Talk:Thoughts on a better noveling tool
I think this is a great project to push forward - I have no computer programming skills, so cannot help there. A couple comments I would make re. the bottom (novel writing) window:
1. I like the idea of scenes being grouped with a particular chapter - but what about orphan scenes? I have a number of scenes in my 2006 NaNoNovel that don't fit in a chapter yet, so I like the ability to keep them "floating" out there until I discover where they go.
2. I also like the ability in Papel to organize things non-linearly (if that is a word). In other words I can put Chapters in any order on the page horizontally and vertically. In the new proposal it looks like Chapters are automatically lined up along the horizontal with scenes being grouped below a particular chapter. I think this would be great for me farther into the novel writing process, but in the beginning I really like the extremely free-form feel of Papel. Perhaps there could be a "cluster" vs. "row" option for grouping chapters and scenes?
That's my 2 cents for now.
I agree with the previous comments about being less rigid on the structure. Perhaps having two options on this window of 'free form' or 'structured' would cater for all.
The main point of my post relates to the type of application - I would like to see it cross platform (larger audience) and therefore suggest that it be a Java application. I currently use Papel on both Windows and Linux (under Wine) but Papel is not well behaved under Wine (truncates text files to 64k). Whereas I have another blogging tool (Thingamablog) which is Java and works very well in both environments.