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Any suggestions for writing environments for writing a non-fiction book?
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Posted by Cassius
Mar 17, 2007 at 11:43 PM
I’m about to start writing a book, if I can ever get the energy to be in a non-prone position. The book (I sure hope it’s longer than a pamphlet!) will have a very short bibliography (probably < 10 items)), will have examples in the form of diagrams, but probably will not include mathmatical expressions.
Some of “us folk” have suggested
Liquid Story Binder, Journal, NoteMap, and others that I don’t recall.
Any suggestions of other software and any comments on the pros & cons of the various programs would be useful.AND APPRECIATED.
Thanks,
-c
Posted by Dominik Holenstein
Mar 18, 2007 at 06:36 AM
Cassius,
I can recommend two applciations to look at:
IdeaMason v3
You can manage all your material including the references and the writing in one applcation. It is research oriented and good for academic writing. The composition too is worth to look at. A big plus of IM is that you can first collect and categorize your material in seperate chunks. When you have finished research and initial writing you then can turn to the composition tool and arrange the material into the correct order in an outline.
http://www.ideamason.com/
WhizFolders Pro Deluxe
It is developed for the writer. You don’t have a reference system but with around ten references you can manage them in manually. A very nice feature of Whizfolders is that you can export/print the topics without theier titles. Additionally, Whizfolders prints a table of content. What I am not sure is how stable it is when you add a lot of pictures and diagrams.
http://www.whizfolders.com/
Take the time to took at these two tools and then decide.
I wish you all the best with your book project!
Dominik
Posted by Thomas
Mar 18, 2007 at 09:46 AM
I have tested many during previous few days, though very shortly, and stayed with IdeaMason. It fits my world, allows to enter any random snippets, and later on to construct whole book from them. It also allows to reuse those snippets, and work on more projects within one database (which is good if they are on similar topic).
It doesn’t impose any structure on writer, as some other tools do (though those were mostly targetted at fiction writers).
I’m not yet that far to say, but I understood with IdeaMason it’s best to export final draft into MS Word (or any other) and do the finishing touches there.
I became envious to see what Mac platform has available for writing, but switching is not an option yet.
Posted by Franz Grieser
Mar 18, 2007 at 10:19 AM
Cassius
>I’m about to start writing a book, if I can ever get the energy to be in a non-prone
>position. The book (I sure hope it’s longer than a pamphlet!) will have a very short
>bibliography (probably
< 10 items)), will have examples in the form of diagrams, but
>
probably will not include mathmatical expressions.
I also recommend Ideamason (I haven´t used Whizfolders so I cannot say anything about that). Depending on the length of the project, more precisely, on how complex your outline will be, you may want to use Notemap for outlining or a mind-mapping tool such as Mind Manager, Mind Genius or even Freemind for brainstorming. The outliner in IM is basic compared to Notemap but does the job. You simply have to add a new “idea” (i.e. a note) for each element of your outline. Handling these means a bit more manual work than in a “real” outliner and you cannot import an outline from Notemap or any other application (at least, I haven’t managed to get one in).
Inserting graphics is straightforward: Just drag them from the Windows Explorer into an “idea” window and place them. I usually only put place holders for the images in the IM file and replace them in OpenOffice.or Writer by references to the graphics files (I don’t want and need the images in the text file while I still edit it as this blows the file size up and makes working in the Writer or Word file slow). But you can keep images in IM and export them to Word or Writer.
One more thing: You should have a fast Windows machine for Ideamason 3.1, or a fast graphical adapter. IM3.x uses a lot of windows that make redrawing on slower machines a drag. On the 1.1 GHz PC I use for my work opening a new idea window takes 3-4 seconds. That’s why I always keep an empty idea window open for typing in new notes so I do not have to wait for the window to open.
Franz
Posted by Hugh Pile
Mar 18, 2007 at 10:36 AM
In the Windows world, another vote for IdeaMason. It’s very good for all the reasons given above, with a flexible but not over-complicated UI, and the general direction of its development as indicated by its creators (“road map” would be too precise a term) suggests that it’s going to get even better. The only contra-indication is its price, but I think that is justified.
In the Mac world, a vote for Scrivener - a real writer’s tool. It seems most suited to fiction, but I believe it has been used for all kinds of factual writing (and can cope with endnotes and footnotes). Its development seems to be a model of good practice, with a clear overall vision, but highly responsive on the details. Like IdeaMason, it doesn’t claim to be a word-processor and needs MS Word or similar (there are cheaper WPs in the Mac world) to prepare drafts for printing or despatch to an editor. After an extensive series of betas, Version 1 has just been released to pretty much universal acclaim. It’s also very reasonably priced, if you already possess a Mac equipped with OS X.
There’s a nice story associated with it: its creator tried lots of other writing tools for both PCs and Macs. He couldn’t find one he liked, so taught himself Cocoa in order to build one for himself.
I too have tried all sorts of other writing tools, intended-for and adapted. Though many are adequate, in the current state of the market these two are by far the best.