, I can see Notebook as a one-stop-shop for notes & short prose (& poetry, if that’s your bent), just like paper notebooks have been for centuries.

Steve in Acworth commented

Steve in Acworth — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 13:58:33 +0000

Well that answers the question I had and that prompted me to join the forums—no word count. They should add this feature.

Eric commented

Eric — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 09:02:42 +0000

The ability to add a word count feature is on NoteBook’s possible future features list.