![]() For large projects, these tools provide a handy way to display alternate views and find specific documents quickly. In addition, there is the concept of a Group, which is a different way of organizing, and filters which can dictate how the organization is displayed. ![]() For example, just the chapters can be in the "Chapters" collection while a different collection can contain the Chapters plus all the character definitions. Documents, think of them as chapters, can become part of "collections". However, there is more capability in the display of the organizational structure of a project in Ulysses. Ulysses uses a three pane structure very similar to Scrivener. That leaves the writer free to focus on the semantic content of the document, the meaning of the words, not the application specific, technically derived appearance or formatting of the document - something we pay typesetters to do. Ulysses, in its export function, provides very detailed control of the final appearance of the document. I'm spending some time on this concept because it's an important one, key to the concept of Ulysses, and one that many writers don't think about when they launch a novel or book writing project. The developer says it bluntly but accurately: Funny thing is that an "Output format" is actually a format for later output and not, as apparently and primarily thought in Redmond, for input. Now, all that MS Word specific formating is useless. For example, one might make a hasty, unwise decision to write an entire novel in Microsoft Word, before having approached a publisher, and then find out later that the publisher wants the novel in a very different format. ![]() Īll too often the author starts with a notion of how the document will be output for an editor, but often that changes. The advantage of such a system is that the author can tag certain words for emphasis without having to worry about the technical details of how that will be executed later. For example, by default, if I want to define emphasis for a word, in Ulysses, I place it inside pre-defined tags, like ++this++. To this end, Ulysses does something that appears, at first to be a throwback to the days of WordStar in which printer commands were actually embedded in the text. That was after the author had finished the creative task. In the old days of the typewriter, with fixed typewriter fonts, it was left as a post-production chore to annotate the text with proofreading symbols for underline, italic, etc. One of the pitfalls of writing, say, fiction is that the author can be distracted by the additional task of being the typesetter. This is the third review in a series looking at writing tools. In some respects, it has the look and feel of Scrivener, but has additional tools for the organization of documents and the export of a project. Ulysses from The Blue Technologies Group is an ambitious, complex, capable writer's tool that has emphasis on the free flow of the writer's thoughts as opposed to the distracting task of deciding how the text should appear as it's written.
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