While making preparations for my graduation thesis, I realized that I haven't ever done a writing project of such a size before. Having seen first hand how atrocious Microsoft Word documents get when you want properly formatted 100+ page documents I'm pretty sure it's not gonna be a good tool to use. So I am looking for something better.
Since Hubski is full of writers and editors, who better to ask? Ideally it supports scientific writing (sources and formulas), (re)structuring pieces of texts and good formatting tools on a cross-platform basis. I'm open to suggestions, as long as it can somehow output or convert to PDF I'm good.
There are several stages to writing, that need to be separated out. 1. Outlining. 2. Writing. 3. Layout NO application can do all three well enough for a 100-page doc. I use a web-app called WorkFlowy for all my outlining. It is quite simply brilliant. Possibly the best app I have ever used, for simplicity, features, and utility. Also works brilliantly on mobile. I write in FullScreen No Distractions mode in iaWriter. This is a no-frills writing environment that gives you a white screen, black text, and zero formatting tools. For serious writing, I can't imagine using anything else, any more. It keeps you focused on the WORDS, and not the FORMATTING, and ensures that whatever you write holds up because it is good words, written well, and not because you used fancy italics and listicles to hide the fact you don't know what you are talking about. Finally, once I have all the content written, I put it into ... gasp! ... Microsoft Word. The only way to win any battle with MS Word is to fight on it's own territory; use a simple, built-in template, and use the built-in styles. So select a template. Flow your text in from iaWriter. Then start formatting it, start to finish, using the clickable default formatting options. When inserting images, use a PNG and insert it via the "Insert" menu item. Use the Image Formatting pane to set the location, style, and attributes of the image. I output the Word file to PDF, and print the PDF, because this solves some of the more annoying Word printing issues. But the key with Word is to not try and do anything with it that the programmers haven't already thought of and created a button for. Fancy formatting, inserting a sidebar, and using your own custom stylesheet will ensure failure.
I use Scrivener for everything other than my day job. I utterly love it. But my day job requires me to create and output exquisitely formatted sales proposals of around 100 pages or so. Scrivener is excellent at outputting scripts, books, etc, but it isn't a page-layout application for complex pages.
Interesting, I hadn't thought of breaking it up like that. What I do wonder is how you handle the back-and-forth that inevitably occurs, e.g. when you're writing and your outline changes because of it. Maybe it's my writing style but I often rearrange stuff. I totally agree about being able to focus. I did all my writing for The Correspondent in Google Docs. Plain text really helped me focus on the text and nothing else. Markdown has also been on my radar, do you use that as syntax for iaWriter? I've also been considering using InDesign for the layout, which I have learned the bare basics of this year. Supposedly one can link .md files to ID...
Well, technically, if you are going back and forth between your outline and your first draft, then you haven't outlined it properly, or you have started writing too soon. You need to re-think the purpose and content of your outline. GoogleDocs was my second-best writing environment, and I loved it when I worked at a tech-savvy company that had standardized on the full GoogleApps suite. But Google's apps fall down as soon as you need to use them with ANYTHING else. I find any sort of markdown notation a distraction. It is, once again, confusing CONTENT with LAYOUT. Stick with writing excellent content, and then worry about the layout later. That way you will ensure that your content is good, before you dive into the distraction and bottomless pit of layout. ... which brings me to ... InDesign. It really is amazing. Brilliant app. But it is a bottomless black hole pit of despair unless you get professional training on it. I use it pretty much weekly, and I massively destroy things with ID pretty much weekly. At this point, if I can get a page to look right in ID, then I output it to PDF. Then I assemble the individual PDF pages in Apple's "Preview" app, into a full, multi-page PDF, and print it out. Sometimes I hand-type page numbers into Preview, as well. (shrug) Writing is religion. I know kb is going to have a lot to say on the topic too, and I look forward to reading his excoriation of my technique! :-) Markdown has also been on my radar, do you use that as syntax for iaWriter?
If we're talking about the same Markdown, I find your assertion of its nature to be false. Markdown and its derivatives serve to enhance your content, not add new features to it. Content itself is important, but being able mark the most important ideas as well as present data that is otherwise unreadable - say, tables - is no less so; sometimes it even is your content.I find any sort of markdown notation a distraction. It is, once again, confusing CONTENT with LAYOUT.
Honestly? You have nothing but my sympathy. If I were forced into a workflow where I had to take words and run them through a four-step workflow that involved hand-typing shit into Preview after getting Word to play nicey-nicey with my images, I'd have a heart-to-heart with my employer about the amount of effort being wasted on layout and how they could probably hire a community college intern just to prettify the writing and still come out ahead. I have never been forced into a corner where people who need InDesign-level tweakatude don't have a couple InDesign galley slaves for that specific purpose.
Yeah. We have had that talk, and the InDesign/Writer grunt employee for me is on the plan... but then we got purchased by a big company, and are doing the "right-sizing transition" thing, as the new company figures out where to throw money at us for the biggest wins. I expect that by this time next year, most of my current work will be an assembly process for a recent-graduate level InDesign geek with a penchant for writing. I will write the "interesting" bits and focus on my Competitive Intel research and analysis, and manage the production of sales proposals and case studies. InDesign is cool... but I used PageMaker and Quark and Illustrator for far too many years to fit another iteration of those design tools into my whisky-addled brain!
Outlines serve two purposes: a way of formatting my arguments (not unlike in philosophy with premises P1, P2, P3 leading to conclusion C, etc) and as a jumping-off point. But there's a thousand ways to write a certain statement, tell a part of my story or explain a concept. I usually figure those out during the writing process and can't imagine knowing that beforehand. It's like guessing where to put your furniture when you haven't built a house yet - the details matter, but they are dependent on the larger structure that it's very hard to get right so early on. Plus, I often think of new arguments or points of view during my writing, necessitating restructuring or rewriting of parts. Do you not have those issues, or are they not significant for you? InDesign so far has been me attempting to cobble together a few booklets. If I embed all the assets, I don't break everything. Its logic is kinda weird and I don't know whether that's because of my low skill level, because I confuse concepts with Illustrator and Photoshop, because it's just weird or all of the above.Well, technically, if you are going back and forth between your outline and your first draft, then you haven't outlined it properly, or you have started writing too soon. You need to re-think the purpose and content of your outline.
But it is a bottomless black hole pit of despair unless you get professional training on it.
I agree with everything you said... ten years ago. Nowadays, writing is a system for me. It is a woodworkers shop. The logs come in over here, they get shaped into planks, the planks get honed here, individual pieces get made here, the pieces get fit together over there, and at the end, the piece is sanded and finished at that last table near the door. When I moved from a "creative" writing mindset to a "production-writing" mindset, I realized that there is no "magic" in writing. You don't need candles burning, and the lighting just so, and quiet, and all that. Now, I align the tools and the steps, and the writing happens. I think I have reached a state like Stephen King talks about in "On Writing" where you get all the mechanical bits lined up, and then you let the creativity flow via those tools. The "system" is in place to produce great work... you just insert the creativity. This is why I don't return to my outlines. Because when I write my outline I am thinking about how I am going to consume that outline at the next step. So when I get to the next step, I consume the outline, and out comes the first draft. When I get to the second draft, I consume the first draft, and output the second draft. It's a linear process for me. And it works for me. (Clearly doesn't work for KB, though!)
I use Vim for writing on my journal and everything else. It takes a while to get to a level where you can use it comfortably, but once you get there, for me I don't want anything else. It just feels like home. Very quick to navigate, you don't need to use the mouse for commands and stuff (keyboard only), highly configurable through a single file (.vimrc) on Linux and it's just a black screen where you put text (and code) in. For word processing and formatting, I use LibreOffice. At the end of the semester, I wrap everything I've written up in there and export to PDF. This comment was written on Vim. ♥
It's interesting seeing LaTeX thrown around here a lot. I've heard of it but never really looked into it, so I looked at the site for it just now. I've got to admit it looks like a nightmare. They say upfront that they want to "let authors get on with writing documents" but then show and example where it looks like you're writing code? How is that better than the straightforward example they give first, which they describe as "wasting time"? What am I missing here?
I have worked with LaTeX and the idea is that you codify the elements in your writing. So you type out \chapter{title} and it'll apply the proper widths, margins, font sizes and other formatting elements that you might want. It's used a lot in the hard sciences because it makes writing long, difficult equations a breeze.
LaTeX lets you logically describe what you're writing, and leave the presentation up to a template/designer. It is similar to the relationship between the content of a webpage and the CSS that makes it look a certain way. You may find the online https://www.sharelatex.com/ editor an easy way to get started. As a writer, I find it much more pleasant than Word or any other bloated text editor. As a reader, it will truly produce the most beautiful documents you've ever laid your eyes on.
cc demure yellownissan 4TRANdan I have actually worked with LaTeX in projects before, twice. Last year we used Overleaf to collaborate on a report; a few years ago I tried LaTeX myself. I think it works great for getting a technical report out that doesn't look ugly. It makes difficult equations easy and can make simple documents or articles nice in little to no time. For a while, my CV was in LaTeX. That said, using it left a bad taste in my mouth. I've found the templates to be wholly unsatisfactory, inflexible and generally a pain to deviate from the norm. I consider myself a designer so I do want to customize my layout, I just don't want it in the dreadful way that MS Word does. Package and file management was buggy both offline and online for me. (Or I just didn't get it, that's also likely, but I definitely tried.) The Overleaf 40-page report had 12 packages that added necessary functionalities but resulted in the packages conflicting regularly and randomly. Syntax is, after using it frequently, readable but it feels more like writing code and less like writing. So my general feel towards LaTeX is that it introduces more problems than it solves.
Handling figures is the thing Word sucks most at, and I still don't know a good way to work around it. All the other aspects of managing a thesis/dissertation are doable with Word though. Auto-generated TOCs that update, sections and chapters, etc. goobster is right about Word: you have to fight on its turf. The features are there, but not necessarily in the way or place you expect them to be, but they are for the most part there.
I've figured out how it "thinks", and can make anything inserted (images, spreadsheets, other objects, etc) pretty much play nice. And if I can't I can always build that one page in InDesign (or whatever) output it to PDF, and insert that one page into the final PDF file as a replacement, before I print it. But man... there is NO WAY anybody else could collaborate with me on what I do. It's a completely broken process that only works because I have cobbled it together from the bits and pieces of apps that actually work. Handling figures is the thing Word sucks most at, and I still don't know a good way to work around it.
The trick to Word is to imagine that there's a vengeful poltergeist named Clippy lurking in the code and every now and then you have to click on extraneous radio buttons and disclosure triangles to appease his hunger for GUI-fucking. As soon as you accept that it's possessed you can just sorta go with the flow. Granted, it's bombastically retarded that in the year 2017 we have to put up with this shit but hey - vengeful ghosts.
My tip: perhaps try making whatever it is you need in PowerPoint. I've found it's much easier to design with, it has a layer panel and I think that if you meddle around with the settings you can set the page size to letter and export to PDF. I actually designed a small app using PowerPoint using the Appear and Disappear animations for my work.
You just described the ideal use case for LaTeX! For really long documents it's especially good, because you can compile your chapters/sections/etc individually, if you set it up correctly. That way you only work with small documents most of the time, and don't kill your memory. Of course, LaTeX is a markup language, so you'll have to learn a new language to use it, but if you can get over that learning curve it is so worth it.